Cousins and Colleagues,
We've been running a bit slow these days... Maybe everyone has been
able to climb over their brick walls, locate that last elusive
ancestor, and close down the trail.
Or perhaps we're all too busy in any one of countless other ways. At
any rate, here's a little something for us to ponder. Although this
isn't exactly genealogy-related, I found it fascinating nonetheless.
Perhaps because we deal with dates so much of the time...
8.02 pm on February 20 this year 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 8.01 pm 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 10:01
am on January 10, 1001.
And because the clock only goes up to 23:59, it is something that will never
happen again.
JS
List custodian