Every year, a rumor goes around the internet that some time in August will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Mars, because it will look as bi

Why do we see this rumor every year, often in the same time of the year?

August 27, 2003 was when Mars was the closest to our planet that it has ever been in over 50,000 years (35 million miles away, about 144 times as far away as the mooon).

At that time, Mars appeared to be 6 times larger than it normally does. At the time it was an exciting event, as long as you had a telescope. To the naked eye, Mars was still just a tiny dot in the sky.

At the time, chain emails went around that overstated the event, claiming that Mars would be within only a few miles of us, that it would be next to the moon, or that it would look like we had two moons in the sky. These emails still show up every year, even though the event happened almost 7 years ago.