Friday Sees Once-in-a-Lifetime Moment

(Editor's Note: The following article was written by Hugo Gey of the Daily Mail UK)

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.

And even the most hardened sceptic will surely pause for a moment to reflect on the unique occurrence, which will not come around again in the lifetime of most of us.

Among other things, 11.11.11 will be:

• Veterans Day/Armistice Day, celebrated around the world.
• A day of spiritual significance for those who believe the number 11 has a mystical power.
• A very special day to get married or have a birthday (especially if it's your 11th).
• Perhaps even the end of the world, according to some 'prophecy' web forums.

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.

Spoon-bending 'psychic' Uri Geller has written that the number represents 'the need to find balance in life', and added: 'When I see the number 1111, I pray for sick children and world peace.'

He also believes that thanks to its status as a 'balanced' number, '11.11 is the pre-encoded trigger and the key to the mysteries of the universe and beyond'.

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.

Sarah Bull, a Mail Online journalist who is getting married in Suffolk on Friday, said that it 'means a lot to be able to get married on such a historical date.'

She added: 'We chose 11.11.11 for our wedding day because it's a date which nobody, including my rather absent-minded fiancé, will ever forget.'

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.

APOPHENIA: THE NATURAL HUMAN URGE TO FIND PATTERNS

The reason we ascribe significance to 11.11.11 is apophenia - the urge to find patterns in seemingly random data.

It is this that explains why we see clouds forming certain shapes, and why we often hear of people finding 'faces' in things like potato crisps.

Apophenia is also important in the psychology of gamblers. It can either encourage those on a winning streak to believe that it will continue, or convince losing gamblers that their luck must inevitably change.

While it can be a symptom of mental illness if taken to an extreme - as depicted in the film A Beautiful Mind - apophenia is instinctive to all humans as a way of drawing conclusions about the world.

This phenomenon helps us, for example, to recognise abstract drawings as representing human figures, and to remember phone numbers which seem to follow a pattern.

The end of the Great War came on November 11, 1918. Given the carnage seen in the war, we can assume that the date was not deliberately chosen, but was simply the earliest possible opportunity for a ceasefire.

However, the decision to end the war at exactly 11 o'clock certainly was deliberate, at the Armistice was signed around five in the morning (Paris time), to take effect at the symbolic point a few hours later.

Tragically, fierce fighting continued right up until the official ceasefire, and one American soldier was killed at 10.58.

Of course, there is no real significance to the date 11.11.11 - not even at the time of 11.11.11 - but it is a classic example of apophenia, the human urge to see patterns in essentially random events.

With that in mind, perhaps the group which is taking the day in its correct spirit is the Corduroy Appreciation Club, which has anointed 11.11.11 as 'The Day That Most Resembles Corduroy' because it is made up of straight lines.

However, to say that the date is no more than a coincidence would have provided little comfort to those who endured the bizarre weather on the last 11.11.11.

It remains to be seen whether 11.11.11 will produce such surprises this time around, but people should be sure to keep a careful eye on the weather - and on any local Hellmouths - at 11 seconds past 11 minutes past 11 o'clock.