Another Day in Paradise

Today I heard on the radio that a Cambridge University scientist has declared April 11, 1954 the most boring day since 1900. This is based on a computer analysis of 300 million facts, according to an NPR interview with William Tunstall-Pedoe, the scientist who invented the search engine that sifted through the facts and arrived at this oddly compelling conclusion.

Listeners who've commented on the story have mostly offered personal evidence to refute it — usually their own birthdays or those of their loved ones. None of the comments convinced me that this day shouldn't be one of those most boring in history.

If April 11, 1954 was so ho-hum and ordinary, then wasn't it also the most wonderful day, too? No great people were born, but neither were there explosions, battles or mass murders. And aren't the simple, uneventful days the most special?

In Abraham Vergehese's book Cutting for Stone, the character Ghosh tells his son, Marion, "You know what's given me the greatest pleasure in my life? It's been our bungalow, the normalcy of it, the ordinariness of my waking, Almaz rattling in the kitchen, my work. My classes, my rounds with the senior students. Seeing you and Shiva at dinner, then going to sleep with my wife." Ghosh, the overworked doctor at a poor hospital in Ethiopia, falls asleep every night with these words on his lips: "Another day in paradise."

I hope that April 11, 2011 — like April 11, 1954 — is just another day in paradise.