ONCE IN A LIFETIME(11.11.11 Decade day)

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

(11.11.11 Decade day)

At 11.11.11 on 11.11.11, the time and date will be a perfect same-numbered palindrome, reading the same backwards as forwards, an event which can only happen on one day every 100 years.
While some consider it as the perfect day for a wedding, some 'prophecy' web forums claimed it could also be the end of the world.The reason the date is so unusual is that 11.11.11 is the only double-figure palindromic date, since there is no 22nd month.And the last time it happened, on November 11 1911, an almost supernatural event saw temperatures drop by more than 60F in a single day.

This was the Great Blue Norther, a cold snap which hit the U.S. causing blizzards and tornadoes as well as record falls in temperature.In Kansas City, it was as warm as 76F (24C) in the morning - but this had dropped to 11F (-12C) by the end of the day.A new film being released on Friday, entitled simply 11-11-11, predicts that the day will see the opening of a portal in to Hell, and says: 'On this day, innocent blood will spill.'The film by Darren Bousman, director of several entries in the Saw franchise, features a man whose family dies in a car crash at 11.11am, and who then begins to be haunted by the number 11.It plays on beliefs long held by some spiritualists, who say that the number has a special significance and claim that many people have a mystical attraction to the time 11.11.

One group believes that 11.11 is the special symbol of the 'Spirit Guardians', a group of 1,111 celestial beings who supposedly look after mortals and manifest themselves in mid-morning. However, most of those who have chosen this Friday as a day to get married are more attracted by the pleasing coincidence than by any deeper significance.The small town of Gretna Green, a traditional wedding venue near the border between Scotland and England, will host at least 50 weddings on 11.11.11, compared to fewer than a dozen on a typical November Friday.Wedding mania will be even more pronounced overseas, such as in India where thousands of couples have judged the date to be auspicious for a successful marriage.The day will also be one of celebration for a number of children who will be turning 11 on 11.11.11.Most famously, the 11th of November is Armistice Day in the UK - Veterans Day in the U.S. - when we celebrate the end of World War I and commemorate the victims of that war and subsequent ones.

                                                                                        Prof. John Kurakar