Today (Tuesday), dubbed 'Twosday' by some, is 22 February 2022, or 22-02-2022 – a "palindrome day," in which the date remains the same, even if you read it backwards.
Palindromes are fun things for language-lovers, as they are words, numbers, phrases, or other sequences of characters that read the same backward as forward, like "radar," "level" or "racecar." Palindromes can also be numbers – such as 1991 or 2002 – or dates that remain the same back to front, like today: 22-02-2022.
Eight-digit palindrome dates do not occur very often. In the previous century, there were none at all. This century, however, will have 29 of them, if you write the date as day-month-year.
Those wanting to take their palindrome fun another step further today should keep an eye on their digital clocks: at two minutes and 22 seconds past 22:00 tonight, today's hour and date will show 22:02:22 on 22-02-2022.
Last year, 12 February was also a palindrome day: 12-02-2021. The next palindrome day will be in eight years, on 3 February 2030 (03-02-2030). After that, there will be 13-02-2031 and 23-02-2032.
Month-day-year?
This century has 29 palindromes if the date is written down as day-month-year, but only 12 if the date is written as month-day-year, like in the United States.
Only one date this century was a palindrome anywhere, and that was 2 February 2020, or 02-02-2020, in which the order of the day and month made no difference.
Such a global palindrome is very rare, and it will take another 99 years before the next one will happen on 12 December 2121, or 12-12-2121. The last one was 911 years ago, on 11-11-1111.
An overview of all palindrome dates this century, in both formats, can be found here.
