All the 12s as Oakleigh celebrates her birthday

All the 12s as Oakleigh celebrates her birthday

5 December 2012

IT won’t happen for another 100 years.

But when the twelfth day of the twelfth month meets the twelfth year next Wednesday it will extra significant for one Downpatrick schoolgirl.

Despite the unlikely odds, Down High School pupil Oakleigh Murphy will turn 12 on that very day.

Mum Marissa said they hadn’t thought much about the significance themselves until friends and family began pointing it out.

“The date only comes round very rarely,” she said. “And I haven’t heard about anyone else who has experienced this on their birthday so it does seem to be a once a lifetime thing.”

Known as a ‘Perfect Palindrome’, dates which can be read the same way front to back have sparked predictions of either great fortune or doom over the centuries.

The Murphy family aren’t putting much stock by any otherworldly significance but may be comforted to know that a ‘Golden Age’ is predicted from 12/12/12 — the Ancient Mayan calendar, for example, stating it is the beginning of a new cycle of evolution for planet earth, humanity and the cosmos.

“It is just a happy unusual coincidence,” said Marissa. “She’ll just be having a few friends round on the day itself but there may be a few surprises thrown in.”