Watch

A watch is a personal portable timepiece.

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HISTORY OF WATCHES

Miniature sundials were the earliest form of portable timepieces. The 24-hour dial below was  marked in Roman numerals on the outer band and in Arabic numerals on the inner one.

Watches have been made ever since locksmith and watchmaker Peter Henlein from Nuremberg, Germany invented the mainspring as a means of driving a clock in around 1500. His invention made portable timepieces possible.

These first watches were made in Nuremberg and Augsburg, and were sometimes called Nuremberg Eggs.

The Watch 1505 was crafted by Peter Henlein during the year 1505. It is the oldest watch in the world that still works.

Like clocks the early watches needed a means of maintaining a constant speed as the mainspring ran down. The earliest means was the fusee (a cord wound round a conical barrel).

A pomander watch from 1530 once belonged to Philip Melanchthon

One of the earliest references to what we would perhaps now call a wristwatch was the new year gift received by Queen Elizabeth I from Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in 1571. It was described as an armed watch, having "in the closing thearof a clocke, and in the forepart of the same a faire lozengie djamond without a foyle, hanging thearat a rounde juell fully garnished with dyamondes and a perle pendaunt."

From the beginning, wristwatches were almost exclusively worn by women. The idea failed to catch on for men, who continued to use pocket watches until the early 20th century.

Although portable clocks appeared in the 16th century, pocket or 'fob' watches only became practicable in the late 17th century, with the advent of the coiled spring drive and balance-spring regulator. Many watches incorporated a repeating mechanism, striking the hours and quarter-hours.

By the 18th century the mechanical mechanism had been perfected by inventors such as Thomas Tompion and Thomas Earnshaw, but throughout the nineteenth century watches remained articles of value.

A mechanical watch movement

The oldest surviving wristwatch (then described as a bracelet watch) is one made in 1806 and given to Joséphine de Beauharnais.

Watches made the short journey from bosom to wrist during the 19th century, due in part to the craze among middle-class women for cycling. Their new, more convenient position made sense and they developed quickly.

The Albert is a short kind of watch named after Prince Albert (1819-1861), husband of the UK's Queen Victoria. Albert originated a fashion for wearing a watch chain across a waistcoat from one pocket hole to the other.

In 1850, at Roxbury, Massachusetts, David Davis, Edward Howard, and Aaron Lufkin Dennison formed a company whose revolutionary business plan was to manufacture the movement parts of watches so precisely that they would become fully interchangeable.

Davis, howard and Dennison's company relocated four years later to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American system of watch manufacturing.

Watches remained a luxury until 1868, when G. F. Rosskopf, in Switzerland, introduced cheap watches of simplified design for working men. Roskopf was able to present his watch at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1868 and won a Bronze Medal.

In 1870 Georges Roskopf introduced a second design with a setting mechanism; this watch cost 25 francs.

Wrist watches with analogue faces came into common use in the 1860s, but weren't considered manly, and were mainly worn by women. Many regarded them as a joke and fad.

During the early part of the 20th century, increasing miniaturization, mass production and the need for accurate time keeping for the military, led to the migration of the male watch from the pockets to the wrist.

The Parisian jeweller Cartier is credited with creating the first popular men's wristwatch in 1904 for Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont who found it hard to look at a pocket watch while flying. This square-faced watch became so popular it is still in production today in much the same form. Until then wrist clocks were thought of as a decorative item for women.

Wristwatches became essential items of battlefield equipment during World War I as the creeping barrage artillery tactic, developed during the war, required precise synchronization between the artillery gunners and the infantry advancing behind the barrage.

Early wrist watch by Waltham, worn by soldiers in World War I By Museumsfoto - Deutsches Uhrenmuseum

Rolex began trading under that name in 1915. Their first watches were made in London.
1921

Rolex created the first ever waterproof and dustproof wristwatch, the Oyster, in 1926. The watch featured a hermetically sealed case which provided optimal protection for the movement.

Self-winding watches, responding to movements of the wearer's wrist, first appeared in the early 1920s.

One of the earliest Mickey Mouse goods to go on sale was the Mickey Mouse wristwatch. Introduced in 1933, the watch originally retailed at $3.75 and sold at a pace of two million annually.

