'9' fans are gonna love Wednesday

Set your clocks for 9:09 a.m. and relish the fact that it will come back in 12 hours

By: Tim Clodfelter | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: September 08, 2009

If nine is your lucky number, you'll be on cloud nine Wednesday morning.

9:09 a.m. will be the ninth minute of the ninth hour of the ninth month of the ninth year of the new century. Wait nine seconds, and you'll have one more nine to celebrate.

Cats are said to have nine lives. That aforementioned cloud nine appears to be everyone's favorite cloud. A typical pregnancy lasts nine months.

For Apple fans, Wednesday could be a lucky day. Apple is holding an event in San Francisco to make some big announcements. The only clue offered so far has been the invitation's slogan: "It's only rock and roll but we like it." There is speculation that the Beatles are finally going to be available on iTunes, with other theories including a new line of iPods.

Whether the Beatles go to iTunes or not, Wednesday is definitely going to be your lucky day if you're a Beatles fanatic. The band's entire catalog is being re-released on CD, remastered and -- according to early reviews -- sounding better than ever. And the video game Rock Band: The Beatles comes out that day, too, letting players take on the roles of the Fab Four.

The Beatles certainly loved the number nine: They released "Revolution 9" (with the repeated verse "Number 9, Number 9") and "One After 909"; in their solo work, John Lennon released "#9 Dream" and George Harrison released "Cloud Nine."

And don't forget that in the classic 1955 novelty song, "Love Potion No. 9" works wonders, or that the 1970s educational cartoon series Schoolhouse Rock declared it "Naughty Number Nine."

On a more diabolical note, there are nine circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy; a Cat O'Nine Tails was a multi-tipped whip used for punishment; and if you flip 9/9/09 upside down (and ignore the 0) you get the sinister number 666, the Number of the Beast according to the Bible's Book of Revelation.

But for the most part, nine is considered a lucky number. It even has that designation in mathematics. Check out mathworld.wolfram.com/LuckyNumber.html, which bills itself as "the Web's most extensive mathematics resource," for more details.

If you sleep in and forget about 9:09 a.m., you can either squint and celebrate 9:09 p.m., or wait until 10:10 a.m. on October 10, 2010.

■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com