TODAY’S date can be read the same way forwards, backwards and upside down.
The rare phenomena are called an ambigram and a palindrome.
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What is an ambigram?
Today’s date is 22 February 2022 and it is written numerically as 22/02/2022 and can be read the same upside down.
If we take away the markers from today’s date, 22022022, we will notice that it contains only two digits, 0 and 2.
According to a leading website on time Timeanddate.com, Aziz S. Inan, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Portland, calculated that in the mm-dd-yyyy format, palindrome days tend to occur only in the first few centuries of each millennium.
Dr. Inan was quoted by the website saying, “In the mm-dd-yyyy format, the first of 36 Palindrome Days in the current millennium (January 1, 2001 to December 31, 3000) was October 2, 2001, and the last such day will be September 22, 2290.
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According to Inan, there are 12 palindrome days in the 21st century in the mm-dd-yyyy format with the first one on October 2, 2001 while the last one will be on September 2, 2090.
If you consider the dd-mm-yyyy format, then there are 29 palindrome days in the current century.
The first one was on 10 February 2001, while the last one will fall on a leap day on, 29 February 2092, from the 21st century.
The palindrome and ambigram work for the British date format but not for the US date format for the 22nd of February 2022.
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What dates are ambigrams?
Ambigram dates are very rare and only occur once in a blue moon.
- 12/02/2021
- 02/02/2020
- 10/01/1001
- 19/09/9091
- 18/08/8081
- 01/02/2010
- 29/02/2092
What is the significance of an ambigram?
Today’s date is a doubly rare and is an unprecedented milestone.
Not only is it an ambigram but it also a palindrome, meaning it is asymmetrical as well – with the date being dubbed ‘Twosday’.
This means the mirror image of the date will read exactly the same and will also read the same upside down.
