What is this letter in the russian keyboard ->"№"

Pressing shift+3 in a Russian keyboard presents this symbol/letter/thingy: №


I was trying to google it but...

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4299/nodocuments.jpg



What the bejesus!? What are you mystery letter!??

That's the number symbol :). №10 means No. 10.

№ = #
It was a standard number sign in XIX century France, and as such came into Russian typography. It has not changed since then.
Check "Numero sign" article in Wikipedia.
;)

Ohhh! Ok then :)

Yes I knew that "No." means number... Problem is I also know "p" means "p" in English, but "r" in Russian... So go figure what something means in Russian! I feel kinda silly now, heh... Thanks for the clarification.

It's a pretty commonly used abbreviation in English, it's just not treated as a character symbol so it doesn't appear on standard keyboards. There used to be a № key on older typewriters though, as far as I remember.

By the way, in the official documents (like those used by the government of the Duma) they use latin letter N instead, not №.

I think the Americans use # for that. When I saw this symbol ("#") first time I also could not understand what does it mean.