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,. .~~~.,.\~ , z,.-~ , ~"':~; ...., ' ... ,\'-~~"ilit.,,:', ,..--;;:,:~.'.~ ,,"~- 23 SKIDDOO A sizable body of folklore has accrued to the number 23--see, for instance, The 23 Phenomenon by Robert Anton Wilson (see Fortean Times, 23:32). Usually, attention is focused upon its sinister aspect, but for Richard Connolly, a pub manager in Douglas, Isle of Man, it is a: lucky number. His recent 23rd birthday fell on 23 September; 'so, at 23:23 hours that day he placed a bet of £23 on the number 23 on the roulette wheel at his favourite gambling place, the Palace Casino ,in Douglas. He won £571. "1 was staggered when the ball popped into 23," he said. He would have won a lot more if he bad had the conviction to resist hedging the bet by splitting it between the numbers each side. (Source: The Sun, 25 September 1992.) THE POWER OF NUMBERS -7 The coincidental positioning of num bers has long held superstitiou~ or mys tical meanings for mankind. Consider the number seven, the num ber most people think of as a 'lucky' number. 52-NEXUS Take the example of a certain fellow, born on the 7th day of the 7th month of 1907. OTT his 70th birthday, 7n/1977 , he decided to gamble on his lucky number -seven. So he visited his local race track, and noticed with amazement that horse number 7, in race 7 was odds on favourite to win, and the race started at 7 minutes past the hour. Buoyed by all this synchronicity, our friend placed $77 on horse number 7. You guessed it, the horse came 7th! WALTER CRONKITE'S UFO ABDUaION? Walter Cronkite, grand old man of the evening news and long time anchor man for CBS News, now finds himself in the news, much against his will. Close friends of Cronkite admit that he has become a member of the space age with a bang! Walter, they say, has had a close encounter of the third kind, that is, face to face with aliens. Walter told close friends that he was seated on his verandah with an aperitif, waiting for dinner. Suddenly the house and grounds were severely shaken. Cronkite felt himself passing out, and thought he was having a heart attack. 1l Here's how the veteran newsman described the event Jto a close friend. "I came to," he says, "stretched out on something like an examination table, in a round, metallic room, perhaps 20 feet across. I tried to move, but was unable to. Severa~ beings surrounded me humanoid, I would say, uut fuzzy, indistinct. They seemed to be fading in and out 1 couldn't see them clearly. It wasn't my vision, because everything else was clear. I was mainly consci01'l5 of large, searching eyes." For the next couple of hours he said his mind was filled with events from his own past, and from many of the major news events he had covered over the years. "I think they were conjuring it all up and recording it in some way," Cronkite said. Walter's friend contin.. ued with more bits and pieces of their conversation. "Every so often, I get a powerful urge to go 011 the air with statements to the effect that the aliens are pe:3Ceful, law abiding beings, who only mean us well, and can be very beneficial to us. But I don't KNOW anything, and I'm resist ing every effort to become an apologist or propagandist for them." "I'm in therapy. In the first place I want to know that I'm sane, and didn't FEBRUARY-MARCH '93