With tomorrow being the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination I thought I’d post a couple odd factoids.
This week we also saw the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg and there was a minor controversy over President Obama failing to attend.
But that was not the first time a President turned down an invitation.
In 1963 President Kennedy was invited to the 100th anniversary and he did seriously consider it but decided not to go.
Instead he went to Texas.
Had he accepted the invitation he never would have been in Dallas in November 22nd.
Here is another odd calendar quirk. I don’t assign any cosmic significance but it is interesting.
First off, the 50th anniversary is happening on the same day of the week as the original event. And this comes about through somewhat odd coincidence.
Because of the way our calendar is set up, a date advanced by one day for each calendar year and one for each leap year. In other words this year the 22nd of November is on Friday, next year it will be Saturday, and so on. Between 2015 and 2016 it will advance by 2 days (one for calendar, one for leap).
It has been 50 years since 1963 so we get 50 days from that. We have had 13 leap years since then so we get 13 more.
50 plus 13 is 63…
So the 50th anniversary of November 22, 1963 is on the same day of the week because the date has moved forward on the calendar 63 times since then.
Again nothing more than a quirk of the calendar but as it turns out 63 is the only year in a century where the math works out that way (to be on the same day of week and match the year)