The Most Boring Day In History Was April 11, 1954

[The Straight Story]

The Most Boring Day In History Was April 11, 1954

The weekend after Thanksgiving/Black Friday is definitely relaxing but also a little boring. But it's not the most boring day in the 20th century. That'd be April 11th, 1954. A scientist developed software to determine that as the boringest day ever.

Why was it so boring!? Well, first of all it was uneventful. Usually in other days, someone famous was born, someone notorious died, or something significant happened. On April 11th, 1954, a Sunday in the 1950's, apparently none of that went down.

The scientist who came up with that date, William Tunstall-Pedoe, used his sophisticated search engine, True Knowledge, to search for the day where no result really popped up. With True Knowledge users can find out what happened on a particular day in history. Here's what he did:

"It occurred to us that we are able to objectively measure the importance of every day in history. Some days are highly eventful and on some days far less happens and we can also objectively estimate the importance of these events.

"For fun we wrote the program and set it going. When the results came back the winner (or perhaps loser) was April 11, 1954 – a Sunday in the 1950s. Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim: Abdullah Atalar – a Turkish academic.

http://gizmodo.com/5700069/the-most-boring-day-in-history-was-april-11-1954

[Chipper Chat]

1. That was my brother's 12th birthday. We had ice cream and cake.

I never knew our little insignificant party in insignificant 1954 here in insignificant central Indiana was so significant.

[Puzzler]

2. This fact alone makes it a very interesting day.

[the redcoat]

3. Congratulations, you just opened a black hole nt

[Puzzler]

4. It's actually a well known paradox.

In mathematics it's the paradox of the least-interesting number.

[Raine]

5. LOL that was the day before my brother was born

so I guess for our family that day was the calm before the storm. ;-)

[Fumesucker]

6. Your brother was ADHD too?

My younger brother was and he very nearly drove me and my parents all out of our minds, he never, ever stopped unless he was asleep..

At 56 now he's still hyper..

:)

[Iterate]

7. A day that will live in irony...

It just occurred to me that the data and method could be used to predict the probability of future boring days so that they might be avoided, perhaps even with a color-coded alert system.

Certainly the NSA and private account snoops would contribute their data to the project, as it's clearly in the national interest not to court economic collapse of the excitement industry. And I think it goes without saying that it's past time to start monitoring those National Day of Private Reflection activists who wish to destroy our economy and take away your job.

To repair the oversight, it's about high time that, at a minimum, the search begin for someone born on that date who can be promoted to the status of celebrity. If we fail that national challenge, we just may wake up someday from our oversleep and find it's already been claimed...by the Chinese.

[Uben]

8. It's the most interesting date in history!

Boring? Hardly. On that date, the second coming of christ was born and he lives among us now. At age 56, Jesus, a migrant farm worker, awaits orders to implement the rapture. Rumors are circulating this was to happen much earlier but Jesus had taken up smokin pot and forgot to do it, so...........

[90-percent]

9. ITS MY BIRTHDAY

Coincidentally, April 11, 1954 is when I was born and when my sister celebrated her 10th birthday. I have a brother in law that was also born that day.

This sort of thing doesn't happen to me very often.

-90% Jimmy

[surrealAmerican]

10. It would be interesting to see a list of the ...

... twenty or so least eventful days. Would they all be Sundays? Would they be more likely in mid-century?

[Major Hogwash]

11. That was the night my honeymoon started.

And when my hell on earth began.
So, I guess it's accurate.

At least my ex would agree.

It's a joke, folks.
Like Sarah Palin, it's not to be taken seriously!

[demwing]

12. Not so fast...

On that day, according to HistoryOrb.com:

Marlene Bauer won the LPGA New Orleans Golf Open and rocker Chris Difford (Squeeze), was born.

However, on Tuesday, the 27th day of that same month and year, no person of any importance died or was born, nothing cool or terrible happened, no one won anything or went anywhere. Everyone slept in, and everyone had meatloaf sandwiches for dinner, for the second day in a row.

On closer inspection, Chris Difford was not born on April 11th, 1954 (4/11/54), he was born on November 4th, 1954 (11/4/54). HistoryOrb.com was obviously confusled by the Un-American habit the rest of the world has of swapping the places of months and days in their date formating system.

The leads to the obvious question: Why can't everyone else in the world just give up your silly metric system and bass-ackwards date format, and just be like the good old US of A?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. There was a general election in Belgium

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/26/most-boring-day-ever-11-april-1954
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_general_election,_1954

Of course, Belgium gets so much stick for being a 'non-country' and having 'less than 10 famous people', this may not help matters.