A scant 7,980 years from now — just a few months after the great Y10K scare when the whole world becomes apprehensive and apoplectic over the prospect of having to change to a 5-digit year electronically when the year 9999 is unexpectedly followed by the year 10,000 — someone much like me will begin to figure out when the next palindromic date will occur, it having been over 900 years since the last one occurred on September 9, 9090 (or, as we say in our nerd circles, 09099090 in the U.S. and Europe, 90900909 in Asia).
Let me save that someone the trouble.
The first worldwide palindromic date of the 11th millennium will occur on October 10th, 10101 (that is, 101010101).
Another great mystery solved.
This is my 1,810th post since this blog began on September 28, 2007. People born in the year 1810 include P.T. Barnum and Frédéric Chopin, but the year was not as good a year for famous births as 1809, which ushered into the world Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, Felix Mendelssohn, Nicolai Gogol, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Cyrus McCormick, Kit Carson, Charles Darwin, William Gladstone, and Louis Braille.
You could never be accused of not looking forward to the future.
ReplyDeleteTasker Dunham, as we used to say on the school playground, it takes one to know one.
DeleteOoookay...
ReplyDeleteEmma S., you seem a bit tentative.
DeleteYou are having a lot of fun with this. You're telling us that we have to look further into the future.
ReplyDeleteRed in Saskatchewan, bingo!
DeleteWhen time travel is discovered I will now know what dates to look for in the future!
ReplyDeleteI love Edgar Allan Poe's poetry.
Bonnie, it was many and many a year ago in a place not near the sea, that a maiden there lived whom we're glad we know, a blogger who's called Bonnie.
DeleteI think you probably win the prize for the most arcane post of the millennium so far.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I'm hoping there's a monetary prize involved. You have cut me to the quick (I'm kidding, but please see my next post).
DeleteI then went into hospital and have only just read this comment and your last post. I hope that I have now made up for my lapse of attention.
DeleteGraham, I'm so happy you're out of the hospital, and this leads me to ask if Brits omit the word "the" from other places that a person might enter and, with luck, later leave?
DeleteSnowbrush, in Britain it is common to omit 'the' when talking about something in general. If I'm going to hospital it can be taken that the name of the hospital is irrelevant. If I'm going to the hospital then it would be a specific hospital and it would be assumed that the listener/reader already knew which hospital to which I was referring. We would also say 'in hospital' if we were being treated but 'in the hospital' if we were visiting. There are many other examples of prepositional phrases not using an article before the noun. I think it's an idiosyncratic use of language which has just happened rather than any particular rule.
DeleteRoughly 7,980 years prior to now, the first cat was buried alongside a human being, suggesting that he was valued by said human.
ReplyDeleteSnowbrush, now that is both arcane and esoteric!
DeleteArcane? I know what you mean because I grew up in Mississippi, and I had no idea what bamboo was. Although it was growing all around me, all I ever heard it called was cane.
DeleteSnowbrush, I am now feeling bamboozled.
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