Calendars or adjustment art
- Aberdeenshire (Scotland) 8,000 years ago. Humans built a megalithic monument composed of 12 stones that gathered the positions of the moon throughout the year. So this kind of lunar calendar is the oldest known calendar.
5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia they also used the lunar calendar, which divided the year into 12 cycles, but the Babylonians and Sumerians realized that it did not match the solar year, and every four years, they added a long month to sort of fix the gap.
The first solar calendar was invented by the Egyptians about 3,000 years ago. Egyptian astronomers and mathematicians calculated that the year was 365 days, and so at 12 months of 30 days they were added 5 days to complete the solar year. In addition to the ocean, the Mayans knew that the solar year lasts 365 days, and about 2,000 years ago they drew up very precise calendars, such as those they used in the Roman Republic.
a.C. Until the seventh century, they used a 10-month and 304 day schedule in Rome. Then, a further two months were added and the 355 days began to be used. When Julius Caesar travelled to Egypt, he saw that there they were using a much more precise timetable and, based on it, and adding visas for the first time, he established a more precise timetable that would be used in the West for 15 centuries.
But the Julian calendar had accumulated 10 days of lag by 1582. That is why Pope Gregory XIII commissioned and implemented a more detailed timetable. The physician and astronomer Luigi Lilio elaborated the new calendar and suggested gradually increasing the accumulated gap; instead of adding a single day in each biennium, if we add two, in 40 years the problem was already solved. But by then the pope was already dead and Gregory wanted immediate results. He decided to eat 10 days in a bite; the day after October 4, 1582 was October 15. Thus, the pope obtained at least one confession, known as the Gregorian calendar. But it also caused other problems.
Many European citizens and local authorities did not enthusiastically accept the Pontificia’s decision, as they believed they were being robbed of their time. Consequently, in some countries the new timetable was immediately implemented, but others did not update it until the twentieth century. This caused a series of vicissitudes in historical dates during the years and centuries after. For example, the writers Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare share the official date of death (23 April 1616), although they did not die the same day, and according to the Gregorian calendar of November of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.
And it also failed to definitively solve the problem of the mismatch, because the Gregorian year is 26 seconds longer than the astronomical year. This means that in 3323 years the one-day lag is accumulating. Astronomers have planned a far-off solution to correct this small margin: The year 4000 will not be bisiest and the year 8000 will not.
Vietnam, February 7, 1965. The U.S. Air Force first used napalma against the civilian population. It was not the first time that gelatinous gasoline was used. It began to be launched with bombs during World War II and, in Vietnam itself, it was used during the Indochina War in... [+]
Archaeologists have discovered more than 600 engraved stones at the Vasagård site in Denmark. According to the results of the data, dating back to 4,900 years ago, it is also known that a violent eruption of a volcano occurred in Alaska at that time. The effects of this... [+]
Japan, 8th century. In the middle of the Nara Era they began to use the term furoshiki, but until the Edo Era (XVII-XIX. the 20th century) did not spread. Furoshiki is the art of collecting objects in ovens, but its etymology makes its origin clear: furo means bath and shiki... [+]
In an Egyptian mummy of 3,300 years ago, traces of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the Justinian plague in the 6th century and the Black Plague in the 14th century, have just been found.
Experts until now believed that at that time the plague had spread only in... [+]
Greenland, the end of the 10th century. The first Scandinavian explorers and settlers arrived on the island. But by the 15th century these settlements had been abandoned and the original Inuit remained. But in 1721, the missionary Hans Egede organized an expedition and the... [+]
In 2017, Indonesia and the Netherlands signed an agreement to return the heritage stolen by the European country because of colonialism for three centuries. The Indonesian responsible for the return process, Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja, explained that this agreement "was important in... [+]
Greece 1975. The country began the year as a republic, three weeks earlier, in the referendum on 8 December 1974, after the citizens decided on the end of the monarchy.
A decade earlier, in 1964, when King Paul I died, his son Constantine took the throne at the age of 23.
But... [+]
Copenhagen, 18 December 1974 At 12 noon a ferry arrived at the port, from where a group of about 100 Santa Claus landed. They brought a gigantic geese with them. The idea was to make a kind of “Trojan Goose” and, upon reaching the city, to pull the white beard costumes... [+]
Tennessee (United States), 1820. The slave Nathan Green is born, known as Nearest Uncle or Nearest Uncle. We do not know exactly when he was born and, in general, we have very little data about him until 1863, when he achieved emancipation. We know that in the late 1850s Dan... [+]
New York, 1960. At a UN meeting, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister and UN ambassador Jaja Wachucu slept. Nigeria had just achieved independence on 1 October. Therefore, Wachuku became the first UN representative in Nigeria and had just taken office.
In contradiction to the... [+]
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered several cylinders with inscriptions at the present Syrian Reservoir, the Tell Umm-el Marra. Experts believe that the signs written in these pieces of clay can be alphabetical.
In the 15th century a. The cylinders have... [+]
London 1928. At the Victoria and Albert Museum there was a very special painting: in the painting there is a black man, with wig and Levite, surrounded by books and scientific instruments. Thus it was catalogued in the Museum: “Unique satirical portrait representing a failed... [+]
Ethiopia, 24 November 1974. Lucy's skeleton was found in Hadar, one of the oldest traces of human ancestors. The Australian hominid of Australopithecus afarensis is between 3.2 and 3.5 million years old.
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A group of archaeologists from the University of Berkeley, California, USA. That is, men didn't launch the lances to hunt mammoths and other great mammals. That was the most widespread hypothesis so far, the technique we've seen in movies, video games ...
But the study, published... [+]