Check the Facts First

I got another one of those chain emails sometime last week.  I seem to get a lot of them, but I never send them on.  Chain emails come to my email box to die.  I deleted the thing and moved on.

Well, not so much.  That email started to nag at me.  So, I retrieved it from my deleted folder so I could share it here.  (I'm not working today, and I needed something to write about besides my knitting).

This October has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays, all in one month. It happens once in 823 years. These are money bags. Pass them to 8 good people and money will appear in 4 days. Based on Chinese Fengshui, whoever stops this will experience none.

Besides the obvious typo (feng shui is two words), that 823 years thing bugged me.  It didn't seem reasonable.

All that is required for the five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays is for a 31-day month to start on a Friday.  (Any 31-day month is going to have five of three days of the week.  It all depends on when the 1st is.)  Are they trying to tell me that in a calendar with seven 31-day months, it's taken 823 years to have one of those firsts start on a Friday?

I don't think so.

Then I remembered that the October in any given year is exactly the same as the January.  January 1, 2010, was a Friday.

823 years?  Not even 823 days!

If someone is going to make up some random chain email to start, shouldn't that person at least try to make it plausible?  I mean, really!

Okay, rant over.