Some Useful Facts About Year and Calendar System

1 .  The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calander

2. The Gregorian calendar was proposed by Aloysius Lilius, a physician from Naples, and adopted by Pope Gregory XIII in accordance with the instructions from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to correct for errors in the older Julian calendar

3. The Julian and later the Gregorian calendars were designed to reflect the motion of the earth around the sun.

4 . The Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years every 400 years

5 . Years before the birth of Christ are in English traditionally identified using the abbreviation BC

6 . Years after the birth of Christ are traditionally identified using the Latin abbreviation AD (“Anno Domini”, that is, “In the Year of the Lord”).

7. Origin   of each  month  in a Gregorian calendar January- Named after the god Janus February- Named after Februa, the purification festival. March- Named after the god Mars. April- It may come from the Latin word aperire (“to open”) May- Named after the goddess Maia or the god Maius. June- Named after the goddess Juno July- Named after Julius Caesar in 44 BC- Prior to that time its name wasQuintilis from the word quintus, fifth. August- Named after emperor Augustus in 8 BC. Prior to that time the name was Sextilis from the word sextus, sixth. September-  September. From the word septem means , seven October- From the word octo, means eight. November- From the word novem, means nine. December- From the word decem, means ten.

8. The International Organization for Standardi­zation, ISO, has published a standard on how to write dates, times, and time intervals. This standard is known as ISO 8601.

9. There are three basic formats: Calendar date, ordinal date, and week date A calendar date should be written as a 4-digit year number, followed by a 2-digit month number, followed by a 2-digit day number. Eg: 2012-01-01 An ordinal date should be written as a 4-digit year number, followed by a 3-digit number indicating the number of the day within the year 31st day of  December 2011  may be rewritten  as 2011-365

10. A week date should be written as a 4-digit year number, followed by a W, followed by a 2-digit 1953W317 or 1953-W31-7 2 August was the Sunday of week 31 of 1953.

11. Gregorian calendar, Method  400 years -------à  146,097 days------------à years of 365 or 366 days- counts days as the basic unit of time (400 years, 303 common years have 365 days and 97 leap years have 366 days) ,

12. From the 12th century until 1751 the legal year in England began on 25 March

13. England, Ireland and the British colonies changed the start of the year to 1 January in 1752

14. The calendar is strictly a solar calendar based on a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths

15.  The Gregorian calendar was first adopted in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain in 1582

16.   Following are  other calendars Mayan Calendars ,  The Julian  Calendar, The Roman  Calendar , The Chinese Calendar

17.   In the Julian calendar the relationship between the days of the week and the dates of the year is repeated in cycles of 28 years

18.   The Gregorian calendar this is still true for periods that do not cross years that are divisible by 100 but not by 400

19 In solar calendars such as the Gregorian, only days and years have physical significance: days are defined by the rotation of the Earth, and years by its orbit about the Sun. Months, decoupled from the phases of the Moon

20   In the Gregorian calendar, the tropical year is approximated as 365 97/400 days = 365.2425 days

Collected by  S Jayachandran  -  SA , Divisional office , Mavelikara-690101 Wish you  a happy  new  Year  to  All  readers .For Npfe mavelikara division