20世纪最无聊一天：1954年4月11日

屈联西

  2010年12月01日 环球时报


　　April 11 of 1954 can be identified as the most boring of the 20th century, according to the Cambridge scientist, computer programmer William Tunstall-Pedoe。
　　剑桥大学一位科学家、计算机编程人员威廉 汤斯多宣称，1954年4月11日为20世纪最无聊的一天。
　　On that day a general election was held in Belgium, a Turkish academic was born and an Oldham Athletic footballer died, Tunstall-Pedoe's computer program suggests. Apart from that nothing much happened。
　　威廉 汤斯多最新编写的程序显示，在那天，比利时举行了大选，一个土耳其学者诞生，还有一个英格兰奥德汉姆球队足球运动员去世。除此以外，便没有更值得注意的事情了。
　　The program, called True Knowledge, came to its decision after being fed some 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events". Using complex algorithms, such as how much one piece of information was linked to others, True Knowledge determined that particular 1950s Sunday to be outstanding in its obscurity。
　　威廉的这一程序名为“真实知识”，在接收到3亿条含有“人物、地点、业务事件”的信息后会做出相关判断。通过复杂的算法(比如其考虑一条信息在多大程度上跟其他信息相联系)，该程序得出上世纪50年代的这一星期天是最无聊的一天。
　　"Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred," Tunstall-Pedoe said. "The irony is, though, that - having done the calculation - the day is interesting for being exceptionally boring."
　　“没有重要的人在这一天去世，也没有重要的事件在这一天发生，”汤斯多说道。“但让人觉得可笑的是，经过计算，这一天的格外无聊使得它的存在有意思了。”
　　Plans for the coup d'etat in Yanaon, then a small French colony in India, are also believed to have been hatched that on the evening of April 11, 1954, but nothing actually happened that night。
　　据说，当时还是法属殖民地的印度小城雅隆在那天晚上曾发生政变，但最终什么都没发生。