A palindromic year.

Byline: The Register-Guard

People who can recall both Bush presidencies have the privilege of having seen two palindromic years - 1991 and, now, 2002. Palindromes are numbers, words or phrases that read the same backwards and forwards. Four-digit palindromes are rare, and there won't be two palindromic years in a single generation for another thousand years.

Verbal palindromes are common - mom, dad, deed, madam, rotator, reviver and, what may be the longest single-word palindrome in English, redivider.

Multiword palindromes are harder to construct and often require that punctuation be overlooked, but there are good examples. Perhaps the most famous: Madam in Eden, I'm Adam. Then there's the Teddy Roosevelt palindrome: A man, a plan, a canal - Panama! And the Napoleon palindrome: Able was I ere I saw Elba. And our favorite: Yreka bakery.

Palindromes were said to have been invented by the Greek poet Sotades the Obscene of Maronea in the third century B.C. He is said to have recast the entire Illiad in palindromic verse, and to have written lines of poetry that had the opposite meaning when read backwards. His satires were so biting that Ptolemy II had him sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea. Other sources say he was sealed into an iron chest and tossed overboard.

Unfortunately, only fragments of Sotades' poetry remain. This would have been a good year for a revival; the next good opportunity won't come until 2112.