22 02 2022 A Palindrome & Ambigram, Reads Same Backwards, Upside Down

Today’s date written in the DDMMYY format, 22022022, reads the same backwards and upside down too making it both a palindrome and an ambigram.

This rare but interesting occurrence, a mirror day, won't appear again in our lifetime.

While palindromes are fairly rare, today’s date is a rarest double, with it being an ambigram too. Interestingly as the day falls on the second day of the week, many have also called it ‘Twoesday’, rhyming with the Tuesday.

In the Roman calendar, the next one that is both in the eight digit system and in the digital font glyphs will fall on February 8, 2080.

As per a report published in The Herald, there are 11 such dates this century. Today is the eighth and the last three will fall in the 2080s.

The last double (Both a Palindrome & Ambigram) fell on February 12, 2021, when the date read as 12 02 2021.

The ‘Double’ requires not only a palindrome in the eight-digit format, such as 4 February 2040 or 04022040, but also one using only the four digits that have rotational symmetry in the digital glyphs, that is 0, 1, 2 and 8, The Herald report said.

While, people tend to associate such dates with good or bad omen, numerologists around the world consider such numbers as ones bearing particular energy or universal message. However, there is little established scientific basis for such explanation.

Speaking about the occurrence, the Deputy Director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium in Bhubaneswar, Subhendu Pattnaik said, “The date system has been in practice since thousands of years. We have divided the month into 30 days and the year into 12 months, so it is only natural that some numbers will repeat themselves.”

“This is just a coincidence and it has nothing to do with anything supernatural,” he said.