Finally, we can say goodbye to ‘Njaanuary’
The new month we will be ushering in on Wednesday will be so unique that there will be no equal until after 823 years elapse, a widely circulated online message claims.
It will have every day of the week appearing four times, a phenomenon that will apparently never happen again in our lifetime.
“This happens only after 823 years. This is called money bags. So, share to at least five people or five groups and money will appear within five days,” says the message, which is placed alongside a February 2017 calendar, that has been circulating on the social media since early last year.
But this is a total hoax, says calculations enthusiast Mungai Kihanya.
Mr Kihanya says this will just be another February with 28 days, just as it happens with any February in a non-leap year.
“It happens every year. It will be so even next year,” Mr Kihanya told the Sunday Nation on Friday.
WORLD OF FIGURES
“Only a month with 28 days should have exactly four Sundays, four Mondays, four Tuesdays, etc. The reason is simple: a week has seven days and seven times four equals 28,” Mr Kihanya wrote in his World of Figures column in the Lifestyle magazine in February last year after he first saw the hoax message.
“In reality, the so-called unique phenomenon is more common than not. After all, there are a lot more 28-day Februarys than 29-day ones,” he stated.
In what appears like an attempt to make the message plausible, its authors link it to a Chinese philosophy Feng Shui that emphasises on harmony between humans and nature.
But Mr Kihanya sees this as a ploy to have the message spread.
“Back in the day, when Microsoft was the only email server in the world, they did a survey and found that over 80 per cent of messages processed were useless chain-letters. I doubt if that ratio has changed to date,” added Mr Kihanya, who has a Master’s in physics.