The Hamilton Watch Company introduced the first electric watch on January 3, 1957. This had no mainspring, the mechanism being kept in motion by the mutual attraction of a permanent magnet and an electromagnet, which pushed the balance wheel.

Electronic movements, also known as quartz movements, have few or no moving parts, except a quartz crystal which is made to vibrate by the piezoelectric effect. (An electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials such as crystals, in response to applied mechanical stress). The first quartz watch to be manufactured was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron, which hit the shelves on December 25, 1969.

Quartz movement of the Seiko Astron, 1969  By Museumsfoto - Deutsches Uhrenmuseum

Watches finally went digital in the 1970s when the Hamilton Company developed the Pulsar, which sported lights in place of hands.

The first LCD watches were marketed as early as 1972 in which all moving parts are dispensed with. The time measurement is done by a quartz crystal oscillator linked to digital counting and display circuits. The time is usually indicated by liquid crystal display (LCD).

A Pulsar LED quartz watch (1976) By Alison Cassidy

In 1999, Samsung launched the world's first watch phone, the SPH-WP10. It had 90-minutes of talk time with an integrated speaker and microphone.

FUN WATCH FACTS

In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10. This is because the 10:10 position is symmetrical, and the human brain tends to appreciate symmetry and orderliness. Also the 10:10 hands look “happy” due to the fact that the hands look like a smile.

Rolex is the largest single luxury watch brand with estimated revenues of around £1.75 billion.

A Swiss watchmaker created a series of 400 $10,000 watches that contain a strand of hair from Napoléon Bonaparte.

Wearing a Casio F-91W, a cheap digital watch sold around the world, was used as evidence to keep detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

NASA has special wristwatches that keep Mars time for employees working with the rovers.

Sources Europress Encyclopedia, The Independent

Time

Time is the continuous passing of existence, recorded by division into years, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

The Romans used daylight and darkness to determine time, so for them an hour was 45 minutes in the winter and 75 in the summer.

It wasn't until 525 when the monk Dionysius Exigous (Dennis the Little) devised a new calendar originating from Christ’s birth, which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Julius Caesar, that some in the west began recording time from the life of Jesus.

The Malaysian phrase for the time it takes to eat a banana is "pisan zapra" and it was a measure of time used before clocks were invented.

The phrase "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" and comes from a time when people had to specify their time came from a clock instead of a sundial or other device.

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During the American Revolutionary War, many soldiers, including George Washington, carried a portable sundial to tell the time. 

In 1862 Adolphe Nicole of Switzerland patented the chronograph -- a timepiece that allows for split-second timing of sporting events. 

On February 8, 1879 Scottish-Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming first proposed the dividing the world into 24 time zones at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute. This made him the father of world standard time.

American times zones were created by railroad officials in 1883. The underlying cause of confusion was simply that the United States had no time standard. Each town or city would keep its own solar time, setting clocks so noon was when the sun was directly overhead.

Greenwich, in London, England was established as Universal Time meridian of longitude in 1884.

Official Standard Time Zones in the world. Wikipedia

From 1986, the term Greenwich Mean Time was replaced by UTC. However the Greenwich meridian remains that from which all longitudes are measured, and the world's standard time zones are calculated from it, each hour corresponding to 15° longitude.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips" in 1924.

Greenwich clock. By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

Unix time is a system for describing a point in time, defined as an approximation of the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on January 1, 1970. At 23:31:30 on February 13, 2009 the Unix system time number reached 1234567890 seconds. Parties and other celebrations were held around the world, among various technical subcultures, to celebrate 1234567890 day.

The invention in 1955 of the caesium atomic clock has led to the replacement of older and purely astronomical time standards, for most practical purposes, by newer time standards based wholly or partly on atomic time.

TIME MEASUREMENT 

The Babylonians created the 7 day week because there are seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye (The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).

Formerly measurement of time on Earth was based on our planet's rotation on its axis, but this was found to be irregular. Therefore, the second, the standard SI unit of time, was redefined in terms of Earth's annual orbit of the Sun by the International Committee of Weights and Measures in 1956.

A pendulum-governed escapement of a clock, ticking every second

A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A second is called a second because it's the result of the second division of an hour by 60, the fist division being a minute.

The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".

A moment is a medieval unit of time, which corresponded to approximately 90 modern seconds.

