by Farmers' Almanac Staff | Posted In: Events, General

If you are familiar with the sentence “Madam, I’m Adam,” you might know what a palindrome is. A palindrome is a term for when a word or phrase is spelled the same way backward as it is forward. Some other examples of palindromes include level, kayak, civic, radar, solos, tenet; names like Mom, Dad, Bob, Otto, and Hannah, and sentences like “Was it a bar or a bat I saw?” or “Too Hot To Hoot.”

There are more elaborate sentences of palindromes that will amaze. Take this 2 sentence palindrome, for example:

Are we not pure? “No, sir!” Panama’s moody Noriega brags. “It is garbage!” Irony dooms a man — a prisoner up to new era.

But some palindromes can be dates.

September Palindromes

Tuesday, September 10, 2019, marks the beginning of a palindrome 10-day stretch. For 10 consecutive days, we’ll be treated to palindromes in the m-dd-yy format, which is common in the United States. These dates are the same forward as they are backward:

9-10-19

9-11-19

9-12-19

9-13-19

9-14-19

9-15-19

9-16-19

9-17-19

9-18-19

9-19-19

Time and Date tells us, “As long as you write your date in the m-dd-yy format, every century has 9 years with 10 Palindrome Days in a row. These years are always in the second decade of the century. For example, every year between 2011-2019, 2111-2119, and 2211-2219 will have 10 consecutive Palindrome Days. This is true for previous centuries as well.”

More Than Words

It’s always fun when dates and times have interesting patterns; many people get married on these dates. For instance, when it was 12/12/12 or 11/11/11.

Dates like 11/02/2011, which include the full two-digit form of the day and month, and the full four-digit form of the year, are rare palindromes. There are only 12 such dates in this entire century.

Here’s a list of them all:

October 2, 2001 (10022001) January 2, 2010 (01022010) November 2, 2011 (11022011) February 2, 2020 (02022020) December 2, 2021 (12022021) March 2, 2030 (03022030) April 2, 2040 (04022040) May 2, 2050 (05022050) June 2, 2060 (06022060) July 2, 2070 (07022070) August 2, 2080 (08022080) September 2, 2090 (09022090)

What other fun dates or words can you think of that are palindromes? Share them with us!