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Welcome to the world of the Vincent D'Onofrio obsessed - and a bit of real life thrown in.


Saturday, November 09, 2013

By The Numbers

Apparently today, 9/11/13, is the last time till 2105 that the date will figure three consecutive odd numbers.

Yes.

Who keeps track of these things?

Of course, in the US, where you do dates backwards, this phenomenon happened back in September, on the 12th anniversary of the Attacks, so I guess people had better things to be thinking about.

In Britain we also refer to this date in the US way as 9/11. But would the US do us this courtesy with the London attacks? I suppose we should be glad they can't be turned back-to-front, as they were, of course, on 7/7.

Oh, and the last time the dates will be three consecutive even numbers is next year, on 10/12/14. That's December for us and October for the US.

Divided by a common language.

6 comments:

JoJo said...

I remember one of my college friends telling me about the time she spent in Germany, and her friends throwing her a birthday party. She was perplexed and said, but it's not my birthday. They then realized that one of the friends saw her birthday written numerically and assumed the center number was the month, when it was the first number that was the month.

The thing is, when you say a date, you say, 'Today is January 14, 2013', not 'today is 14 January 2013'. So why wouldn't it be written 1/14/13?

judith said...

I get JoJo's reply but one could also say. 'what's the date today.' and the answer could be. '14th January.' I'm sure I've done it that way. What ever date it is it still makes me a day older.. LOL.

val said...

Yes, Judith, my birthday is the 28th of March. In French, le 28 mars, German das acht und zwanzigsten Marz. Sorry, JoJo, only Americans do it the American way!

Claire said...

This whole date thing can be quite confusing and challenging at times. I work in the sales department and we do have tons of foreign costumers and I guess by now I've seen all possibilities out there. Some even going by 13/9/5 which turned out to be May, 9th, 2013 lol. I usually tend to write dates the 'American'
way too ;-) but usually I'd write it like this: Nov., 10th, 2013 to avoid misunderstandings.

Frances said...

My birthday was on the 13/11/13. Hoping this means a good and productive time until my next birthday.

val said...

Thing is, JoJo, saying January 14th is also American. Over here we would usualy say the 14th of January, but writing it without the "of".

And don't you call your national day the 4th of July? Born on the Fourth of July?

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