This will be a very short post, but it is worth it. Today happened to be the day where a time and the date contain the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 in order at:
12:34:56 07/08/09
(today) those 9 numerals appeared in ascending order.
Like other strange date or time days, this one won’t happen again until the same date and time in 3009. It will happen again once each millennium in the 9th year: 3009, 4009, 5009, etc.
Correction: this date and time will happen once each century, not once each millennium: 2109, 2209, 2309, etc. I forgot to drop the first two digits in the date.
Square Days
Other days of note are the “square” days where the day and month numbers are the same. This happens 9 times each century:
- 1/1/01 is 1 x 1 = 01
- 2/2/04 is 2 x 2 =04
- 3/3/09 is 3 x 3 = 09
- 4/4/16 you get the idea
- 5/5/25
- 6/6/36
- 7/7/49
- 8/8/64
- 9/9/81
Pi Days and Times
There is also pi day (~3.14):
- 3/14 or March 14 every year
- Albert Einstein’s birthday is also March 14
- pi is an infinite, non-repeating number, so it is an irrational number
- If you convert the first 8 significant figures (3.1415926) to a clock time, you can have a second of geek: 3:08:29.73 am each day
Anyone else out there have some common numbers that would make a great moment of geek? If so, please tell us about them in the comments.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:07 am
The neatest thing about your mystical date that happens only once each millennium is that it happens ten times more frequently than that, so you can get the once-in-a-thousand-year thrill every century.
Of course, you will quash this post and claim you “remembered” — which is why I’m going to plaster it all over the Internet first. Congratulations!
July 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
@Roadhellion: It’s not nice to threaten people and call them dishonest when you don’t know anything about them.
I will not edit my post to reflect your input. I will admit I’m wrong and didn’t take into account the fact that we’re dropping the first 2 numbers off every year, so “09″ will occur each century: 2109, 2209, 2309, etc.
You could have just left your correction without being nasty about it. I admit when I’m wrong and try to make it right if I can.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:36 am
@Roadhellion @Engineer: you have been marked as spam for failing to stick to the post topics in your comments.