Knowledge Base Wiki

88 (eighty-eight) is the natural number following 87 and preceding 89.

88 is:

• a refactorable number.^[1]
• a primitive semiperfect number.^[2]
• an untouchable number.^[3]
• a hexadecagonal number.^[4]
• an Erdős–Woods number, since it is possible to find sequences of 88 consecutive integers such that each inner member shares a factor with either the first or the last member.^[5]
• a palindromic number in bases 5 (323₅), 10 (88₁₀), 21 (44₂₁), and 43 (22₄₃).
• a repdigit in bases 10, 21 and 43.
• a 2-automorphic number.^[6]
• the smallest positive integer with a Zeckendorf representation requiring 5 Fibonacci numbers.
• a strobogrammatic number.^[7]
• the largest number in English not containing the letter 'n' in its name, when using short scale.

88 and 945 are the smallest coprime abundant numbers, since all numbers until 945 are multiples of 2, 945 has 3, 5 and 7 as divisors, and 88 is the first abundant number that doesn't have 3, 5 or 7 as divisors.

• The atomic number of the element radium.
• The number of constellations in the sky as defined by the International Astronomical Union.
• Messier object M88, a magnitude 11.0 spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
• The New General Catalogue object NGC 88, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Phoenix, and a member of Robert's Quartet.
• Space Shuttle Mission 88 (STS-88), launched and completed in December 1998, began the construction of the International Space Station.
• Approximately the number of days it takes Mercury to complete its orbit.

Number 88 symbolizes fortune and good luck in Chinese culture, since the word 8 sounds similar to the word fā (發, which implies 發財, or wealth, in Mandarin or Cantonese). The number 8 is considered to be the luckiest number in Chinese culture, and prices in Chinese supermarkets often contain many 8s. The shape of the Chinese character for 8 (八) implies that a person will have a great, wide future as the character starts narrow and gets wider toward the bottom. The Chinese government has been auctioning auto license plates containing many 8s for tens of thousands of dollars. The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened at 8 p.m., 8 August 2008.^[8]

In addition, 88 is also used to mean "bye bye (拜拜)" in Chinese-language chats, text messages, SMSs and IMs, because its pronunciation in Mandarin is similar to "bye bye".^[9]

In amateur radio, 88 is used as shorthand for "love and kisses" when signing a message or ending an exchange. It is used in spoken word (radiotelephony), Morse code (radiotelegraphy), and in various digital modes. It is considered rather more intimate than "73", which means "best regards"; therefore 73 is more often used. The two may be used together. Sometimes either expression is pluralized by appending an -s.^[10] These number codes originate with the 92 Code adopted by Western Union in 1859.

Neo-Nazis use the number 88 as an abbreviation for the Nazi salute Heil Hitler.^[11] The letter H is eighth in the alphabet, whereby 88 becomes HH.^[12]

Often, this number is associated with the number 14, e.g. 14/88, 14-88, or 1488; this number symbolizes the Fourteen Words coined by David Lane, a prominent white supremacist.^[13] Example uses of 88 include the song "88 Rock 'n' Roll Band" by Landser, and the organizations Column 88 and Unit 88.

The number is banned on Austrian license plates due to its association with "Heil Hitler [and] where H comes in the alphabet".^[14] In June 2023, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Italian government announced that the number 88 would be banned from use in Italian association football, as part of a joint initiative to combat antisemitism. This followed an incident in March of that year in which a Lazio supporter wore a club shirt bearing the name "Hitlerson" and the number 88, which led to the supporter receiving a lifetime ban from attending Lazio matches.^[15]

In the US, former FBI assistant director of counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi declared in 2019 that something as innocuous as raising a flag on the White House to full staff on 8 August (i.e. 8–8) is a "messaging" problem because "the numbers 88 are very significant in neo-Nazi and white supremacy movement."^[16]

Eighty-eight (88) is also:

• a popular ice cream bar manufactured by GB Glace
• the number of keys on a typical piano (36 black and 52 white); a piano is sometimes called an "eighty-eight"
• 88 Keys, character in the 1990 Dick Tracy film
• Eighty Eight, a live album by the Christian rock band the 77s
• in the titles of songs:
  • "Rocket 88", a song first recorded at Sam Phillips' studio in 1951; Rocket 88 was a 1980s United Kingdom band named for the song
  • "88 Lines About 44 Women" by the band The Nails
  • "88 Seconds in Greensboro" by the English new wave band OMD on their 1985 album, Crush
  • "88" by the Canadian punk band Sum 41 on their 2004 album, Chuck
  • "88" by the English nu-metal band Apartment 26 on their second album, Music for the Massive
  • "88", a song by Level 42 on the album Strategy
  • "88" by hip hop act the Cool Kids
  • "88" by the Japanese electro-pop duo LM.C

• in the Back to the Future films, 88 miles per hour is the speed that Doctor Emmett Brown's Delorean car had to reach in order to attain time travel.
• the model number of the Oldsmobile 88 automobile and the AGM-88 HARM missile
• the QBU-88 (or Type 88) Chinese sniper rifle
• the number of the French department of Vosges
• the designation of two freeways named Interstate 88, one in Illinois and another in New York
• in Chinese SMS or chat, short for "bye bye", from the Mandarin pronunciation "ba1 ba1" (8 - 8)
• in hip hop, where "88" stands for "HH", short for "hip hop"
• in Kill Bill, the name of O-Ren Ishii's Army, the Crazy 88
• the ISBN Group Identifier for books published in Italy and Switzerland
• "the number of the Anti-Terrorist" in the documents submitted to NBC by Seung-Hui Cho prior to the Virginia Tech shooting on 16 April 2007 ^[17]
• the number of an anti-terrorist police squad, called "Detachment 88", set up by the Indonesian government following the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians
• Tanner '88, Garry Trudeau's HBO series on the fictional campaign of Congressman Jack Tanner in his bid for the White House
• 88 Minutes, a 2008 film starring Al Pacino
• 88, a 2015 Canadian thriller film
• 88rising, hip hop and rap collective and record label consisting of primarily Asian and Asian American artists.
• the Group of 88, a group of 88 professors at Duke University who signed a controversial advertisement published after a woman falsely claimed to have been raped by members of Duke's lacrosse team
• the Cambridge Z88 was a 1988 portable computer
• 88open was an industry standards group in 1988 created by Motorola to standardize Unix systems
• an '88-level' is a named condition in the COBOL programming language
• The House on East 88th Street, a book by Bernard Waber
• 88-Keys, an American record producer and rapper
• 88Glam, a Canadian hip-hop duo
• Two genera of butterflies (Diaethria and Callicore) are called eighty-eights because markings on their wings look like the number 88.
• The German 8.8 cm FlaK 18/36/37/41 anti-aircraft gun used in WWII was often referred to colloquially as an "88" (German: acht-acht).
• R88 is the designation for "all runways" in METAR/TAF weather data
• The 88 is an American pop rock band.
• "Lucky 88", a song by Speedy Ortiz