Posted on 04/04/2006 9:24:04 PM PDT by presidio9
Call it a coincidental sign of our digital times or a reason to stay up late and stare at the clock. Either way, early Wednesday morning the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06.
At 1:02 a.m. and three seconds on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it will be the first hour of the day, the second minute of the hour, the third second of that precious minute in the fourth month of the fifth year of ... uh oh. It's not really the sixth year.
It's actually 2006 — only in our shorthand is it '06.
"It just happens to be a chronological oddity," said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory, an official world atomic clock timekeeper. "If you were to use the full year, that would screw things up completely. You do have to bend it a little if you want to make it work. That's what you call 'Finagle's Law of Best Fit'."
Even numerologists, such as Rob Ragozzine, who runs the SimplyNumbers.com web site, dismiss the 1-2-3-4-5-6 moment as merely "a neat coincidence" because of that pesky 2006 thing.
"People are interested in numbers," said Jack Horkheimer, 67-year-old host of the Star Gazer public television show and executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium. "Would I stay up all night waiting for it? Ten years ago, I would have had a party. Now, I will probably be deep in the arms of sleep."
There are less bleary-eyed alternatives. There's 1:02 p.m., but Horkheimer said that's really 13:02 p.m. and doesn't really count.
Chester recommends celebrating universal time, the standard scientific time, which is four hours ahead of eastern daylight time. So 01-02-03-04-05-06 can be celebrated at 9:02 p.m. EDT by calling up the U.S. Naval Observatory's "master clock" then and waiting for the universal time pronouncement, he said. That number is 202-762-1401.
The clock is also on the web at: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/what1.html.
For much of the world, especially Europe, this odd line-up of numbers doesn't really happen until next month. That's because many countries put the number of the day first, then the number of the month. So for many places, 01-02-03-04-05-06 happens at 1:02 a.m. May 4.
O brother!
One more time!!!
When I see 11:11 on the clock it's strange, too.
I'm feeling ill ...
Ummmm.....that's cool, in a really weird way.
Just blame DST.
I once came home from work and my clock in my truck read: "12:34"
And remember to always protect your eyes when your digitial clock turns to 10:08.....the time when the most segments in your clock are lit.
That's pretty cool. It reminds me of my days at my first office job when it turned 12:34 in the afternoon on May, 6th, back in '78. I guess something similar happened on June 7th in '89 (if you count military time - - 2345 hours).
Just teasing...
I make not apologies if this was posted earlier. Obviously it is the most important news story ever.
That's nothing. I used to leave work every day at 4:20.
You must have missed an earlier thread about this...we had...shall we say...a little fun with it, and it had very little to do with the number sequence! Let's just say the IPWs came back!
And I owed PaulaB a PING...lol
I know what lotto numbers to play
I remember in 1961, if you turned it upside down..it still said, 1961. Never got over it...
Is this the official "live thread?" Will there be a countdown?
I actually posted to you because you inadvertently supplied the answer to an oddity in my life. I ALWAYS look at the clock (digital...across the room in the kitchen) at 10:08. I've always found it strange that I do that BECAUSE MY BIRTHDAY IS 10/8; it was kind of freaking me out!
Maybe it's because of a slight increase in light in the dark kitchen....HMMMM.
Y2K+6orso
What would happen if your clock is on "military" time? 23:58...aaaauuuugghhh!!!
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