A zeptosecond, a trillionth of a billionth of a second, is the smallest division of time that has been observed.

The word 'fortnight' is a contraction of 'fourteen-nights'.

FUN TIME FACTS

Someone traveling at the speed of light could travel forever because they wouldn't experience time at all.

There is an official world record for time traveling. It's held by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days total in orbit around Earth. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, this would mean Krikalev effectively has gained 22.68 milliseconds of lifetime on his journeys to space.

If we put a giant mirror ten light years away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope theoretically we'd see 20 years into the past.

Because the earth is slowing down, today is about 0.00000002 seconds longer than yesterday.

A.M. stands for “Ante Meridiem,” which is Latin for “Before Midday”; P.M. stands for “Post Meridiem,” which is Latin for “After Midday.”

Amazonian speakers of Nheengatú use gestures to describe time, pointing at where the sun would be in the sky to say a specific time of day.

Since 1405 until the present day without interruption, the Swiss city of Lausanne has maintained a lookout in the Cathedral bell tower. The lookout announces the time by yelling the hour from 10 pm to 2 am, 365 days a year. The lookout cries the hour to each cardinal direction.

Dogs can tell time by scent. They can smell different times of the day, and how long you've been gone by how much your (owner's) aroma has dissipated since you've left.

Season

INTRODUCTION

A season is a particular climatic type, at any place, associated with a particular time of the year.

The change and seasons is mainly due to the change in attitude of the Earth's axis in relation to the sun, and hence the position of the sun in the sky at a particular place. 


During May, June, and July, the Northern Hemisphere is exposed to more direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the Sun. The same is true of the Southern Hemisphere in November, December, and January.

The differences between the seasons are more marked inland than near the coast, where the sea has a moderating effect on the temperatures.

Illumination of the earth at each change of astronomical season

In temperate latitudes four seasons are recognized: spring, summer, autumn (fall), and winter. The northern temperate latitudes have summer when southern temperate latitudes have winter, and vice versa.

Tropical regions have two seasons - wet and dry. The belt of rain associated with a convergence of trade winds moves north and south with the Sun, as do the dry conditions associated with the belts of high pressure near the tropics.

Monsoon areas around the Indian Ocean have three seasons - the cold, the hot and the rainy - because of the influence of the oceanic water body surrounded at its north end by Asia.

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India's Hindu calendar has six seasons: spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, pre-winter and winter.

Ancient Japan had 72 seasons, lasting around five days each.

The spring and autumn equinoxes are the only days when the Sun rises directly due east and sets due west in the northern hemisphere.

THE SEASONS

The earth's “axial tilt” is 23.5 degrees. Uranus, by comparison, spins at 98 degrees.  Earth’s four seasons are comparatively mild and, thanks to our proximity to the sun, relatively brief.  Much of Uranus, by contrast, spends winters in permanent darkness and summers under constant sunlight. And those seasons last decades. 

Commonly we think of March, April and May as the spring months, but astronomically, spring officially begins on the spring equinox.

We have used the word 'spring' for the season since the 16th century. Before that it was used for centuries to apply to the source of a river.

Before we called it spring this season was known as Lent or Lenten.

Persephone was the Greek goddess of spring. She spent winters as Queen of the Underworld but returned in spring to preside over rebirth.

The earliest known use of the term 'spring-cleaning' was in 1857.

Every year, spring gets 30 seconds to one minute shorter in the Northern Hemisphere.

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The word 'Summer' comes from the Old English name for the season "sumor."

Until the 17th century, autumn (or fall) was most often referred to as “harvest”.

In Greek myth, autumn was a sign of the grief of harvest goddess Demeter at her daughter Persephone being abducted to the Underworld.

Autumn” and “column” are the only common words in English ending in -umn.

Winter’ comes from the Germanic ‘Wintar’ which itself comes from the root ‘Wed’  meaning 'wet' or water'.

During winter the sun is low in the sky has less heating effect because of the oblique angle of incidence and because of sunlight as further to travel through the atmosphere

Sources Daily Express, Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Rolex

Rolex is the largest single luxury watch brand with estimated revenues of around £1.75 billion. The company was founded by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in London, England in 1905 as Wilsdorf and Davis.

