Today, Popular Science reported that a duo of researchers at Johns Hopkins University created a new calendar in which dates fall on the same day of the week every year. To do this, they dropped February’s leap day, replacing it with a whole leap week at the end of December every 5-6 years. While a two-week office vacation between Christmas and New Year’s Day would be fantastic, it sounds like some people would be stuck with a permanent case of the Mondays.
This made me curious about how our current calendar came to be, so I visited The Source Of Alleged Truth (aka Wikipedia). I learned that messing with the calendar is a time-honored tradition with numerous prominent historical figures mucking things up.
Rumor has it Romulus established the first Roman calendar in 753 BC with 10 months of 304 days (March-Dec.). Being averse to the cold, since he wore a toga all year, Rommy decided to leave winter off the schedule. The peasants knew this was ridiculous, but kept their opinions to themselves, lest they be persecuted.
Fifty years later, Rome’s King Numa (Rome had kings?) decided to let winter-born people celebrate birthdays, so he tossed January and February into the calendar, with New Year’s Day on March 15 (later moved to Jan. 1). Numa used 354 days, but since Romans considered odd numbers lucky, he upped it to 355, just for kicks. Things still weren’t working, so he used two Wikipedia-paragraphs worth of calculations and a whole extra “leap month” during the occasional year to balance it out. Peasants reacted with the obligatory cheer, lest they be persecuted, and went on ignoring the calendar, farming in sync with the seasons.
Julius Caesar, feeling pretty smart after inventing the caesar salad, thought the Roman calendar wasn’t quite right — probably uneasy about a calendar that celebrated the ides of March. So, in 45 BC, he created a calendar with 12 months of 365 days and a leap day every fourth February. Jules was basing his calendar on a solar year, which meant it aligned with the seasons, so peasants gave it a resounding, “It’s about time, you idiots” (only in their heads, of course, lest they be persecuted).
Everyone lived happily by their Julian calendars for centuries, then scholars discovered a solar year is actually about 11 minutes shorter than the 365.25 days of the Julian calendar, causing it to gain three days every four centuries. The Vatican, knowing they’d be around for a while, figured they should probably fix things, or a future Pope would be celebrating his June birthday as snow fell. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull announcing his Gregorian calendar, which excluded years divisible by 100 from being leap years, unless the year was divisible by 400. The peasants, sick of the endless math, thought, “This is bull. Literally. A papal bull. We have to order new calendars. I want ‘Gruel of the Month’ this time.”
Countries were slow to adopt the Gregorian calendar, allegedly because they weren’t Catholic, but most likely because people were upset about their birthdays. In 1582, when Spain, Portugal and Italy implemented the new calendar, the peasants went to sleep on Oct. 15 and awoke back in time on Oct 4. This thrilled the peasant children who got two birthday parties that week, but angered peasant woman who gained two years (“I’d never guess you were 23. It seems like you just turned 22!”).
Sweden decided to take decades to convert by excluding leap days over 11 successive leap years, until they caught up. After a few years, King Charles XII realized his Official Calendar Guys forgot to exclude leap days in 1704 and 1708, so in a fit of rage, he switched Sweden back to the Julian calendar. Swedish peasants thought, “You have GOT to be kidding me,” but didn’t bother to protest since they’d been using black market Gregorian calendars for years.
Britain and the British Empire (including what is now the eastern U.S.) adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. This allegedly caused some riots related to taxes, but since I’m an American working for a British firm, let’s just say, “everything went smoothly, and peasants throughout the British Empire were joyful.”
The last interesting conversion to note happened when people in Alaska went to bed as Russian citizens on Friday, Oct. 6, 1867, and awoke on Friday, Oct. 18, as American citizens. They got two consecutive Fridays because the International Date Line was shifted from Alaska’s eastern to western boundary in sync with the change to the Gregorian calendar, when the U.S. purchase of Alaska took effect. “You couldn’t make it two Saturdays?” Alaskans asked. “I have to work on Fridays!” This was the origin of the phrase, “Alaska is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
All of this leads me to think that maybe Feb. 29 should be a legal holiday. After all, nobody (even Johns Hopkins researchers) would want to eliminate a free day off from work.
Our latest event from the ‘in just 60 minutes’ series featured guest speaker Steve Cram discussing “Are you ready to compete in 2012? Knowing your competitors and having the strategies and skills to go the extra mile.”
Watch the video to see footage from this successful event where Steve Cram talks about the connections between sport and business.
For five seasons between 1982 and 1986, Steve Cram enjoyed a dazzling spell of competitive success – including the demolition of Ovett’s and Coe’s world records in 1985 – winning a world, two European and three Commonwealth gold medals. Short of full fitness, he had to settle for silver behind Coe in the Los Angeles Olympics 1,500m final, but he bounced back with three world records in 19 days the following year – including history’s first sub-three-and-half minute metric mile. Steve is now the main athletics presenter for the BBC.
When Steve Cram was in full cry, one commentator likened it to “watching a Greek god on the track”.
TheFrameworks/Detroit is looking forward to a fascinating evening of advertising and French culture at La Nuit de la Pub, “A surprising evening” taking place this Saturday (5 March) from 5pm to 8pm at Westin Book Cadillac.
Anne Saint Dreux, Director-Founder of the Maison de la Pub in Paris and the official representative of the Art Directors Club of New York for France, will be setting out to answer the question “Is there a strategy of emotion?”. The evening will feature an enlightening screening of international commercials – “Around the world in 80 ads” – and a second presentation about French women in advertising.
And in case anyone is in any doubt about our motivation for attending – and sponsoring – the event, we’re quite aware that “la pub” is French for “the ad”!
The event is part of a tour organized by the Délégation générale de l’Alliance Française in the USA in partnership with la Maison de la Pub in Paris, and the Festival de France: French Institute of Michigan and French School of Detroit. Tickets are $30 and food and drink will be available at a cash bar. For more information – and to enquire about last-minute tickets – visit the event’s Facebook page or try the number below.
La Nuit de la Pub
Westin Book Cadillac
1114 Washington Blvd
Detroit, MI 48226
Phone: 313-442-1600
Our latest event from the ‘in just 60 minutes’ series featured guest speaker Greg Dyke discussing ‘Our failing democracy – will the coalition last long enough to save it?’ The video above includes footage from this successful event.
In his four years as Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke started four new digital television channels, five new digital radio channels, opened two new BBC regions, launched the BBC’s interactive television services and helped create Freeview. Greg reversed the trend at the BBC, which took employees away from making programmes and made them into managers. In doing so he reduced administration costs dramatically from 24% of total income to 15%. In 2005 he became chairman of HIT and in 2006 he became chairman of Brentford Football Club.
In conjunction with Reeves, TAL and EC Group, TheFrameworks is pleased to announce the third ‘In just 60 minutes event!’ with Greg Dyke.
In his four years as Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke started four new digital television channels, five new digital radio channels, opened two new BBC regions, launched the BBC’s interactive television services and helped create Freeview. Greg reversed the trend at the BBC, which took employees away from making programmes and made them into managers. In doing so he reduced administration costs dramatically from 24% of total income to 15%. In 2005 he became chairman of HIT and in 2006 he became chairman of Brentford Football Club.
Greg will be discussing ‘Our failing democracy – will the coalition last long enough to save it?’
Date of event
Thursday 21 October 2010, 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm
Where
Pewterers’ Hall, Oat Lane, London EC2V 7DE
Click here to view a map
Contact
The event is free, to register please click here.
