Thanks for your informative piece on the Roman numerals on the Tomb of the Unknowns. Now can you explain to me why the 4 on my watch is denominated by IIII instead of IV, a fact I had not noticed ...

Roman numerals are, by modern standards, a bit unusual. By virtue of using designations for both 5 and 10, and not scaling well to higher numbers, they’ve fallen out of favor outside of some specific ...

Do you want to win a bet? Ask someone to draw the face of an old grandfather clock with the Roman numerals placed correctly. Most of the numbers are easy — either IIII or IV is correct as the Roman ...