What Are Palindrome Days?
Palindrome Days happen when the day’s date can be read the same way backward and forward. The dates are similar to word palindromes in that they are symmetrical.
'BOB' is a palindrome.
Because date formats vary from country to country, not all dates that are palindromic in one kind of date format are Palindrome Days in another. For instance, April 21, 2024 or 4-21-24 is a palindromic date in the m-dd-yy format, but it isn’t if you write the date as dd-m-yyyy (21-4-2024) or dd-mm-yyyy (21-04-2024).
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April 2024: A Month of Palindromes
m-d-yy
- April 2, 2024 (4-2-24)
m-dd-yyyy
- April 20, 2024 (4-20-2024)
m-dd-yy
- April 20, 2024 (4-20-24)
- April 21, 2024 (4-21-24)
- April 22, 2024 (4-22-24)
- April 23, 2024 (4-23-24)
- April 24, 2024 (4-24-24)
- April 25, 2024 (4-25-24)
- April 26, 2024 (4-26-24)
- April 27, 2024 (4-27-24)
- April 28, 2024 (4-28-24)
- April 29, 2024 (4-29-24)
Different Digits
In addition to the format, many people around the world also write the digits of the date differently. For instance, it is common to write only the last two digits of the year—so, 24 instead of 2024. Other date representations include:
- d-m-yy or 1-1-24
- d-m-yyyy or 1-1-2024
- dd-mm-yy or 01-01-24
- dd-mm-yyyy or 01-01-2024
- mm-dd-yy or 01-01-24
- mm-dd-yyyy or 01-01-2024
Each of these date formats has its own Palindrome Days.
Some Palindrome Dates are Rare
Some dates are palindromic.
Depending on date formats, palindromic dates can be rare. Aziz S. Inan, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Portland, has calculated that in the mm-dd-yyyy format, Palindrome Days tend to occur only in the first few centuries of each millennium (1000 years). The last palindromic date in the second millennium (years 1001 to 2000) in this format was August 31, 1380 or 08-31-1380.
According to Dr. Inan, 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 (10-02-2001) and the last such day will be September 22, 2290 (09-22-2290).
There are 12 Palindrome Days in the 21st century in the mm-dd-yyyy format. The first one was on October 2, 2001 (10-02-2001) and the last one will be on September 2, 2090 (09-02-2090).
In the dd-mm-yyyy format, there are 29 Palindrome Days in the current century. The first was 10 February 2001 (10-02-2001). The last is a special one—it’s a leap day! 29 February 2092 (29-02-2092) will be the last Palindrome Day of the 21st century.
Palindrome Weeks
The back-to-back Palindrome Days in the m-dd-yy format are not that rare. For example, every year since 2011 has had 10 consecutive Palindrome Days.
The month in which this happens always corresponds to the last digit of the year. In 2011, the Palindrome Week ran from January 10, 2011 (1-10-11) to January 19, 2011 (1-19-11). In 2012, the same sequence of dates occurred in February. In 2017, it happened in July, in 2018 in August and in 2019, it happened in September.