Today is an Odd Day. You can be $576 richer if you celebrate!

Today is an odd day. It is May 7th, 2009.

On this date in 1915, the British liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German torpedo. In 1945, Nazi Germany signed an agreement to cease fighting the second world war. The Russian composer Tchaikovsky was born in 1840, and Vladamir Putin became that country's president in 2000. In 1968 the actress known as Traci Lords was born, and would later become infamous for appearing underage in adult films and Penthouse.

However, besides historians, musicians and who are recognizing this day for being odd, but rather mathematicians and numerologists. In North America's abbreviated form of numbering the month, then day, followed by the year, today is 05/07/09.

Did you spot the pattern? Out of this entire century, there are only six dates that will have this same sort of pattern; days where the numeric shorthand will form a sequence of ascending odd-numbers. This is what some are calling an Odd Day.

Ron Gordon, a schoolteacher in Redwood City, CA has offered $579 to the people who have the most interesting or largest celebration around this date. He has a website at oddday.net, where he has written more about this curious date. There you can also find a humorous illustration of wizards, dinosaurs, and other odd characters thinking about this peculiar coincidence of numbers.

It is notable that in the majority of other countries around the world, today's date is written 07/05/09: a sequence that amounts to no real significance. Whether or not Even Days are just as important, I will leave up to you.

So, what will you do this odd day? Choose odd lottery numbers, park in an odd-numbered stall, avoid even-numbered menu items. Try to find the pair of countless missing socks, or phone your oft-neglected middle sibling just to say hi, and tell him that today is an Odd Day. Make a top ten list, but omit the even numbers. Dial some odd-numbered phone numbers. Have a thrilling conversation about parity with a friend! Discover an odd perfect number! Or, just have a prime number's worth of shots at the bar tonight.

A list of this century's Odd Days:

• 01/03/05 - January 3, 2005
• 03/05/07 - March 5, 2007
• 05/07/09 - May 7, 2009
• 07/09/11 - July 9, 2011
• 09/11/13 - September 11, 2013
• 11/13/15 - November 13, 2015

For comparison's sake, in this century there are:

• 24 leap days (Feb 29th)
• 144 Fridays the 13th
• 36,525 total days (approximately)

Some palindromic dates to reflect upon:

• 10/02/2001
• 20/02/2002
• 30/03/2003
• 01/02/2010

iWoo is a graphic designer and photographer from Canada. He wasn't so great at math in high school.