postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

gentlemanbones:

higashikatajoshuu:

advanced-procrastination:

just-shower-thoughts:

I hate that SEPTember OCTOber NOVember and DECember aren’t the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months.

Whoever fucked this up should be stabbed

If I recall, they did used to be the corresponding months.  It was just when Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Augustus came into power, the months July(Julius) and August(Augustus) were added, thus throwing off the numbering of the calender.

Good news, though: whoever fucked it up did in fact get stabbed.

This is not correct actually… 

The traditional Roman calendar started with March*. July was originally called quintilis (fifth month), August sextilis (sixth month). Then there was September that was the seventh month, and so on.

Caesar introduced a new calendar but it did not add any months, the twelve months existed before then. (In fact, the fifth month was named after Julius Caesar after Caesar’s assassination, thanks to Mark Anthony. The sixth month was named after Augustus because Augustus fixed some things that were off about Caesar’s calendar.)

So July and August were always there, and only their names changed.

Throughout centuries, there was no universally acknowledged first day of the year that every political entity agreed on (some considered it the 1st of January, some Easter, some Christmas…). In the 1500s the French king made the 1st of January the first day of the year by law, other catholic states agreed, and of course protestant countries did not accept it. For instance, Great Britain used the 25th of March as first day of the year until the 1700s.

*The super hyper ancient roman calendar did not count days for the equivalent of two months in winter. Basically they started counting the days in March and stopped in December – there were 10 months and a hole in winter. Then the less ancient Roman calendar (according to the tradition, issued in 713 BC, then lasted until Julius Caesar’s reform) filled the hole with January and February, but the beginning of the year was still in March for seasonal reasons. Making the year start with the first day of March is known as ‘republican style’ (as in Roman republic). Apparently the Romans started using the first day of January in the II century AC, so completely unrelated to Julius Caesar.