Rolex began trading under that name on November 15, 1915. The name Rolex is a contradiction of 'horological excellence', the 'rol' taken from the first word, and the 'ex' from the second.

The company moved its base of operations to Geneva, Switzerland in 1919 due to English wartime taxes levied on luxury imports as well as to export duties on the silver and gold used for the watch cases driving costs too high.

Rolex created the first ever waterproof and dustproof wristwatch, the Oyster, in 1926. The watch featured a hermetically sealed case which provided optimal protection for the movement.

Rolex replaced (for free) all watches seized by the Germans from shot down allied pilots in World War 2. It was also Rolex's policy to give watches to British prisoners during the war and allow them to pay for them after they had been released. One of these watches was sold for more than $65,000 in Sydney, Australia in 2006.

The Rolex Datejust was introduced in 1945. It was the first watch with an automatically changing date on the dial.

Rolex Datejust on Jubilee bracelet with Turn-o-graph bezel. By Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 

The GMT Master was launched in 1954. Designed in collaboration with Pan American Airways for use by their pilots and navigators, it was the first watch to show time zones.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay wore Rolex Oysters during their 1953 Everest expedition.

On July 28, 1996, a man’s body washed up on a trawler in the UK seas. There was no identification on the body except a 25-year-old Rolex Oyster on his wrist. As Rolex maintains such meticulous service records, they were able to ID the victim and ultimately the murderer.

The most expensive Rolex ever produced by the company's factory was the GMT Ice reference 116769TBR with a retail price of US$485,350.

Rolex has three watch lines: Oyster Perpetual, Professional and Cellini.

Rolex watches are frequently counterfeited, often illegally sold on the street and online.  O. J. Simpson wore a counterfeit watch during his murder trial.

Counterfeit Rolex watches displayed in Arlington, Virginia, USA (2008)

Dominos Pizza - the world’s second-largest pizza chain - awards all store managers who achieve $25,000 in sales a week for four consecutive weeks with a customized Rolex watch, in a contest called "The Rolex Challenge".

Source Daily Mail

Month

The word month comes from an old term for the moon, a month being approximately the length of one orbit of the moon around the Earth.

No word in the English language rhymes with month.

Any month that starts on a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th in it.

The first letter of each month from July through November spells JASON.

The poem to remember the days of the month "Thirty days has September", taught to children to this day, is actually at least a 600-year-old poem, with the earliest known published forms written in Old English and Latin, from 1425 and 1488, respectively.

Here is a list of songs with months in the title.

JANUARY 

The Romans named January after Janus, the God of gateways. Janus had two heads so he could look in both directions, back at the old year and forward towards the new year, at the same time.

Statue of the Roman God Janus.

January and February were the last two  months to be added to the Roman calendar, as the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period.

Although March was originally the first month, January became the new first month because that was when the Romans chose the new consuls.

The Anglo-Saxons called January "Wulfmonath" as it was the month hungry wolves came scavenging at people's doors.

January is the coldest month in the Northern Hemisphere, and the warmest in the Southern Hemisphere.

The first recorded reference to a "January sale" in the UK was in 1865.

FEBRUARY 

The name of February came from the Latin "februa," a means of cleansing, which referred to the pre-spring purification rituals.

Before Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in 46BC, February was the only month with an even number of days. All the rest had 29 or 31. Odd numbers were seen as luckier.

Even when Caesar introduced leap years, the last day of February was the 28th. The extra day was achieved by counting February 24 twice.

The Anglo-Saxons called February Solmonath meaning month of mud or Kale-monath meaning kale or cabbage month.

The only time that February is mentioned in a Shakespeare play is when Don Pedro says in Much Ado About Nothing: "You have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness."

The only time a month begins and ends on the same day of the week is February in a leap year.

February 1900 Japanese calendar showing that 1900 was not a leap year

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have had a full moon.

MARCH 

The month of March comes from the Latin “Martius,” named for Mars, the Roman god of war who was also regarded as a guardian of agriculture and an ancestor of the Roman people. His month was the beginning of the season for both farming and warfare.

Colossal statue of Mars (Pyrrhus) - User:Jean-Pol GRANDMONT (2011), Wikipedia Commons

March was the first month of the year until the Gregorian calendar began to be used in 1752.

March was called Hlyda or Lide in Old English, which is a reference to the loud winds.

