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It's 11/12/13. What Can You Expect?
We can promise this will never happen again. Today is 11/12/13, otherwise known as Nov. 12, 2013, otherwise known as a "Sequential Day." When dates are compromised of a sequence of numbers, they're known as "sequential days," and there are only a handful of them per century — so, you know, enjoy this while it lasts. Tuesday will be the second-to-last sequential day of the 21st century; the very last one will fall on 12/13/14, otherwise known as Dec. 13, next year. After that, you'll have to hang on until Jan. 2, 2103, or 1/2/03, which is a full 90 years away.
11/12/13 isn’t alone — there are a whole bunch of numerical anomalies on the calendar. Take Odd Days: there are only six dates every century comprised of 3 consecutive odd numbers. Countries who format their date with the month in the middle had their final Odd Day on Nov. 9, 2013 (9/11/13), last Saturday. As in, that day you didn’t notice that anything was different. There will be one more “Odd Day” this century —11/13/15 —(on U.S.-type calendars only) after which we begin our 90-year wait until 1/3/5, so that’s probably it for your lifetime unless Google figures out how to prolong your life. (Talk about missing something you never knew you had.)
Luckily, there are other things to look forward to before you die: Trumpet Day, for example, will fall on 2/22/22. There's also Square Root Day on 4/4/16, Ladybug Day on 10/11/12, and Ones Upon A Day on 1/11/11. Except, we already missed those last two. This feels like FOMO taken to extremes.
It's unclear who named all of those dates, but waving the flag for Name Days is adorable Californian math teacher Ron Gordon, who's created unique websites for each of these gems. "These days are like calendar comets — you wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day - and poof, they're gone," he told the Daily Mail.
Gordon told Bustle that he believes “Sequential Days” should be renamed “Tic Tac Toe Days" in time for next year, because the days are “three in a row.”
“Most folks won’t make the beginning of the next series (1/2/3),” he continued. “They can add 88 to their age after New Year's 2015 to see how old they’ll be for the next celebration."
So, what's in store for 11/12/13? Well, weddings, mostly. According to one poll, there are at least 3,000 weddings planned for Tuesday, up more than 700 percent of what's average. The last time America saw this kind of aisle-rush for a certain date was 7/7/07: by some estimates, more than 60,000 couples married on July 7, 2007. The massive drop in weddings by comparison this special Tuesday is probably because it's, well, a Tuesday. (7/7/07 was a Saturday, so all the stars aligned at once for couples who wanted an extra-special anniversary.)
Over in Ohio, one judge is marking the day by taking Tuesday off work and spending all day long marrying couples. Tuesday also happens to be a Mega Millions day on the Lottery, meaning that a whole bunch of people will probably be picking 1-2-3, which will be hilarious if they all end up having to split the pot.
Still, there's got to be something evil to this date, right? One astrologer told a local paper: "It isn't a very auspicious day because we're in a Mercury retrograde ... It's a time to not take any important actions in your life, like signing contracts or getting married. In my opinion as an astrologer, I wouldn't do it."
So: there you have it. Don't get married. Get rich. Mourn all of the weird dates on earth you'll never live to see. And most of all, enjoy this Tuesday. After all, you only get one 11/12/13.
Image: Flickr/Eka Raditya Rooshartanto