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Highlights
- This February 22, the world hits an unprecedented milestone. It’s the date itself: 22/02/2022
- This is not only a rare palindrome but an ambigram too
People will remember this date - 22/02/2022 - for more than one reason. This is not only a rare palindrome but an ambigram too. Palindromes, which refer to words, phrases or a sequence of numbers that can be read the same way forward and backward, are not quite uncommon. You may have also come across palindrome dates many times but Tuesday's palindrome is rare in the sense that it reads the same forward, backward & upside down. The rare date falls on Tuesday, prompting the people to call it 'Twosday'.
In the "Month/Day/Year" format, 22nd February 2022 is written as 22/02/2022 numerically which becomes a palindrome as it reads the same way forward and backwards. It also becomes an ambigram as it is the same upside down! Dropping the slash marks from today's date, 22022022 it reads the same digitally. The below tweet shows us how it becomes both a palindrome and an ambigram.
"Today is both a palindrome and an ambigram. Which means it can be read backwards and forwards as well as upside down. This may be my most useful tweet ever. Good day," wrote the Twitter user.
The rare date has sparked some funny reactions on Twitterverse. Take a look:
Twosday isn't the only date with a striking pattern. This century alone has had a couple Onesdays (1/11/11 and 11/11/11), and 11 other months with repetitions such as 01/01/01, 06/06/06 and 12/12/12. We’ll hit Threesday, 3/3/33, in 11 years, and Foursday 11 years after that.
Remarkably, every year since 2011 has had 10 consecutive palindrome days in this format! In 2011, Aziz Inan, a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Portland, compiled a list of palindromic dates in the current century in the mm-dd-yyyy format.
The first palindromic day in this century was on October 2, 2001, and September 2, 2090, will be the last palindrome date of this century.