March is the only month with three consecutive consonants in its name in English.

APRIL 

It is unclear as to where April got its name. A common theory is that it comes from the Latin word "aperire", meaning "to open", referring to flowers opening in spring. Another theory is that the name could come from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

In Old English the month of April was called Eastermonad.

In Western Christianity, there is a bigger likelihood of Easter falling in April than in March.

Eggs celebrating Easter,

In the English language, April is the first of three months in-a-row, along with May and June, that is also a female given name.

MAY 

The Romans named the month of May after Maia, a goddess of growth and fertility.

Vulcan and Maia (1585) by Bartholomäus Spranger

In Old English, May was called Thrimilce (three milks), the season when a cow could be milked three times between sunrise and evening.

In many north hemisphere countries May Day, which is on May 1, is celebrated as the beginning of summer.  It is a traditional spring holiday in many European cultures. Dancing, singing, and cake are usually part of the festivities.

Traditional English May Day rites and celebrations include crowning a May Queen and celebrations involving a maypole, around which dancers often circle with ribbons. Historically, Morris dancing has been linked to May Day celebrations.

Labor Day is celebrated on a different day in most countries. Many choose May Day as their day to honor working people. Socialists, communists and other like-minded people celebrate it as International Workers' Day.

In any year, no other month begins or ends on the same day as May.

No US President has ever died during the month of May. James Buchanan narrowly avoided doing so, dying on the morning of June 1, 1868.

JUNE

June, Leandro Bassano

June is named for the Roman goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter.

Juno was the Roman goddess of marriage. Because of this, getting married in June was thought to be lucky.

June begins on a different day of the week each year.

Splitting the year into four seasons of three full months apiece based on the Gregorian calendar, June 1st is the meteorological first day of summer.

Billy Connolly: "There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter."

JULY 

The month of July was named after Julius Caesar by a decision of the Roman Senate in 44 BC as July was the month of his birth. Before that, it had been known as Quintilis (fifth) as it was the fifth month in the old calendar.

The Tusculum portrait, of Caesar. By Gautier Poupeau from Paris, France - Wikipedis Commons

Until the 18th century, the word July in English had the stress on the first syllable and rhymed with duly or truly.

July 1 is not the mid-point of the year. The exact halfway point comes at 1pm BST on July 3 in a non-leap year.

No month ends on the same day of the week as July unless it is a leap year, when January does so.

AUGUST

August is named after Augustus, first Emperor of Rome who chose it as it was the month of his greatest triumphs. He died in August AD 14.

The statue known as the Augustus of Prima Porta, 1st century. By Till Niermann - Wikipedia Commons

Until 8 BC, the Romans called August 'Sextilis' as it was the sixth month of their year.

The Anglo-Saxons called August by the name Weod-monath (weed month) as it is the month when weeds grow most rapidly.

August' is the only name of a month that is used as a male name. April, May and June are all  female names.

SEPTEMBER 

September mean 'seven' in Latin as it was originally the seventh month in the Julian calendar, created by Julius Caesar

September is the only month with the same number of letters in its name in English as the number of the month. It is the ninth month and has nine letters.

The Anglo-Saxons called September 'Gerst monath', meaning 'barley month'.

Barley field

In any year, no other month ends on the same day as September.

In 1752 September had only 19 days in the UK as the country moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

On an average September day more babies are born in the US than on a day in any other month.

OCTOBER 

The name "October" comes from the Latin oct for "eight". It was the eighth month of the year before January and February were added to the beginning of the year.

The Anglo-Saxons called October Winterfylleth meaning the 'fullness' (not dirtiness) of winter. It signified the beginning of winter.

The Welsh for October is Hydref (originally Hyddfref), a word signifying the distinctive sound uttered by cattle.

In Catholic Europe in 1582, October had only 21 days. When countries changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the days from 5-14 October were omitted.

NOVEMBER 

The name 'November' comes from the Latin for nine (novem), as it was the ninth month of the Roman calendar.

In Old English November was 'Windmonath' (wind month) or 'Blotmonath' (blood or sacrifice month) referring to the time of slaughter of farm animals.

The Dutch called it 'slachtmaand' (slaughter month); in Welsh it is 'Tachwedd', also meaning 'slaughter'.

