What day of the week was January 1, 1995?

Determining the day of the week for a past date is a classic mathematical puzzle that relies on a simple pattern. A normal year contains 365 days, which is precisely 52 weeks plus one extra day. This single extra day means that a given date will shift forward one day of the week each year. The only complication is a leap year, which has 366 days (52 weeks and two extra days), causing dates to jump forward two days of the week.

To solve for this particular date, we can work backward from an easily remembered anchor point, like January 1, 2000, which was a Saturday. The period from the beginning of 1995 to the beginning of 2000 is five full years. Among those years, only one was a leap year (1996). Therefore, to find our answer, we must shift backward a total of six days: one day for each of the four normal years and