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It's '11022011' !
From our neighbors to the south (University of Portland) come these facts about today’s date:
- One: It’s a palindrome
- Two: It’s an extremely rare one.
Simply, a palindrome is a symmetric word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that reads the same forward and backward.
According to University of Portland engineering professor Aziz S. Inan, who has in several places published a lot of variations on palindrome dates, palindrome dates are rare but today’s date – 11022011 – is extremely rare.
Why? Because it is an eight-digit palindrome day, for one.
Here it is in Turkish:
Now for the number blur
According to the professor’s article in The Beacon, the university’s student newspaper:
Nov. 2, 2011 represented as 11022011 is a one-of-a-kind palindrome date with respect to all palindrome dates contained in all four-digit years. Why?
"First, number 11022011 equals 7 x 7 x 11 x 11 x 11 x 13 x 13, that is, the product of seven square, eleven cube and thirteen square where numbers seven, eleven and thirteen are three consecutive prime numbers! So, number 11022011 is divisible by the product of the squares of three consecutive prime numbers!"
It just gets wilder from there, check out the article and this PDF by Inan: “More Facts about Palindrome Day, November 2, 2011 – 11022011!”
So how many of these things will we have this century?
This year, Inan writes, contains two palindrome calendar dates: 1-10-2011 and today.
This century there will be only be 12 eight-digit palindrome days, with the last one occurring on Sept. 2, 2090 (09022090).
“After this century, 12 more palindrome dates exist in the 22nd century (all being on the 12th day of the month) and another 12 in the 23rd century (all on the 22nd day of the month). The last (36th) palindrome date of this (third) millennium is to occur on Sept. 22, 2290 (09222290). After that, no more palindrome dates will happen for another 711 years until the next one in 3001, on Oct. 3rd (10033001),” reports the Facebook page dedicated to today’s date and other date palindromes.
In an email to the Los Angeles Times, he wrote: "I know both 11-1-11 (which can also be interpreted as 1-11-11) and 11-11-11 dates to occur this month are very interesting dates as well since they won't repeat again until the next century, but 11022011 won't happen again in ALL four-digit years!!"
And now for everyone’s other favorite number sequence: