Today on Yahoo News there's an article about the rare "blue moon" we'll have on New Year's Eve. By definition, a blue moon is a second full moon in a month. It's not blue, though. It's just a name, like "harvest moon" or "new moon."According to the article, blue moons occur every 2.5 years; the last one was in May 2007. What is rare is a blue moon on New Year's Eve. That happens only once every 19 years. I don't know about you, but tomorrow night I'm going to go outside to catch a glimpse of the moon.
The phrase, "once in a blue moon" means "a rare event" or "something that happen infrequently." One site I looked at said there are 41 blue moons in a century. That's 3% of the moons. I don't know if I'd call that "rare," but certainly once every 19 years (0.4% of the moons) would qualify, don't you think?
Want to know more? Go to Yahoo's blue moon. Wikipedia (wicked source!) has some interesting things to say about blue moon and it's historic use, too. (First use of the phrase, "blue moon" was 1528: "Yf they say the mone is belewe / We must believe that it is true.")
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text pjfs 2009.
picture: http://arvindevalia.com
