Did you know that today was a palindrome day?
Today’s date can be read the same forward and backwards. This is a full palindrome day as it is with the full year date format. M/D/YYYY
Today is also a short palindrome day when using just the last two digits of the year. M/D/YY
You should be able to quickly deduce that there will now be a string of short palindrome days. Tomorrow is 9/11/19 which is also the same forward and back.
Some people are calling this a palindrome week, but I disagree as the week starts on Sunday and not Tuesday. However, since we will have ten days in a row of palindrome dates this coming weekend will be a palindrome weekend.
So, when will the next palindrome day be?
For February 2, 2020 to work we have to use the less common mm/dd/yyyy format. Here in the US we most often use the m/d/yyyy or m/d/yy format.
We will also have a couple short date palindromes if we use the mm/dd/yy format.
Of course we usually think of words when we see the term palindrome. The longest palindrome in the English language is tattarrattat which was used by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses. Tattarrattat is the sound of a knock on a door.
Palindromes can also be phrases like “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!”
There are other weird facts I could share about palindromes, like the fact that even a novel of more than 50,000 words was written as a palindrome. However, I will stop the trivia here.
However, I will state that Ben Johnson created the word palindrome from the Greek words palin and dromos. The root word palin means again and dromos means way or direction. For those of you not up on your history of authors, Ben Johnson was a playwright from the early 1600’s so the word has been around for a long time.
Hmm, I guess my day was a bit like a palindrome.
sleep, eat, commute, work, eat, work, commute, eat, sleep
I did have some fun in the classroom two years ago when I wrote the original post. I asked one of the students what the date was and then wrote the date from right to left on the board.
See: Palindrome Day
Steven
Braman's Wanderings 