There Sure Are a Lot of Ones in Today's Date
Yep, it's 11/11/11. Crazy. People are getting married for good luck, doctors are offering discounts on births. Haven't seen this many ones since November 11, 1911.
Here's how the New York Times marked this day 100 years ago.
To-day it is possible to write the date with the repetition six times of a single digit. It is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, and so one may save time and just put it down 11-11-11. It will be a century before the same thing can be done on Nov. 11, 2011, though, of course, on Dec. 12 next year there wil be a close approximation to it with 12-12-12 as a correct presentation of the date.
Still to-day for the last time until the era is changed will one digit appear seven times in the date, however it be written. To-day is 11-11-1911. Eight hundred years ago this was beaten by writing 11-11-1111, on Nov. 11, 1111, but it is not likely that the precise monkish scribes at the time would have allowed so slovenly a method of recording an essential fact. As none of us is likely to be living in the year 11111, it would be well for those who delight in curious trifles to take their fill of enjoyment out of this method of dating to-day, 11-11-11.
What, no 11-11-11-themed horror films? No elaborate numerological conspiracy theories? Things really were boring before the internet.