Cross Super Bowl Sunday with Ground Hog Day and you Get a Palindrome

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, today is Super Bowl LIV the San Francisco 49ers will play against the Kansas City Chiefs, exactly  50 years since the Kansas team won its first Super Bowl title or believe it or nor Groundhog Day, you’d only be partially correct.

If the date is read from left to right and then from right to left, the sequence remains the same, which makes it a palindrome.A palindrome is a word, phrase or sequence of numbers that can be read the same way forward and backward. Some other examples of palindromes: “racecar,” “mom,” “dad” and “Red rum, sir, is murder.”

Sunday’s date is no ordinary palindrome. It’s the rarest kind, an unrepeatable, eight-digit date that can be recognized all over the world, according to University of Portland professor Aziz Inan, who’s been studying numerical palindromes since 2010.

Sunday’s palindrome date also falls on the 33rd day of the year, with 333 days remaining in the year, Inan noted, which makes this numerical phenomenon just a little freakier.

“02/02/2020 will not repeat next century, in fact, it’ll never repeat in all four-digit years,” Inan said. “That is only one date that occurs in all time, in all the calendar systems.”

From the years 1000 to 9999, there are only 11 such eight-digit “ubiquitous” or “full palindrome” dates, as Inan calls them, including Sunday’s:

01/01/1010
11/11/1111 —-> 909 years ago
02/02/2020 —-> Sunday’s date
02/12/2121 —-> 101 years later in the 22nd century
03/03/3030
04/04/4040
05/05/5050
06/06/6060
07/07/7070
08/08/8080
09/09/9090

The next full palindrome date will occur on Dec. 12, 2121, (12/12/2121) or 101 years from now.