To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Pi day?
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:17:53 -0400 (EDT)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Today is being celebrated in the US as Pi day, as it's 3/14, pi to
three digits.  (Google has commemorated it on their front page.)  I
don't plan to celebrate until five years from now, as that will be
3/14/15, pi to five digits.  I wonder if anyone celebrated 418 years
ago, when the date was pi to seven digits:  3/14/1592.  (Yes, pi was
know to that many places then.  But were dates written in that form
anywhere at the time?)

Of course Europeans these days write the day before the month.  So
they don't celebrate pi day at all, since April only has 30 days, and
since there aren't 14 months.  (No 31/4 or 3/14.)  But they get to
celebrate e day, January 27, which the US doesn't, since there's no
February 71.  I wonder if there was a special celebration 28 years ago
(27/1/82).

Today is also Albert Einstein's birthday.  He would have been
131 today.