Today is International Pi Day! Why? Because Pi – which is an irrational number – starts out with 3.14. Thus, March 14th (3-14) became Pi Day. Actually, the exact time for celebration is 1:59 pm so that the exact number 3.14159 (the first 6 digits of Pi) can be reached.

What does Pi Day have to do with computers? Nothing, really. Except that, before computers, the number of digits calculated for Pi was about 2,000. In the 1960s, however, the number of digits increased to about 500,000 thanks to what many consider the first supercomputer – the CDC-6600. This was a computer from Control Data Corporation.

Some computer-related companies are celebrating Pi Day with discounts. You should check them out on our Product Specials Page.

As for supercomputers, we’ll talk about then in a future blog post. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about International Pi Day, you might check out these 36 Pi facts:

Note: today is a very busy day for the page “36 Facts About Pi” and it may not want to load right away. If it doesn’t open for you, refresh (reload) the page or try again later in the day. When we went to it this morning, it loaded sometimes and other times it just timed out. We’ll talk about why this happens in a future blog post, too.