Here is what the Urban legend site has to say about the "significance of "11". Also, towards the end of this post is my on take on coincidences and their meaning.

The telephone country code of 119 is used for neither Iran nor Iraq -- Iran's country code is 98, Iraq's is 964, and 119 is unassigned. Also, American Airlines Flight 77 carried 64 people (58 passengers and 6 crew members), not 65.]

As for an explanation of the other "11"s., trhey say something that Wolfgang and others have been saying in different forms.

"It is but human nature to search for patterns even where none exist. We attempt to impose a gestalt on randomness because chaos is impossible to comprehend, hence our fascination with recurrent themes. We feel something of great import is going on if a particular number comes up time and again, and we are unsettled by it.

"And yet, it's all randomness. That is not to say that at times any number plucked from the air will not appear more often than is the norm because such clumpings are only an expected part of the process of random distribution. Even though a flipped coin comes up heads five hundred times out of a thousand, it does not follow that each 'head' occurrence is immediately followed by a 'tails' -- inevitably during a run of a thousand trials, there will be moments wherein the 'tails' tally varies significantly from the 'heads' count. Clumping can and does occur, and random numbers seemingly appear more often at various moments in time. Over the long run, of course, everything evens out. But at the moment when 13 comes up four times in a row on a roulette wheel, or 11 seems to jump off the page at one, it all seems so very eerie.

"There is nothing inherently portentious about the number 11. Other numbers such as 13, 7, 4, and 3 are strongly tied to a number of supersitions, both good and bad. But 11 is as innocuous a number as there could be.

"Another way of looking at the seemingly impressive array of 11s showcased in the widely circulated e-mail is:

"Date of the attack: 11/9 11 - 9 = 2 Date of the attack: September 11 = 1 + 1 = 2 Year of the attack: 2001 = 2 + (0*0*1) = 2 + 0 = 2 September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11 = 1 + 1 = 2 Telephone country code for Afghanistan: 93 9 * 3 = 27 93 - 27 = 56 = 5 + 6 = 11 = 1 + 1 = 2 World Trade Center: 2 towers World Trade Center attacked by: 2 airplanes Each airplane: 2 wings The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11: 1 + 1 = 2 New York = 2 words The Pentagon = 2 words Ramzi Yousef = 2 words"

The above was taken from the URban Legends site - the following is my contribution:

A very effective scam run at race tracks is for a tout to go around telling people, "confidentially", the name of the winning horse in the next race. However, gives different names to each person so that he has small groups of people who had been told by him that a particular horse would win. Of course, he did not expect them to place any money on his recommendation, he has first to build up their trust. However, one of the horses wins the race but it does not matter which one. He now has the attention of that group whom he had advised to place their money on the winning mount. They take him seriously but realize that it might have been just a lucky guess. He next tells each of them in this smaller group the name of the horse that will win the next race. Again, though, he gives each bettor each a different name. Again, a horse wins the horse race - nothing remarkable in that but the bettor who happened to have been given what turned out to be the second winning tip is now sure that the tout has great instincts or information and will place a large bet with him on the next "sure thing". After all, his equine advisor proven himself, he had come through twice with winners! And what are the odds of that!!?

Of course, this scam be run through several more layers by starting out with a bigger initial group making the psychic or handicapping abilities of the tout seem even more paranormal to the "wining" bettor but to someone looking at the entire system, it is just the working out of the inevitable.

Through no fault of our own, we often are in the position of the bettor. It is hard, as well as counter-intuitive, to step back and see the inevitability of entire system but that is what Wolfgang and others here are asking us "bettors" to do. It makes more sense to me than hypothesising tha tthere are unseen forces in a web of which Man is a part and that Man has the ability to interpret and control them. To me, that seems to be hubris.

Sourdough