L8BRKN
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Why no love for XIX? Some theories ……
I don’t follow the Mark closely so my knowledge of the history of this model is limited, but I’m curious to know why IWC skipped over XIX.
IIRC, the Mark went from XII to XV, skipping 13 and 14 as I understand it because these numbers are considered either unlucky or undesirable in some cultures (not sure if this is accurate or not). Thus, while there is clearly precedent for IWC skipping numbers with the Mark, I’m wondering why they did so in this instance, so I did some poking around into the number 19 for some possible answers and found this:
“19 is thought to be unlucky in Japan, mainly due to the fact that the number 9 itself in Japanese can be pronounced as ku, meaning “suffering” or “pain”. (29 and 39 are also thought to be unlucky in Japanese culture for the same reason as 19. Number 19 is also one of the Karmic Debt numbers, the others being 13, 14, 16.”
And this from Encyclopedia Britannica:
“Eclipses of the Sun tend to recur in periods of 19 years. The Babylonians considered the 19th day of the month to be unlucky because it was 49 days from the beginning of the previous month (add 30), and, since 49=7 × 7, it was a day of great portent for good or evil.”
Perhaps IWC’s reason for bypassing XIX is as simple as IWC just wanting to designate this new version with a nice round number.
Or maybe, since the rise of COVID-19, the number has now acquired in the public consciousness a negative stigma??
If anyone has any other explanations or theories why IWC snubbed XIX, do please share. Thanks!
