My friend Dr. Stuart Sumida, biologist at Cal St. San Bernadino, has long been a fan of these historical pages. Today he sent me a fun note:

Something that happens once and only once over the course of history. Shortly after noon on July 8, comes the moment that can be called 12:34:56 7/8/9. To mark this momentous event, this week we'll feature words that have three consecutive letters in order, something that doesn't happen very often either (there are hundreds of everyday words, but we are talking here about unusual and interesting words).

It's not exactly true that this sequence of time/date happens only once. If you follow the day/month/year convention, you can observe the same sequence next month, on August 7. And even though it appears to be a rare occurrence, such interesting patterns aren't that unusual. Consider these from the past:
01:23:45 6/7/89
12:34.56 7/8/90
01:02:03 04/05/06
In a couple of years we'll have 11:11:11 11/11/11.