Today’s date, 02022020, is a palindrome. Palindromic dates happen all the time but today is special. So special that it’s unique. First of all, today is a palindromic date everywhere. Because of the silly date format that either the U.S. or Europeans use (take your choice), it’s almost always the case that a date that’s palindromic in the U.S. is not palindromic in Europe and vice versa. Dates that work for both are very rare, and today is one of them. The last time it happened was 909 years ago.
But as Steve Jobs used to say, “One more thing.” Today is also a palindromic split in that it’s the 33 day of the year and there are 333 days left. A day that is both a universal palindromic date and a palindromic split is unique: there’s only one and today is it.
Here’s a video by Matt Parker, the Stand-up Mathematician, that explains all this in more detail: