Q - What connects the classic book Huckleberry Finn to the number 2? Read on ...
The Number 2 is almost as prominent in the world as number 1.
Take the human body which has 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, and 2 ears for starters. And there are just 2 sexes, male and female (the mind boggles but wouldn't it be interesting if there was 3 or 4).
Some families have 'twins' which happens about 1 in every 100 pregnancies.
And we are told we have 2 sides to our brain - left and right
How many of each animal species did Moses brink on the ark?
Did you say 2 before thinking about the question? It's an old trick question as it wasn't Moses but Noah who rounded up 2 of each animal for his the ark.
In sport a score of 2 is not that common but it does arise in rugby with 2 points for the conversion of a try. And of course you can get a 2 in golf as a score on a hole or maybe as a result i.e 2 under for the round.
Can you name any hit songs that had 2 in the title? Here's a few...
- Two Tribes - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
- It Takes Two - Marvin Gaye
- Two Becomes One - The Spice Girls
- Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
- Two Hearts Beat as One - U2 (two's all round for this one )
- Just The Two of Us - Will Smith
- 2 4 6 8 Motorway - Tom Robinson
- and this one ...
Words can often be paired in twos - as opposites .... like North and South, East and West, Yes and No, Far and Near, Black and White, Up and Down , In and Out, Day and Night, Back and Forward, Hot and Cold, .... it's endless ...
And on the subject of words many of the most used words in the english language have just two letters (although funnily two itself has three letters).... to...is....an....at....on....in...or...up...me...oh...my...
So back to our opening question about Huckleberry Finn. The answer is in the authors name, Mark Twain. The bold Mark was actually born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he worked as a pilot on the boats on the mighty Mississippi. In boat language at the time a 'fathom' was a measure of water depth (= 6 feet). 2 Fathoms(12 feet) was called a twain ( which was an old english word for 2) and the shout 'mark twain' was often called by the crew (and often by Samuel) as they navigated the river. When Samuel started writing he adopted 'Mark Twain' as his pen name
