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.
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.
So they considered it the ancestor of species, the mother of all of us. In... [+]
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... [+]
Zamora, late 10th century. On the banks of the Douro River and outside the city walls the church of Santiago de los Caballeros was built. The inside capitals of the church depict varied scenes with sexual content: an orgy, a naked woman holding the penis of a man… in the... [+]
Born 7 November 1924. A group of anarchists broke into Bera this morning to protest against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and to begin the revolution in the Spanish state.
Last October, the composition of the Central Board was announced between the displaced from Spain... [+]
A group of interdisciplinary researchers from the Free University of Berlin and the Zuse Institute have developed a complex mathematical model to better understand how Romanization spread in North Africa.
According to a study published in the journal Plos One, the model has... [+]
Washington (EE.UU. ), 1807. The US Constitution banned transatlantic slave trade. This does not mean that slavery has been abolished, but that the main source of the slaves has been interrupted. Thus, slave women became the only way to “produce” new slaves.
So in 1845, in... [+]
While working at a site in the Roman era of Normandy, several archaeology students have recently made a curious discovery: inside a clay pot they found a small glass jar, of which women used to bring perfume in the 19th century.
And inside the jar was a little papelite with a... [+]
Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States launched an atomic bomb causing tens of thousands of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although there are no precise figures, the most cautious estimates indicate that at least 210,000 people died at the end of that year. But in... [+]
Born 2 October 1968. A few months earlier, the student movement started on June 22 organized a rally in the Plaza de las Tres Cultura, in the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco unit of the city. The students gathered by the Mexican army and the paramilitary group Olympia Battalion were... [+]