November is the only month used to represent a letter in the phonetic alphabet.

The first Sunday of Advent is slightly more likely to fall in November than in December.

Advent wreath. By Micha L. Rieser - Wikipedia Commons

In any given year, November starts on the same day of the week as March and ends on the same day of the week as August.

DECEMBER 

The name of the month coming from the Latin decem for "ten", it was the tenth month of the year before January and February were added to the Roman calendar.

At the North Pole, the Sun does not rise in December; at the South Pole, it does not set.

More people suffer fatal falls in December in the UK than any other month.

People born in December have the best statistical chance of living past 100 years old.

Source Daily Express

Day

A day is a unit of time defined as the length of time it takes for one complete rotation of the Earth on its axis. This period of time is approximately 24 hours. The concept of a day is used as a standard unit of time measurement in various contexts, such as in calendars, astronomy, and daily life. In most cultures, a day is typically divided into 24 equal parts called hours, and each hour is further divided into 60 minutes and each minute is divided into 60 seconds.

Earth's rotation imaged by Deep Space Climate Observatory, showing axis tilt

Our weeks have seven days because the ancient Babylonians had one day for each known celestial body: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

Ancient Egyptians had 12 months of exactly 30 days each, with five epagomenal days to bring the total to 365. Each month was divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades.

Monday is the only day of the week that is an anagram of a single word: ‘dynamo’.

The day of the week Tuesday is named after Tiw, the Norse god of single combat, victory and glory. Tiw is associated with Mars, the Roman god of war, which is why the day is Mardi in French, Martes in Spanish and Martedi in Italian.

The actress Tuesday Weld was born on a Friday.

According to a survey in 2002, Tuesday is the most productive day of the week in the workplace.

Wednesday is named after Woden, the most important God in the German pantheon, often identified with the Norse God Odin.  Woden and Odin are also associated with the Roman god Mercury, which is why the French call Wednesday Mercredi and the Spanish Miercoles.

The Japanese for Wednesday translates as ‘Water day’ as the planet Mercury was known as the ‘water star’.

In German, Wednesday (Mittwoch) is the only day of the week not ending in ‘tag’ (day).

The Wednesday before Easter is known as ‘Spy Wednesday’ referring to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.

According to an extensive study of over 300 million events, April 11, 1954 was the most boring and uneventful day of the 20th century. The study, conducted by William Tunstall-Pedoe, a Cambridge computer scientist, found that no major events occurred on that day, and that no notable people were born or died. The only significant event that took place was a general election in Belgium.

Tunstall-Pedoe created a search engine called True Knowledge, which contains over 300 million individual facts. He used this search engine to scan through each day in the 20th century, looking for days with no major events. He found that April 11, 1954 was the day with the fewest major events.

In the Ancient Roman Empire, there were 24 hours in the day. The 24 hours were divided into equal parts 12-Light hours and 12-Dark hours. Therefore the length of an hour would change based on the seasons.

February 6, AD 60 is the earliest date for which the day of the week is known. A graffito in Pompeii identifies this day as a dies Solis (Sunday). In modern reckoning, this date would have been a Wednesday.

46 BC was 445 days long and is the longest year in human history. The year marked the change from the pre-Julian Roman calendar to the Julian calendar. 

Submarine crews do not use a typical 24 hour day, one day lasts 18 hours.

A day on the Moon is so slow that you could outrun the sun in a car and stay in perpetual sunlight.

Here is a list of songs with days of the week in the title

Source Daily Express

Date

Prior to the introduction of the BC/AD system, people did not count years in relation to the birth of Christ. The concept of numbering years Before Christ was developed centuries later. In earlier times, civilizations marked years according to local or regnal systems — that is, by the reigns of rulers, significant events, or city foundations.

If we take what we now call 25 BC, here’s how it would have been referred to in different parts of the world:

In Rome:

The Romans didn’t speak of “25 BC.” Instead, they identified years by the names of the two sitting consuls (Rome’s chief magistrates). Thus, 25 BC was “the year of the consulship of Augustus and Statilius Taurus.” Alternatively, Romans might count from the legendary founding of the city (Ab urbe condita), traditionally dated to 753 BC, making 25 BC roughly year 728 AUC.

