Ambigram Dates

Today is the first ambigram date of this decade!

In fact, its the first ambigram date in almost 10 years (the last one was October 02, 2001).

What exactly is an ambigram date?  It’s a date that appears the same when rotated 180 degrees (not counting any date separators).

For example, today is January 02, 2010, which can be written as:

Ambigram Date - Jan. 2nd, 2010

It appears identical when rotated 180 degrees – an event so rare that it only happens about twice a decade.

It’s even more rare for an ambigram date to occur so close to the beginning of the decade (and it hasn’t happened this early into a decade in over 1000 years!  [Jan 1st, 1010])

An interesting property of ambigram dates is that it doesn’t matter if they are written in MMDDYYYY format (common here in the US) or in universal date format: YYYYMMDD.

YYYY-MMDD Universal Date Format

While it has been many years since the last ambigram date, the next one will occur in less than 2 years: Nov. 02, 2011.

Nov 02, 2011 - The Next Ambigram Date

However, after next year, we’re in for another long wait as the one to follow won’t occur until the year 2020.

Feb 02, 2020 - On Deck

That will be a pretty cool one, though, consisting of only 2 numbers.  Of course, that assumes that the world continues past the year 2012.

So, enjoy this ambigram date while you can.  They don’t come around very often!

(*Note that is is possible to find other ambigram dates using other formats besides the fully formed MMDDYYYY or YYYYMMDD formats)