The 1911 Revolution (October 10 1911 to February 12, 1912) signalled the end of the Qing Dynasty in China, the fall of the last emporer and both Taiwan and China’s beginnings as republics.  Taiwan has treated this as its Independence Day, which it celebrates on October 10 (“Ten Ten Day”).  The communists in China celebrate October 1 (the day the CCP took over in 1949) and avoid the 10th.

I was here ten years ago for Taiwan’s hundredth anniversary (also a Sunday), and can say I wish I had been on vacation in the Philippines instead.  The amount of noise from fireworks that weekend was beyond deafening.  My headaches lasted for days.

As you might have noticed, 2021 is 110 years in Taiwan’s domestic calendar.  This means that on Friday in 2022, about an hour before noon, the calendar and clocks will read:

111, 11/11, 11:11:11

My students had a laugh with that.

 

---

 

Numberphile also did a video recently on calendar calculation, vis-a-vis telling the day of the week by the date alone.  James Grime gives a system developed by the late mathematician John Conway, though others could be developed.

Conway used what he called “doomsday numbers” to determine the day of the week without having to calculate or remember many weeks or months.  I checked, and it’s true.

In every calendar year, the following dates are ALWAYS the same day of the week, regardless of the year.  For all my obsession with calendars and calendar reform, I had never noticed this before.

All even double digit dates after February (4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12)

“Working 9 to 5 at 7/11” (5/9, 9/5, 7/11, 11/7)

January 4th in a leap year, or 3rd in most years

So no matter what date of the year it is, you’re only a few weeks away from a date that a person gives you.  The video also mentions Pi Day (March 14) as being one of the above dates.  Not mentioned in the video below is the last day of February (28 or 29), regardless of regular or leap year.

There are only 28 possible calendars, and calendars run on 28 year cycles.  If you can remember the first day when these cycles begin (1900 which is not a leap year; 1600, 1628, 1656, 1684, 1814, 1842, 1870, 1898, 1916, 1944, 1972, 2000, 2028, etc. all start on a Saturday), it’s not hard to calculate the first day of the year. [Correction: 1898 starts on a Saturday, not 1900, 18 years until 1916.  The 17th and 18th centuries start to get tricky, every 28 years from 1695 to 1791.]

So let’s say (for example) you want to know the day of the week for Hallowe’en in 1980.  1972 started on a Saturday, so eight years plus two leap years makes 10 days (10 mod 7 = 3), thus 1980 started on a Tuesday.  January 1 to March 31 is 91 days in a leap year (91 mod 7 = 0), so April 1 is also a Tuesday, and by extension April 4 (4/4) is a Friday and so is 10/10.  Hallowe’en (10/31) is exactly three weeks after 10/10, thus also a Friday.

Lo and behold, it works.

But bleeping hell, I hate their ableist video editing.