Believe it or not but 8.02pm on February 20, 2002 will be an historic moment in time.

It will not be marked by the chiming of any clocks or the ringing of bells, but at that precise time,
on that specific date, something will happen which has not occurred for 1,001 years and will never happen again.

As the clock ticks over from 8.01pm on Wednesday, February 20, time will, for sixty seconds
only, read in perfect symmetry 2002, 2002, 2002, or to be more precise - 20:02, 20/02, 2002.

The last occasion that time read in such a symmetrical pattern was long before the days
of the digital watch and the 24-hour clock - at 10.01am on January 10, 1001.

And because the clock only goes up to 23.59, it is something that will never happen again.

What about 9:12pm on the 21st December 2112 ??

21:12 21/12 2112

quote:

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World to Have Moment of Symmetry
Tue Feb 19,10:13 PM ET
By The Associated Press

Wow! For one minute, the world will be in perfect symmetry.

In a year that reads the same backward as forward, Wednesday evening will bring 60 seconds of palindromic perfection — at least for those who follow the Gregorian calendar.

Come Wednesday, the time, day, month and year will align: 8:02 p.m., Feb. 20, 2002.

Write that in military time and with numerals for the month of February and it works out to: 20:02, 02/20, 2002. In European style for the day and month it's just as balanced: 20:02, 20/02, 2002.

"A mirror day like this is a good opportunity for reflecting," said Mark Saltveit, editor of The Palindromist magazine. He is devoted to palindromes of all sorts — strings of numbers, words or sentences that read the same backward or forward.

Such a perfect calendar palindrome — one involving just two numbers — is rare.

Comparable palindromes, though, will occur three more times this year — March 30, for instance, works out to: 20:02, 03/30, 2002 — and more than a hundred times this century.

Wednesday's rare moment is drawing its share of attention: Saltveit, a standup comedian, said he already has three radio interviews lined up with European stations.

Separately, a Web site is calling for a two-minute prayer for peace to begin at the start of the palindromic moment.

And an e-mail is making the rounds touting the rare alignment — though it mistakenly says the event last happened on Jan. 10, 1001 and will never happen again.

(Actually, it happened in the year 1111 and will again in 2112.)

Of course, all the excitement comes from a Western perspective, leaving aside the many other calendars that track the passage of time — Chinese, Islamic, Jewish, Ethiopian and others.

But that doesn't bother Salveit. "Occasions like this are good excuses to party," he said.

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[ 02-20-2002: Message edited by: Linda1 ]