Sunday, March 23, 2008

Happy Easter!


Welcome to the earliest (and for those of you in the UK, possibly frostiest) Easter Sunday that you will ever experience!

Did you know that...

• The cycle of Easter dates repeats every 5,700,000 years. During this period, Easter falls on March 23rd only 54,150 times (less than 1% of the total).
• The next time Easter will be this early will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913.
• Easter can be one day earlier (March 22), but that is extremely rare. The next time it will fall on March 22 will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818.
• Easter falls on March 28th in both 2027 and 2032, a gap of five years. No shorter interval is possible.
• Almost exactly half of our Easters occur on the same date 11 years later (but never more than four in a row). For example, Easter falls on March 31st in 1991, 2002, 2013 and 2024, but not in 2035.
• Consecutive Easters are always separated by 350, 357, 378, or 385 days (that's 50, 51, 54, or 55 weeks). For example, Easter 2008 is 350 days after Easter 2007, but 385 days before Easter 2009. So we've just had the shortest possible gap between Easters, and we're about to enter the longest.
• The last time Easter fell before the clocks went forward was in 1959 (back when the clocks changed to British Summer Time in mid-April, not March).
• The coldest recent UK Easter was in 1964. Over the weekend 27-29 March temperatures barely reached 6°C in southern and central parts of the country, and were accompanied by a raw easterly wind. This year may well be a new record.
• The snowiest recent UK Easter was in 1983. Over the weekend 1-3 April there was up to 10cm of snowfall in Scotland, the Midlands and Kent. The following Easters were all snowy: 1958, 1965, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1994, 1998 - and 2008. So much for Spring...
• Easter is not only a movable holiday but a multiple one: more often than not, Western Christian churches and Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on different dates. Orthodox Easter falls on April 27th this year.
• In 2009, Western and Orthodox Easters will fall just 1 week apart - Western Easter will fall on April 12th and Orthodox Easter on April 19th.

See here for more interesting facts about Easter.

14 comments:

Betty Carlson said...

It's freezing here too -- snowing actually -- and it's quite cold in my home town of Olympia, Washington too. Strange!

My mother had told me the next time Easter would be so early will be in the 22O0s, but you sure added a lot of other interesting facts...

Enjoy it regardless!

Anonymous said...

Really intersting facts. Happy Easter to everyone.

Cheryl said...

It's Easter, and we have snow...so wrong. Happy Easter!

Tinsie said...

@ Betty & Cheryl: Nice to know we're not the only ones who are having Christmas weather at Easter ;-)

@ Indie: Same to you :-)

Cheltenhamdailyphoto said...

That's a lot of research! Very interesting, thanks. Great illustration.

Tinsie said...

Thanks, Lynn. Most of the research was done by Diamond Geezer. I just copied it over from his blog :-o

Anonymous said...

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Regards

Tinsie said...

Cheers, will do :-)

Anonymous said...

Hope you had a good one too and thanks for sharing all this fact - I didn't know half of it.

But one thing I know, is how we do our Family tradition Easter Bunny Eggs hunt in the forest in Norway.
That's another interesting facts :lol:

Tinsie said...

Awww that sounds like fun! I'll be over to take a look shortly :-)

Shionge said...

Thanks for a wonderful read Tinsie and sorry for being late Happy Easter to you too :D

Tinsie said...

Glad you liked it, Shionge! It's not too late at all. I don't really celebrate Easter until end of April this year, so in fact you're very early :-)

Anonymous said...

olo: Happy Easter ....souvliste kai kanena arni re paides h ellate stin hellas na to giortasoume....

Tinsie said...

Καλομελέτα κι έρχεται ;-)