3

[1] The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use.

That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically.

[2] However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line.

The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th century.

In contrast, the Eastern Arabs retained and enlarged that stroke, rotating the digit once more to yield the modern ("Eastern") Arabic digit "٣".

In typefaces with text figures, on the other hand, the glyph usually has the height of a lowercase letter "x" and a descender: "".

A common graphic variant of the digit three has a flat top, similar to the letter Ʒ (ezh).

This form, sometimes called a banker's 3, can stop a forger from turning the 3 into an 8.

This is most likely based on the prevalence of this phenomenon among people in such disparate regions as the deep Amazon and Borneo jungles, where western civilization's explorers have historical records of their first encounters with these indigenous people.

[5] Many world religions contain triple deities or concepts of trinity, including the Hindu Trimurti and Tridevi, the Triglav (lit.

"Three-headed one"), the chief god of the Slavs, the three Jewels of Buddhism, the three Pure Ones of Taoism, the Christian Holy Trinity, and the Triple Goddess of Wicca.

[8] Three (三, formal writing: 叁, pinyin sān, Cantonese: saam1) is considered a good number in Chinese culture because it sounds like the word "alive" (生 pinyin shēng, Cantonese: saang1), compared to four (四, pinyin: sì, Cantonese: sei1), which sounds like the word "death" (死 pinyin sǐ, Cantonese: sei2).

The phrase "Third time's the charm" refers to the superstition that after two failures in any endeavor, a third attempt is more likely to succeed.

This superstition is sometimes asserted to have originated among soldiers in the trenches of the First World War when a sniper might see the first light, take aim on the second and fire on the third.