9-1-1

911.

Almost everyone who lives in (or has ever traveled to) America knows what 911 is. If you're reading this post, you're definitely literate, and know what the Internet is. So it would be a very safe bet to assume that you know about 911 too. In the extremely remote possibility that you don't, I'll tell you. 911 is the phone number to be dialed in case of an emergency in the United States or Canada.

Have you ever wondered why 911 is 9-1-1 and not some other random number? One can reason why an emergency number would be 3 digits long (the number has to be short so that it can be remembered and dialed quickly; and 1 or 2 digits may be dialed by mistake). Also, having 2 common digits in the emergency number would probably facilitate easy recall.

But this still doesn't explain 9-1-1. 

That was what I was wondering on the way back from Rosemont with Anand (aka Andy) on Sunday. I spoke my thoughts out loud, and Andy came up with an explanation. Andy's explanation may or may not be true, but it is definitely a plausible one! It goes thus:

"During the time 911 was introduced, phones would have had a circular number plate. They would've wanted two numbers with a lot of separation, so they chose 1 & 9. Two 1's were chosen as dialing 1 would've been fastest".

A circular number plate looks like this:

(photo courtesy: http://www.oldatheart.co.uk/old-phone-4.jpg)

Googling for the answer to my question brought me to this page. It has some interesting trivia, but it doesn't seem like anybody has concrete proof of the origin of 911. If any of you has any info to share on this, I'm all ears!!

Although 911 is meant only for emergencies, there are people who call the number for various stupid reasons. Check out this video for instance:

I've had a 911 experience myself!!

When I was returning from Detroit, I stopped at the Indiana Welcome Center, just before entering Illinois, to take a leak. It was late in the evening, and the place was closed. Just when I turned to go, I noticed a small red suitcase near the entrance. I thought about it for a while, and then finally dialed 911 to report the unclaimed bag. A police officer came along in some time and asked me some simple questions about the bag. Then he thanked me for reporting it, and asked me to carry on. That was that. I don't know what was in the bag, who had placed it there, or what eventually happened of it...

I've asked myself a number of times if I would've done the same thing back in India (i.e. would I have called the emergency number 100 and reported the unclaimed suitcase?). I might have done so, but I would've hesitated a lot more. In the US, one can be certain that a call to 911 would be taken seriously and investigated. Would the same seriousness be there in India too? (Considering that in India the threat from an unclaimed bag would be more than it is here!)

Maybe they would take it seriously in India too, and my uncertainty is based on the uninterested attitude of the authorities towards most other things.

That aside, I also wonder what would happen if an American were to go to India and face an emergency situation. He/she would probably dial 911. Would it work?!!

So I believe that there should be ONE emergency number worldwide (maybe 112, because its treated as an emergency number in at least 45 different countries according to this Wikipedia article).

India happens to be one of these 45 countries - Wow!!!

That's all I have to say about emergency numbers. At least as of now :)