In Greece and the Hellenistic world:

Years were dated by Olympiads (four-year cycles beginning in 776 BC) or by the reigns of Hellenistic monarchs such as the Seleucid or Ptolemaic kings.

In Egypt:

Dates were recorded by the regnal year of the reigning pharaoh or ruler — for instance, “in the seventh year of the reign of Ptolemy XII.”

In Judea:

Likewise, years were marked as “in the Xth year of King Herod” or “in the Yth year of the rule of the Roman governor.”

In the first few centuries after Christ, each country or religion continued to have its own year-numbering system, sometimes dating back to the supposed year of the creation in their beliefs but more often relating to the number of years a particular emperor or king had been reigning. When the monarch, died, a new era began at year one.

In the second century some bishops in the Eastern Roman Empire began counting the years from the birth of Christ.

It wasn't until 525 when the monk Dionysius Exigous (Dennis the Little) (c470-c545) devised a new calendar originating from Christ’s birth, which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Caesar, that some in the west began recording time from the life of Christ. Unfortunately he made a mistake in his calculations, and it is now felt the birth of Christ was around 4BC.

The use of Anno Domini was popularized in Western Europe only after it was used by Bede to date the events in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In particular the endorsement of this method by the scholar Alcuin, a member of Charlemagne’s court at the end of the eighth century was a principal factor in the system’s prevalence up to current times.

In 1565 King Charles IX of France issued a decree that fixeed the beginning of the year at 1st January instead of 1st April. This innovation was not very popular and on 1st April both as a protest and as a joke people sent sweetmeats in the shape of fish to one another as mock New Year’s gifts. Fish was chosen as the Sun happened to be in the constellation of Pisces.

Pope Gregory XIII introduced the modern calendar in 1582. In attempting to eliminate the difference between the date of the birth of Christ as it was then estimated and the errors that have been made and repeated ever since, the Pontiff removed all the days between the 4th and 15th of October of the current year. Roman Catholic countries quickly adopted the new system, but many people were upset as they feel the papacy has taken away 11 days of their lives.

In 1712, February had 30 days in Sweden as it changed from the Julian to Gregorian calendar.

When the United States bought Alaska from Russia, due to a combination of the International Date Line moving and switching to the Gregorian calendar, the days from October 8th through 17th in 1867 never occurred in Alaska.

UK prime ministers Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain both died on November 9th in 1937 and 1940 respectively.

According to Cambridge Computer Scientists who collected over 300 million facts, the most boring day in history was April 11th, 1954.

Contrary to popular belief, the first day of the 21st Century was Monday, January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000. In the sixth century, a Christian scholar named Dionysius Exiguus invented the AD numbering system, in which 1 A.D. was supposed to indicate the year of Jesus’ birth. There was no year zero, so the beginning of the first decade of the Anno Domini Era started with 1 and ended with 10.

The nation of Samoa observed the same time as the Samoa Time Zone until it moved across the International Date Line at the end of December 29, 2011 making it 24 hours (25 hours in summer) ahead of American Samoa. As a result, the date of December 30, 2011 was omitted in Samoa.

A Samoan family.

There is an international standard for writing the date called ISO 8601, that uses the format YYYY-MM-DD. Although it has been around since 1988, very few countries actually use it.

November 9, 2013 was the last date until March 1, 2105 with three consecutive odd numbers. And December 12, 2014 was the last with three consecutive even numbers until April 2nd, 2106.

The dates 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12 all fall on the same day of the week during any one year.

2013 was the first year since 1432 that is a rearrangement of four consecutive numbers.

February 2, 2020, was a special date, known as a palindrome date, because it reads the same forward and backward regardless of the date format used (e.g., DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY). Interestingly, this phenomenon wasn't exclusive to just one region; it was a universal palindrome date applicable for everyone around the world!

Before February 2, 2020, the last time a universal palindrome date occurred was quite a while back, on November 11th, 1111 (11-11-1111), a gap of 909 years.

Looking ahead, the next universal palindrome date won't be for another few decades, specifically on December 12th, 2121 (12-12-2121). So, we'll have to wait a while to witness this interesting date format phenomenon again!

Submarine crews do not use a typical 24 hour day, one day lasts 18 hours.

