Perhaps because 64 is a power of two, and a square and a cube, but also for other reasons, it pops up in lots of places. Here are some of the things I’ve associated it with over the years:

¶ Crayola 64-crayon box: as a kid, this box seemed like the ultimate luxury, the Rolls-Royce of crayons. So many colors, and the box had a built-in sharpener. Advanced technology!

¶ A chess board has 64 squares, and is used as the setting for the age-old question about doubling: would you rather have one billion dollars, or a penny on the first square, then double the number on each next square? It’s an eye-opening demonstration of exponential growth and how big numbers can get. Take the chess board: you’ll have 184 million times more money!

¶ I grew up in New York City too late to visit the 1964 World’s Fair, but its aura hung over the city. I was always fascinated by it, and still am. It epitomized the early 60’s optimism about the future. This Love of Theme Parks video does a good job capturing the Fair’s original spirit and the current state of the location, and explains the important part Walt Disney played in the whole thing.

¶ As a power of 2, it appears in many tech things: Nintendo 64, Commodore 64, base-64 encoding, 64-bit integers, 64-bit computing in general, and so on and so on.

¶ The number famously appears in the Beatles’ song When I’m Sixty-Four. A surprising fact about the song is that it’s one of the first Paul McCartney ever wrote, when he was about 14 years old. It’s an old-fashioned tune because he wasn’t aware of rock and roll yet, or maybe it hadn’t even happened yet. It’s thought they put the song on Sgt Pepper because Paul’s father was turning 64 that year.