Monthly Knuckles
January 30th, 2007
If you don’t have a calendar on hand, here’s an easy way to figure out which months have 31 days and which have 30:
Count the months on your knuckles and the grooves between your knuckles. Leave out your thumb knuckle. Every month that lands on a knuckle is 31 days, every month that lands on a groove between knuckles is 30 days (or 28 for February). Thanks to my client Rebecca @ w-rehab for this little hint which came from Tipnut
January 31st, 2007 at 9:39 am
This makes so much sense! In school we had to learn a stupid little rhyme for this :
30 days have September, April, June and November,
All the others have 31 days clear,
Except for Febuary whch has 29 every leap year!
January 31st, 2007 at 9:39 am
I remember this from watching Kaptain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan) in the 50’s as a tyke (yes, I’m that old). It’s good to see this “hack” out on the web.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:53 am
mom taught me that trick when i was a toddler. really.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:53 am
I’ve used this for years.
Another one I like is to count upto 20 on one hand.
If you turn your hand palmside up and look at the creases on your fingers, there are 3 and including the tip that makes 4.
5 digits on each hand makes up 20. The thumb can be an issue though I hear you say…well there is usually a gentle crease in the skin between the first and second joint which can be counted as well.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:17 am
Learned this from Highlights for Children magazine in the early 80s.
I loathe that stupid little rhyme hoyo mentions. It’s simply not a memory aid. If it were a mnemonic, that would be genuinely helpful, but really, it just requires rote memorization of an out-of-regular-order sequence, and the fact that a quarter of the months end in “ember” doesn’t help.
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:05 am
I, too, loathe that stupid little rhyme. For some reason I remembered it as “Thirty days hath September, April, May and November.”
And I can never get Daylight Saving Time right — is it Spring Forward/Fall Back? But when I fall, I fall forward, so it must be Spring Back/Fall Forward. Or not?
Speaking of dst — it begins March 11 this year, not the first Sunday in April as it normally does and as is stated on my work calendar. Of course, this is the same calendar that shows, on the January preview on the December page, January 1 on both Sunday and Monday and January 33 between January 29 and 31.