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THE WORLD CALENDAR By OR. MARTIN W. FLECK, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico Man has tried many schemes for keeping acc(lUnt of time. The Journal of Calendar Reform mentions sixty-three different changes in the calendarbetween 7000 B. C. and 1934A. D, We think of the Ten Commandments as being very old, The Commandments are only about 3000 years old, Thus, the calendar is much older and, it must qe admitted, the calendar is also much more generally obser- ved. There are many different calendars in use in the world today, In fact, it is not even 1968 in all parts of the world, On the Jewish calendar it is 5729 and New Year's Day was last October; to the Mohammedans, it is 1387 and the year began in Octo1;>er;it is 2626 on the Japanese calendar and Jan- uary I is New Year; the Roman calendar says it is the:year 2720 and the year began on January 14 of our calendar; May 8 of our calendar was the beginnin~ of 2716 on the Babylonian calendar; and last March 21 marked the beginning of year 2280 on the Old Greek Calendar. On the title page of a magazine published in India was found these dates: February 13, 1936 (new style), January 31, 1936 (old style), shebat 20, 5696 (Jewish), Dhulkaada 20, 1354 (Moslem), seem to indicate that the particular magazine had regular readers who used at least six different types of calendars. Thus, you see, the subject of the calend~r is like a grapefriut in that there is much more to it than meets the eye. Today further changes are being urged for the calendar because it is still imperfect, As a mat- ter of fact, a perfect calendar is impossible, Any caleI)dar which we use must be a compromise which combines accuracy with convenience. The principle of keeping time is simple, All it requires is a wheel revolving on a fixed axis and a pair of marks which come opposite each other at regular intervals. The spinning earth is like the wheel on a fixed axis. On the surface of the earth is a mark, an imaginary mark but one which can be accurately located. Back about the sixth grade we learned that this mark was called the Prime Meridian. For the fixed mark, a star is used. Usually the star closest to us, the sun, is selected as the fixed mark. The interval required for the earth to turn once on its axis is called a day. A month is the name given to the interval required for the moon to go once around the earth. It was originally called a moonth, but in the evolution of the word one of the "o's" was lost. The time interval necessary for the earth to make a trip around the sun is called a year. A day is 24 hours in length. A lunar month has a length of 29 days, I 2 hours, 44 minutes and 3-1/3 seconds. It takes 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds for the earth to go once a- round the sun. Thus, it happens that these naturally determined time units are incommensurable. We have to make these units fit into our calendar as accurately as possible. Primitive man used the moon to mark periods of time. Because of the place the moon held in the religion and mythology of early man, we know that the moon was important to him. He held many superstitions concerning the moon, Early people believed that long exposure to the light of the full moon would induce a certain type of insanity. The word for this calamity was lunacy, which stems, of course, from "luna". We know today that the full moon does not cause mental delusions, ex- cepting when two young people of opposite sex and of the right age find themselves alone in the light of a full moon. It is true that modern man laughs at the silly superstitions of primitive people. And yet we are reported to have spent $200,000,000 in one year for the worthless advice of astrologers. An accurate record of the predictions of astrologers shows that they are right no more fre- quently than the rest of us, At no time have astrologers demonstrated that any part of their nefarious J -20-