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Comment by andrewl | Hacker News Reader

I grew up with this:

  Thirty days has September,
  April, June, and November,
  All the rest have thirty-one except February,
  Which has four and twenty-four,
  'til leap year gives it one day more.

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Use your knuckles, with both hands next to each other, from left to right Jan - Dec. Each 'hump' has 31 days.

Yes, this is the way I remember. My wife quotes the rhyme and I annoy her by pointing out the following issues:

1 - 3 lines of the rhyme at the end are utterly pointless as it's much easier to just remember that leap years are actually a thing.

2 - The fact that it rhymes doesn't help you remember which months you're talking about. It could quite easily be, "30 days hath September; October, November, December" and it would still rhyme but be wrong.

My grandfather used to say "Thirty days has November, all the rest I can't remember."

> 1 - 3 lines of the rhyme at the end are utterly pointless as it's much easier to just remember that leap years are actually a thing.

I was taught:

    Thirty Days has September,
    April, June and November.
    All the rest have Thirty One;
    Except February, it's a different one!

or use just the left hand and tap twice on knuckle of forefinger for july and August :)

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