RE: ISO-8859-1

> Numeric character references?  What are those? 

From the HTML specification

5.3.1 Numeric character references
  
   Numeric character references specify the code position of a character
   in the document character set. Numeric character references may take
   two forms:
     * The syntax "&#D;", where D is a decimal number, refers to the ISO
       10646 decimal character number D.
     * The syntax "&#xH;" or "&#XH;", where H is a hexadecimal number,
       refers to the ISO 10646 hexadecimal character number H.
       Hexadecimal numbers in numeric character references are
       case-insensitive.