How people have counted days, months and years, from lunar tallies to the printable calendar.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
From the first printed calendars of the 1450s to farmers' almanacs, advertising wall calendars and today's printables, paper has always been the calendar's favorite home.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
Janus, Mars, Juno, two Roman rulers and a set of numbers that no longer match: the twelve month names tell the whole history of the calendar in miniature.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
The traditional Chinese calendar follows both the Moon and the Sun. Learn how leap months, the 24 solar terms and the 60-year cycle of animals keep it in balance.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
The ancient Maya ran several calendars at once: a 260-day sacred count, a 365-day year and a Long Count that measured thousands of years. Here is how they fit together.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
In October 1582 people in Rome went to bed on Thursday the 4th and woke on Friday the 15th. Here is why Pope Gregory XIII deleted ten days and how the world slowly followed.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
The Romans started with ten months and a winter with no dates at all. Politics, superstition and a very long year in 46 BC eventually gave us the Julian calendar.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
Why does a week have seven days? The answer runs through Babylonian astronomers, the Jewish Sabbath and the seven wandering lights of the ancient sky.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
The Egyptians gave the world the 365-day year. Their calendar was built around the Nile flood, the rising of the star Sirius and twelve months of exactly thirty days.
Calendar history · · 4 min read
Long before months had names, people counted time by the Moon. Notched bones, a row of pits in Scotland and the 29.5-day lunar cycle show how the very first calendars were born.
