"Cold Sunday" was a meteorological event which took place on January 17, 1982, when unprecedentedly cold air swept down from Canada and plunged temperatures across much of the United States far below existing all-time record lows.
The phenomenon was caused by an unusually strong high pressure system over Saskatchewan with a core pressure of 31.15 inHg (105.5 kPa), a level rarely seen outside of permanent polar areas such as Siberia and Antarctica. A recent snowfall had left the ground without any way to hold on to its heat and temperatures dropped precipitously. This mass of cold air was so strong that the temperature at Mequon, Wisconsin dropped to −40 °F (−40 °C). The previous record was −28 °F (−33 °C) and temperatures below −20 °F (−29 °C) had only been felt there six times in the previous 100 years. The lowest temperature recorded that day in the United States was −52 °F (−47 °C), measured near Tower, Minnesota.
Below is a partial list of cities which set all_time record low temperatures in the United States. This is only a small fraction of all locales setting record low temperatures: Hundreds of towns and cities from North Dakota to New Jersey to Mississippi broke records, and the vast majority of the records set on "Cold Sunday" still stand. The cold was not confined to the night, either. In Princeton, New Jersey, and Cincinnati, Ohio, the daytime high temperatures were 2 °F (−17 °C) and −9 °F (−23 °C), respectively.
Sunday is traditionally the first day of the Judaeo-Christian seven-day week, between Saturday and Monday, and the second day of the weekend in some cultures.
In Justin's time, Christians usually called Sunday the Lord's Day (because they observed it as a weekly memorial of Jesus Christ's resurrection) or "the Eighth Day" (because of the Christian belief that Christ's resurrection on the day following the seventh-day Sabbath is a portal to timeless eternity that transcends the seven-day weekly cycle).
Easter Sunday, the day in the Bible on which Christ rose from the dead, celebrated across the Christian world and regarded as the most important day in the Christian calendar.