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The more interesting question to me has always been: Why are the months numbered wrong? Dec ember is month 12, nov ember is month 11, oct ober is month 10. There's an offset of 2 between the month name and the number it references.
The more interesting question to me has always been: Why are the months numbered wrong? Dec ember is month 12, nov ember is month 11, oct ober is month 10. There's an offset of 2 between the month name and the number it references.
Because the calendar used to start in March. Feb was truncated because it was the last month of the year, thus where to put all the fudge factor to make the year work right.
This is a cute story, but it lacks all sources, and it contradicts Wikipedia [1] [2]: > Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sextilis in fact had 31 days before it was renamed, and it was not chosen for its length (see Julian calendar). According…
An even better example is the actual numbered months:
- Septum (7)
- Octo (8)
- Novem (9)
- Decem (10)
The more interesting question to me has always been: Why are the months numbered wrong? Dec ember is month 12, nov ember is month 11, oct ober is month 10. There's an offset of 2 between the month name and the number it references.
Here for example is an image of a pre Julian calendar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roman-calendar.png
Among other things, you can also see another bizarre truth: the pre Julian calendar did not have a leap day, it had a leap month (more or less randomly inserted sometimes to delay elections). It's labeled INTER on the image.
The terms NON and EIDVS are the Nones and Ides of each month the latter of which I imagine Julius would have liked to reform out of the calendar all together. Hindsight.
Which reminds me of a not so useful poem:
In March, July, October, May,
The Ides are on the fifteenth day,
The Nones the seventh; but all besides
Have two days less for Nones and Ides.
True or not, it's finally given me the means to remember which months have how many days.
For centuries in the western world, the Christian church, which considered this to be in its purview, kept trying different calendar schemes to try to make a set of months, preferably equal, fit neatly into the year. There have been may solutions tried or proposed, and the history of this has a certain puzzle-like fascination, but it's not clear to me why people cared so much about this. Astronomical periods are OK,…
That's not really a fair description of adopting a pre-existing system and issuing a single patch after more than a millenium. Sure, lots of things have been discussed, but not much has actually been tried.
For centuries in the western world, the Christian church, which considered this to be in its purview, kept trying different calendar schemes to try to make a set of months, preferably equal, fit neatly into the year. There have been may solutions tried or proposed, and the history of this has a certain puzzle-like fascination, but it's not clear to me why people cared so much about this. Astronomical periods are OK,…
It's my understanding that the original basis for months was the lunar cycle, which is astronomical for common definitions of the word. Part of what makes picking a calendar difficult is that the ~29.5 day lunar month doesn't fit neatly into the ~365.25 day solar year. So we've ended up with succession of adjustments and fudge factors.
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
31 30 31 30 31 30 30 31 30 31 30 30 -- common year
31 30 31 30 31 30 30 31 30 31 30 31 -- leap year
- Leap month alternates between 30 and 31.
- Never have more than two consecutive months with the same day.
- Only time two consecutive months have the same number of days are Jun/Jul (30) and (Jan/Dec (31) or Nov/Dec (30)).
- Puts leap month at the end to avoid offsetting only part of the year.
- Any given 3-month span consists of either 91 or 92 days.
- Any given 6-month span consists of either 182 or 183 days, except for spans involving leap month and January, which have 184.
- First half (Jan-Jun) always consists of 183. Second half consists of 183 (leap) or 182 (common).
Who is Orvitz?
Ousted from Disney by Eisner in 1997, but was given a $100 million in stock severance - Roughly around the same time this mail was written.