Curious properties sometimes lurk within seemingly undistinguished numbers.
Consider the story concerning Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920). His friend G.H. Hardy (1877–1947) once remarked that the taxi by which he had arrived had a “dull” number–1729, or 7 x 13 x 19. Ramanujan was quick to point out that 1729 is actually a “very interesting” number. It’s the smallest whole number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two ways: Both 13 + 123 and 93 + 103 equal 1729.