At 8:02 PM on February 20 this year will be an historic moment in time. It will not be marked by the chiming of any clocks or the ringing of bells, but at that precise time, on that specific date, something will happen which has not occurred for 1,001 years and will never happen again.

As the clock ticks over from 8:01 pm on Wednesday, February 20, time will, for sixty seconds only, read in perfect symmetry 2002, 2002, 2002, or to be more precise - 20:02, 20/02, 2002.

The only other time the clock has been palindromic was at 10:01 AM on January 10, 1001, and it will never happen again.

-- TomK(mich) (tjk@cac.net), February 16, 2002

Answers

"it will never happen again." as long as we keep the current calendar system. (Which is about 1200+ years old, being established in year 784 of our current calendar system.)

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), February 16, 2002.

Cool, Tom! I always think of my dad when there's something unusal about dates. Every time there was a day, month and year, as in 7/7/77, the same, he would always comment on it. That doesn't happen very often, but what you mentioned is even rarer. He'd have gotten a kick out of it. I'll celebrate the minute for him. :) Thanks!

-- Annie (mistletoe6@earthlink.net), February 16, 2002.

Actually we changed calandars back in1754 from the grgorian to the julien, it went from september 2nd to the 14 overnight. that is the jist of it I may have a few facts off though.

-- dave in ohio (dr43147@yahoo.com), February 16, 2002.

Tom, That's just a few days off! Not nearly enough time to organise an End of the World cult. What am I going to do with all the rice and lentils that my Y2k refugee ex-neighbours left me when they went back to Yuppiedom? You could have given us more notice.

-- Griff (griff@hangnail.com), February 17, 2002.

The first year of our current christian calendar was 784. In the year 1754 a correction was made for leap year errors and not all the world adopted it then, some countries much later.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), February 17, 2002.

Sure there is:

What about 21:12 on the 21st day of the 12th month 2112???

That's 21.12.2112------21:12

-- Ben (11022033@canada.com), February 20, 2002.

What am I going to do with all the rice and lentils that my Y2k refugee ex-neighbours left me when they went back to Yuppiedom? You could have given us more notice.

We didn't get a lot of notice on 09/11/01 or 12/07/41 either. Hold on to your neighbor's preps if you didn't bother to put any of your own away, rotate them out before they get old and replace them with fresh stock. When the fecal material well and truly impacts the rotary oscillator you will get NO notice. You'll either be ready or you won't. There are no second place winners.

........Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), February 20, 2002.