Editing 1140: Calendar of Meaningful Dates

{{comic
| number    = 1140
| date      = November 28, 2012
| title     = Calendar of Meaningful Dates
| image     = calendar of meaningful dates.png
| titletext = In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why.
}}

==Explanation==
The calendar used in the comic is the standard {{w|Gregorian calendar}} of 2012 used by most of Western Civilization. The comic looks at the frequencies of which dates appear in English writings indexed in the {{w|Google Books Library Project}}, by using the {{w|Google Ngram Viewer}} ([http://books.google.com/ngrams link]).

Some dates are more (or less) frequently mentioned because they have a special significance. Other dates have correlations for which there doesn't appear to be any obvious reasons. September 11th has also been the date of two significant battles in the War of 1812 (long before it gained notoriety from the 2001 terrorist attacks), particularly one where the British landed in George Washington's own plantation, which likely bolstered its search volume. Yet the significance of the globally significant terrorism incident probably accounts for most of the occurances, since that time.

The date mentioned in the sub-heading (October 17th) is Randall's birthday.

The title text mystery is explained [http://drhagen.com/blog/the-missing-11th-of-the-month/ here]. In summary, many occurrences of "11th" in the writings were actually misread by the Google Books Library Project's [[wikipedia:optical character recognition|optical character recognition]] software and/or [[wikipedia:reCAPTCHA|reCAPTCHA]] users, becoming one of these: <code>IIth</code>, <code>Ilth</code>, <code>iith</code>, <code>lith</code>, <code>llth</code>, <code>1lth</code>, <code>1ith</code>, <code>l1th</code>, or, in texts after 1860, <code>nth</code>.  In addition, the slightly lower frequencies of 2nd, 3rd, 22nd, and 23rd are due to the 19th Century practice of writing these numbers as 2d, 23d, etc.

===Date Significance===
The first of each month is generally more mentioned than others, perhaps because such dates are markers of a new month and may be used as landmark dates or deadlines. Similarly, the final day of each month is commonly a deadline day. Other dates have a less mundane significance, for example:
*January 1 is {{w|New Year's Day|New Year's Day}}.
*February 14 is {{w|Valentine's Day}}.
*February 29 only exists during {{w|Leap year|leap years}}.
*March 15 is the {{w|Ides of March}}.
*March 21 is considered the first day of {{w|Spring (season)|spring}}, by a common convention in the northern hemisphere.
*April 1 is {{w|April Fools' Day}}.
*April 15 is {{w|Tax Day|US Individual Income Tax return filing day}}.
*May 1 is {{w|International Workers' Day|International Workers' Day}}, or {{w|May Day|May Day}}.
*June 4 is the {{w|June Fourth Incident}} of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
*June 30 is the end of the {{w|Fiscal Year| fiscal year}} for most American states and local governments.
*July 1 is {{w|Canada Day}}.
*July 4 is {{w|Independence Day (United States)|US Independence Day}}.
*September 11 is the date of the {{w|September 11 attacks|2001 terrorist attacks}} in New York City and Washington, DC. It's the largest number by a big margin, most likely because unlike the other dates it has no special name, it's referred to as "9/11" (or "September 11") almost exclusively.
*December 7 is the date of the {{w|Attack on Pearl Harbor|1941 attack on Pearl Harbor}}.
*December 25 is {{w|Christmas|Christmas}}.
*December 31 is {{w|New Year's Eve|New Year's Eve}}.

==Transcript==
:'''Calendar of Meaningful Dates'''
:Each date's size represents how often it is referred to by name (e.g. "October 17th") in English-language books since 2000
:(Source: Google ngrams corpus)
:[A regular Gregorian calendar laid out in a grid, Sunday first, on a leap year, with some numbers larger or smaller than others. Significant outliers are mentioned in the explanation.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Calendar]]
[[Category:Google]]