More Palindromic Dates

More Palindromic Dates · 19 February 2022

We are coming to a string a palindromic dates. Ten, in fact. So I figured I could not pass up commenting on them (although I missed a string of them last year).

I know I have already written about palindromic dates, but I thought I would write at least one more post. After all, if an academic can study numeric palindromes (see Seattle Times article), I ought to be able to muse about them.

It seems odd in a way, but numbers can be palindromes too. And they ought to be recognized like palindromic words are. After all, there are an infinite number of numbers, so palindromic numbers ought to get their due. Numbers should not take a back seat to words.

Anyway. We are coming up to a series of 10 palindrome dates in a row:

2/20/22
2/21/22
2/22/22
2/23/22
2/24/22
2/25/22
2/26/22
2/27/22
2/28/22
2/29/22

At least these dates are palindromes in the United States. In places where they put the year first, palindromic dates come at different times. Although the second of February of this year was a palindrome either way. (2/2/22 or 22/2/2) And of course, they are only palindromes if you do not put in leading zeroes or the century in the numbers. (Although 2/20/2022 is an exception to that rule.)

(I have wondered about putting the year last in dates. It does seem that dates ought to go from least specific to most specific. That is, year, month, day. This makes sense at least for sorting. If you sort on dates that are month, day, year, you end up getting all the January dates together followed by the February dates followed by the… Well, you get the picture.)

I am not fascinated enough with palindromes to spend lots of hours thinking about them, but I do think they are interesting. After all, everybody marvels at palindromes such as:

RACECAR
MADAM I’M ADAM
A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA

Okay. Maybe not everybody. But palindromes are surely amazing to third graders and people like me. People who still marvel at things that third graders marvel at.

At any rate. I actually usually put in the leading zeroes and the century numbers in dates, but the string of 10 palindrome dates in a row is intriguing enough not to follow my own normal conventions. After all, how often is that going to happen? Well, now that I think about it, each year through the 2020s. Which makes this a pretty special decade. But I am not sure the Palindromic 20s can compete with last century’s Roaring 20s. But who knows?

Well, that is about all I have for dates that are palindromes. I suppose that is because I have already written about them before. Although I suppose I could write about the red squiggly line under the word PALINDROMIC. But that is a completely different story.

So enjoy the decade with ten consecutive palindromic dates each year. (And I hope you enjoyed my new word PALINDROMIC. If it is indeed a new word.)

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