A Holy Day for Half the World

Friday, March 21st is Good Friday for Christians, but it’s also a sacred date for many other religions. People are celebrating Good Friday, Purim, Narouz, Eid Milad an Nabi, Small Holi, and Magha Puja. That doesn’t happen often.

Ed Reingold and Nachum Dershowitz, co-authors of the books Calendrical Calculations and Calendrical Tabulations, determined how often in the period between 1600 and 2400 A.D. Good Friday, Purim, Narouz and the Eid would occur in the same week. The answer is nine times in 800 years. Then they tackled the odds that they would converge on a two-day period. And the total is … only once: tomorrow. And that’s not even counting Magha Puja and Small Holi.

TIME has an explantion of these holidays and how they are set in the calendar. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Sèbastien Dèsarmaux/Godong/Corbis)