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)