Two's company

All good things come in twos

For the superstitious and the statistically-minded Saturday 2 February 2002, is no ordinary day writes BBC News Online's Chris Horrie.

The new millennium has delivered some spectacular happenings for humankind: a fourth weekly episode of EastEnders, another royal jubilee and, lo and behold, cheap flights from London to Cornwall.

But for numerologists especially, the flipping of the Gregorian calendar from the 20th to the 21st Century signalled a busy few years, in the form of a truckload of "significant" new dates.

Unlucky for some

Set out numerically, Saturday's date appears as 02/02/02 - a number that many numerologists - that is, people who study esoteric meaning in numbers - will see as quite significant.

The link between magic, numbers and geometry goes back to ancient times and each number has supposed special powers associated with it.

The key thing about Saturday's date is that the same number is repeated three times - a factor that some may see as giving it magical significance.

A similar coincidence of time occurred on New Year's Day last year - 01/01/01 - and will of course be apparent on 3 March next year, and so on.

Ancient Greece

The number three and its multiples have long believed to be particularly significant for those with a mystical or religious frame of mind.

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For a time the official religion of ancient Greece involved profound reflection on triangles and worship of the number three.

Some say the tradition has lived on into modern times in the form of the Christian Trinity, the three movements in a classical concerto and the convention of awarding three points for a win in a Premier League football match.

So as a triplicate number 2/2/2 is possibly magic - though not as powerful, of course, as 3/3/3. The date 6/6/6 (6 June 2006) is even more significant looked at in this way.

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Dgital magic

The sequence 9/9/9 (9 September 2009) represents numerology heaven since it involves three triples of the number three itself. Which is possibly why it is used by those well known denizens of the dark side - the UK emergency services.

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In America, police, fire and ambulance services can be reached on 911, which, it has been noted, was the date of the terror attacks on New York and Washington - the US put the month before the day so 11 September becomes 9/11.

Date spotting is not all about triplicates. For those with a digital clock that spells out the time and date, the third of February last year was notable since at exactly four minutes past five, such a clock would have read: 5:4 3/2/1 (minus, that is, the inevitable intervening noughts).

Fans of ascending and descending dates had had to wait 23 years for such a thrill - since exactly 34 minutes past 12 on 5 June 1978 - that is: 12:34 5/6/78.

Palindromes

For some, palindromes - sequences that read the same backwards and forwards - excite great interest. One of the last was 19 September 1991, or 19/9/91.

Another good way to remember that special day

Perhaps because of their supposed "lucky" value, "magical" dates are commonly chosen for weddings.

Gretna Green in Scotland witnessed an unseasonably high number of marriages - 50 - on 9 September 1999, which, of course, translated as 9/9/99.

And a report in last month's Singapore's Straits Times found four times as many couples plan to get married on 2 February this year than on an average Saturday.

But not everyone is in it for the mysticism. Sharon Toh told the paper she liked the date because "there's no excuse for forgetting it".