Great Dates this Year

From the title of this post, I suspect some of you are thinking of other things. C'mon now, don't let your imagination run away with you.

I'm referring to calendar dates, many of which have been quite interesting and special in this year 2011.

This posting will examine some of these dates ...

First there were the dates containing all 1's

1st Jan 2011 (1.1.11)

11th Jan 2011 (11.1.11)

1st Nov (1.11.11) and

11th Nov (11..11.11) ... this one is seen to be especially auspicious.

Then there were the so-called "binary dates" - binary meaning 1 and 0, as anyone with a bit of computer knowledge knows. So these dates were

10th Jan (10.1.11)

1st Oct (1.10.11)

10th Oct (10.10.11) and

11th Oct (11.10.11)

Then there were what I like to call "double barrel" dates, which mirrors or repeats the numeric sequence in an interesting way, like

11th Feb (11.02.2011) 

and today .....  20th Nov (20.11.2011)

Dates like 11.1.11, 11.11.11, 11.02.2011 are symmetrical dates, because you can read the digits from left or right. Sentences with the same properties are called palindromes. Some famous ones are "Able was I ere I saw Elba" (supposedly said by Napolean after he was exiled to the Island of Elba) and "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama" (about the  chap, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who developed the Panama Canal) ...

But I'm digressing. We were talking about calendar dates. Dates have been studied by astrologers, historians, numerologists, and feng shui consultants over the ages. I'm not a believer in any special significance of these numbers, but I realise that a proportion of the world's population do, and mass behaviour have a certain way of making things happen. Those of you who dabble in the stock market will know something about this ...

Anyway, today's a very nice date. So let me wish all of you an absolutely nice day.