Jeremaga  2021 June 30 Wednesday

 

What does the number 999 mean?  If you live in Britain, you probably know. It is the emergency telephone number that you dial if there is a fire or if you need to call the police.

Britain was the first country to have an emergency number.

I'm talking about it today because it started exactly 84 years ago in London, on June 30 1937. They decided to use three digits (numbers) to make it easy to call quickly. Now every country probably has a 3-digit emergency number.

One emergency number in Japan is 119. That was confusing to me at first because the emergency number in the U.S. and Canada is 911.