pat loughery

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

I’ve been alerted to an event that will take place later this week, something that happens once and only once over the course of history. Shortly after noon on July 8, comes the moment that can be called 12:34:56 7/8/9. To mark this momentous event, this week we’ll feature words that have three consecutive letters in order, something that doesn’t happen very often either (there are hundreds of everyday words, but we are talking here about unusual and interesting words).

It’s not exactly true that this sequence of time/date happens only once. If you follow the day/month/year convention, you can observe the same sequence next month, on August 7. And even though it appears to be a rare occurrence, such interesting patterns aren’t that unusual. Consider these from the past:
01:23:45 6/7/89
12:34.56 7/8/90
01:02:03 04/05/06

In a couple of years we’ll have 11:11:11 11/11/11. What other unusual patterns can you think of that are in the near future?

I love these patterns. They keep my mind working when I’m on a motorcycle ride; I’m always calculating the distance to the next odometer palindrome, or something weird like that.