Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Licence needed for work use Learn More
Top Scoops

Book Reviews | Gordon Campbell | Scoop News | Wellington Scoop | Community Scoop | Search

 

Irish Eyes: The Last Completely Odd Day For Ages

DUBLIN 19th Novermber 1999: Today is the last odd digit day in your lifetime. Friday, 19/11/1999 is the last time for one thousand one hundred and twelve years that every number in the date is odd.

Which is odd in itself.

Not until 1/1/3111, will it happen again, around about 37 generations time when fashion will have moved on and no one will remember Britney Spears.

The word on the street is do something to celebrate the oddity. Anything you like though something odd would be most appropriate. Maybe you could, um, talk to yourself all day long and see if your good company, or pretend you can't speak and try to go shopping for groceries you don't want.

Anything you like in fact. You could even try and be as odd as the politicians and try to win popularity by picking on some green looking person and accuse them of eating Christian babies, or worse, not having a pig ignorant reactionary attitude to the debate over cannabis decriminalisation.

However, considering the predilection we have for getting excited about dates you have to wonder why this odd day has been kept such a secret. Hype for that other date, 1/1/2000, has been going on for months and years and yet it falls on a day on which people normally get leglessly drunk and have a good or bad time anyway. It doesn't even need hype, which is the inherent flaw in hype, it picks the wrong the events.

In case you were wondering, the last time there was an even date it was around the same time that amazed travelers to China saw toilet paper and the Diamond Sutra, a block-printed book, at the end of the ninth century, 30/12/888.

Irish Eyes calculates that the next time this will occur is 2/2/2222, and who knows what will be amazing travellers then, a book printed on paper and zoos of genetically engineered animals from the Arabian Nights?

Whatever the case we'll all be dead so celebrate the day of odd digits, it will be your only chance and like the upcoming election it should be made use of.


Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

© Scoop Media

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
 
 
 
Top Scoops Headlines

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.