The Calendar

- ■ ■ 1 1 1 111 hM a E i 8 1 ■ ' ] 111i i H8! 11 111']11 I' Tilll 1H i 111111 1111 .Hi! 1 CE73 A 4-3 fj 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/calendarOOadle The “Reason Why? Books THE CALENDAR Irving and Ruth Adler xvi* XVII • Xvim » X vim* X X hi * *x»|l|*. XXVII# **V|M. X X Villi* New York The John Day Company ROXBURV / The “Reason Why” Books by Irving and Ruth Adler AIR ATOMS AND MOLECULES COAL COMMUNICATION THE CALENDAR EVOLUTION FIBERS HEAT HOUSES INSECTS IRRIGATION: CHANGING DESERTS TO GARDENS LEARNING ABOUT STEEL: THROUGH THE STORY OF A NAIL MACHINES MAGNETS NUMBERS OLD AND NEW NUMERALS: NEW DRESSES FOR OLD NUMBERS OCEANS RIVERS SETS SHADOWS STORMS TASTE, TOUCH AND SMELL THE EARTH’S CRUST THINGS THAT SPIN TREE PRODUCTS WHY? A BOOK OF REASONS WHY AND HOW? A SECOND BOOK OF REASONS YOUR EARS YOUR EYES Copyright © 1967 by Irving and Ruth Adler All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher, The John Day Company, Inc., 62 West 45th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. Published on the same day in Canada by ~T Longmans Canada Limited. C £ 73 4 73 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 67-23865 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents Everyone Uses a Calendar 4 Why People Needed a Calendar 6 What Is a Calendar? 8 The Day 10 The Year 11 The Month 14 The Parts Won’t Fit 16 The Egyptian Calendar 18 The Babylonian Calendar 22 Other Ancient Calendars 24 Our Calendar s Great-grandfather 26 Naming the Months 28 The Year Gets Two More Months 29 The Romans Make More Changes 32 Julius Caesar Comes to the Rescue 33 Ten Days That Were Lost 36 The Seven-day Week 39 Naming the Days of the Week 40 A Calendar That Is Good for Fifty Years 44 Some Other Calendars That People Use Today 47 S M T i 2 i Everyone Uses a Calendar One year your birthday may fall on a Monday. Another year your birthday may fall on a Saturday. You have no trouble knowing when your birthday comes each year. You know this with the help of a calendar. Thanksgiving Day always falls on the fourth Thursday of November. The fourth Thursday might be any day from Novem¬ ber 22 through November 28. We have no trouble knowing when Thanksgiving Day comes each year. We know this with the help of a calendar. Farmers use a calendar to help them de¬ cide when to plant and harvest their 29 10 31 5 6 7 crops. Highway departments use a calen¬ dar to know when to take out their snow plows and when to store them again. Air¬ lines, steamship lines, bus lines and rail¬ roads all use a calendar to guide them in planning when airplanes, 14 steamships, buses and trains will leave and arrive. Banks and schools use a calendar to guide them in planning their work. This book will tell you what a calendar is. It will tell you about the earliest calen¬ 21 dars made by people a long time ago and about how the calendar we use