Tag Archives: day of week

Finding the Day of the Week

OK, this is entirely random but I thought it was amazingly cool, so I thought I’d re-post something I found on the Web.

Here’s the story. As you might know, Earth Day is coming up soon. This Sunday as a matter-of-fact. It happens every year on April 22 and this year that falls on a Sunday, which is kind of convenient since Sunday happens to be an excellent day to celebrate something like Earth Day. It’s on the weekend, people have lots of time, you get the idea.

The first Earth Day was in 1970 and that got me to wondering whether that happened on a Sunday as well. So I went to Google to look it up and stumbled across this really cool page that has a method for easily determining the day of the week for any date in history: Finding the Day of the Week.

It involves a bit of math but not enough to scare you off. Once you get the algorithm down, you’ll be able to calculate any day of the week in your head…or at least quickly with a pencil and paper. And Earth Day, 1970? Turns out it was on a Wednesday. I did some more research and it turns out they planned it to be mid-week to get people to leave their offices and participate. Guess I was wrong about it being well-suited for a weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, besides my plans to celebrate Earth Day, I’ll also be playing a lot of Pottermore, which finally opened up to the public. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade or so, you’re probably familiar with Harry Potter and Pottermore is author J.K. Rowling’s answer to her fans who want more Harry. It’s sort of an online game where you get to follow along with the story and interact with the world of wizards. It’s pretty straightforward, although I had to rely on some cheats to figure out some of the tougher parts. There’s a ton of extra material that gives Potter geeks plenty to read and think about.

Oh, and after the Sorting Hat ceremony was complete, I was put into Ravenclaw. I knew it!