It’s palindrome week! Every date is the same backwards

Attention all number nerds! Today is 5/13/15.

Read backwards, it’s 5/13/15.

Yesterday was 5/12/15. Backwards: 5/12/15.

From May 10th to the 19th, every date can be read forwards or backwards and it will be the same. It’s palindrome week!

A palindrome is a word, phrase — or, in this case, a number combination — that can be read both forwards and backwards, like: “kayak,” “Madam, I’m Adam,” or “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.”

Find a long list of palindromes here.

This month’s 10 days of palindromes:

5/10/15

5/11/15

5/12/15

5/13/15

5/14/15

5/15/15

5/16/15

5/17/15

5/18/15

5/19/15

It’s the most exciting time for number nerds since March 3rd of this year, or Pi Day, when the date read 3/14/15. (At 9:26:53 a.m., the date and time represented the first 10 digits of π.)

These five-digit palindromes are not as rare as seven- or -eight-digit-date palindromes, like 1/10/2011 or 01/02/2010.

According to Aziz Inan, an engineering professor at University of Portland who tracks palindromes, there will only be 26 seven-digit and 12 eight-digit palindrome dates this century.

“Once you start writing the year as two digits, then things change because those dates occur every century,” he told USA Today on Monday. “Today is 5/11/15, but next century there’s also going to be 5/11/15, but it’s going to be the 22nd century instead of the 21st century.”

Still, it’s fun to notice palindromes in the calendar.

“There so much energy that comes out of these special date numbers. It keeps people interested,” he added.

After this week, the next palindrome to pop up on the calendar will be next June: 6/10/16.

Last year’s palindrome week — 4/10/14 to 4/19/14 — also stood out to astro-numerologists:

“This is a phenomenal date,” Astro-numerologist Lloyd Strayhorn told CBC, noting that for 10 consecutive days in April, you could add up the individual digits of that date and the sum will still equal the number of that precise day.

For example: 4/16/14 would be 4+1+6+1+4 =16.

“It’s the only month every 100 years that does that,” Lloyd said.

Want to learn more about palindromes? Watch “A Man, a Plan, a Palindrome,” a short documentary about an award-winning palindrome and the man obsessed with them, below.