Mental Floss

Happy "Odd Day!" (It's the Last One of the Century)

By Nick Greene|
That feeling when the clock strikes midnight and it's Odd Day // via iStock
That feeling when the clock strikes midnight and it's Odd Day // via iStock | That feeling when the clock strikes midnight and it's Odd Day // via iStock

Do you feel that holiday magic in the air? The contagious festive cheer that blesses everyone, young and old? "Odd Day" is upon us, that special time when the calendar features three consecutive uneven numbers: 11/13/15.

Odd Day is the brain child of retired California teacher Ron Gordon, who gets a kick out of finding patterns in dates. His first mathematical holiday was “Square Root Day” in 1981 (9/9/81…9*9=81). After a few press outlets picked up the story, Gordon kept the ball rolling. He was on top of 2004's Square Root Day (2/2/04), and will be all over 4/4/16, don’t you worry. Gordon is also behind “Ones Upon a Days” (1/1/11, 11/11/11, etc.), and “Trumpet Day,” which won’t happen for another seven years (2/2/22…”toot toot”).

If you think Gordon has painted himself into a corner with America’s month/day/year sequencing, you've got another thing coming. He already had a successful promotional push for the overseas version of "Tic Tac Toe Day," a fully sequential holiday, two years ago on December 11, 2013.

On Gordon’s Odd Day website, OddDay.net, he notes there are only six Odd Days in a century, and today “marks the end of this parade of Odd Days which began with 1/3/05.” Another one won't occur until January 3, 2105. We'll all likely be dead by then, so make this Odd Day count (somber pun intended, oddly).

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