Imagine a number. Not too large—five digits. Large enough that you cannot memorize it at first glance, but small enough to fit on your palm if you write it with a marker.

Fifty-nine thousand three hundred forty-three.

This number is a date. Not in the familiar "day-month-year" format, but in the format used by astronomers and satellite systems: Modified Julian Date. MJD. A counter of days that began on November seventeenth, eighteen fifty-eight, and has been ticking ever since. Every midnight—plus one.

MJD 59343 is May ninth, 2021.

Victory Day.

II.

Now imagine another exercise. Take this number and convert it to an unfamiliar numeral system—base forty-three.

Why forty-three? Because this is the size of the alphabet used in QR codes—those black-and-white squares that you scan with your phone. A standardized character set: digits, capital letters, several special characters. Forty-five symbols minus space and percent—you get forty-three.

59343 in base forty-three is written with three symbols: W43.

Double-u, four, three.

W is the thirty-second symbol of the alphabet. 4 is simply four. 3 is simply three.

Verification: 32 × 43² + 4 × 43 + 3 = 32 × 1849 + 172 + 3 = 59168 + 175 = 59343.

It checks out.

III.

Look at the result once more. W43.

Four and three side by side. Forty-three. The number we used as the base of the numeral system.

The date of Victory Day, converted to a system with base forty-three, yields a code that contains the very number forty-three.

This property is called different things. Mathematicians might call it "self-reference"—when an object refers to itself. Programmers—"recursion." Cryptographers—"a checksum that contains its own key."

But whatever you call it—it is strange.

Strange, because such numbers are rare. The overwhelming majority of dates, when converted to base-43, do not contain "43" in their notation. You can verify this: take any random day, calculate its MJD, convert it to base-43. Most likely, you will not see "43" there.

Strange, because this is a specific date. Not an abstract number—but Victory Day. Russia's main holiday. A date celebrated with parades on Red Square, remembered by millions, that defines national identity.

Strange, because forty-three is not a random number in Russian history. It is the year of the Stalingrad victory.

IV.

Nineteen forty-three.

On February second of that year, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered to Soviet forces in the basement of a Stalingrad department store. With him capitulated the remnants of the 6th German Army—about ninety thousand men, exhausted, frostbitten, starving. A quarter million had perished in the encirclement. Several hundred thousand more—on the approaches to the city.

The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest battle in human history. By casualties on both sides. By the ferocity of the fighting. By the consequences for the course of the war.

After Stalingrad, the German army no longer advanced. It only retreated—for two years, through Ukraine and Belarus, through Poland and Hungary, all the way to Berlin.

Stalingrad is nineteen forty-three. A year encoded by two digits: four and three.

Now look at the map. Find Volgograd—as Stalingrad is now called.

The coordinates of the city center: 48°43' north latitude.

Forty-eight degrees, forty-three minutes.

The number forty-three is literally written in the geographic coordinates of the city where the decisive battle of nineteen forty-three occurred.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Coordinates are determined by geography, not history. The city was founded where the Volga makes a bend, where there was a convenient crossing, where trade routes converged. No one chose the coordinates—they simply are what they are.

And yet—they are what they are. 48°43'.

... --- The rest of the book is in the link!