Source Onthatday

Clock

The Egyptians invented the water-clock around 1500 BC. The device, called a clepsydra, consisted of a pot with a hole in the bottom. As it always took the same time to empty the vessel, people could easily tell the hour of day and night by merely watching the water's level in the bowl.

As the new clock spread all over the Mediterranean world, the design gradually improved. A floater was put on the water, now gathered in a vessel beneath, and linked to a gear which moved a pointer that turned in a circle. Behind this "hand" was placed a dial marked off all around and at regular intervals with the old sundial's figures from 1 to 12.

The hour glass was invented about the year 250 BC, replacing water with pure, dry sand. The quantity passing through a narrow neck between two bulbs determined the time.

It is not known for what purpose the hour glass was first devised. Some assert that the Roman army first introduced it to measure "watches" in the night.

The Benedictines are often credited with inventing the mechanical clock, but the claim is unproven. The Rule of St. Benedict (c. 530) set prayer at fixed hours of the day and night, which gave monasteries a practical need for reliable timekeeping. The tenth-century scholar Gerbert of Aurillac, a Benedictine-trained monk who became Pope Sylvester II, is said to have built a clock at Magdeburg around 996, but the device was probably not a mechanical clock, since the verge and foliot escapement is not known before the 13th century.

A monk at Chartres, skilled in glass-blowing, is credited with having created the hour glass' final shape in the 8th century AD.

The earliest known mechanical clock was built in China in 725.

The time on the earliest clocks could be heard and not seen, as instead of clock faces, they marked the passing of time with bells. Indeed the word "clock" comes from the Latin clocca (bell).

It was in Norwich, England, in 1273 that we read of the first mechanical clock in Europe.

The earliest mechanical clock was driven by falling weights attached to gear trains. Because it was regulated by friction, it was extremely inaccurate, by as much as two hours a day.

The earliest medieval European clockmakers were Christian monks.

The astronomical clock of St. Albans Abbey

It is now believed that the earliest mechanized time-keepers were invented specifically to help people in saying their prayers.

The hourglass is only 700 years old, and came into use at almost exactly the same time as the first European mechanical clocks.

During the Middle Ages, the hour glass was used to time tournaments and helped housewives in boiling their eggs. Congregations were said to restrict the time of their parson's sermon by placing a sand clock conspicuously on the pulpit.

The first known public clock appeared on the Viscount of Milan's palace in 1335.

Around the same time Richard of Wallingford mounted a huge device on the church at St Albans that could not only tell you what hour and minute it was, but also the state of tides at London Bridge.

The Prague astronomical clock, installed in 1410, is the world's oldest astronomical clock still in operation.

During his student days Galileo Galilei's observation of a swinging lamp in Pisa Cathedral led him to discover the uniformity of the Pendulum. The Italian's work enabled his friend, the Dutch Scientist, Christiaan Huygens, to construct the first pendulum clock in 1656.

Christiaan Huygens' invention of the pendulum clock allowed everyone from traders to farmers and military commanders to know precisely what the time was.

Until 1670 clocks had short pendulums and were hung on the wall. Then William Clements invented the longer pendulum and the grandfather clock came into being.

There was only one pointer, the hour hand, on the first clocks made in the fourteenth century. The minute and seconds hands were added in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Sundial cannons were used by European royalty in the 18th century. The device incorporated a cannon with a fuse that was lit by an overhanging lens, concentrating the rays of the sun, and causing the cannon to fire at noon, signifying the time for their midday meal.

Simon Willard (1753-1848) established his clock factory in Roxbury, Massachusetts about 1778. He would turn out over 5,000 timepieces by the time he retired in 1839.

Willard patented the "Willard Patent Timepiece" (1802), still familiar as the banjo wall clock, and an alarm clock (1819).

The name grandfather clock was adopted after the song “Grandfather's Clock, ” written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work, became popular.

      Dresden Clock

                                                           
In 1929 a clock driven by a quartz crystal oscillator was developed as a scientific time-measuring device.

Daniel Biasone, founding owner of the National Basketball League's Syracuse Nationals, invented the 24-second shot clock in 1954.

London's Big Ben is the biggest four-faced, chiming clock in the world.

Putting Big Ben’s hands forwards or back in spring or autumn, plus a maintenance check, takes 16 hours. On the same weekend, 2,000 other clocks in the Palace of Westminster must be changed.

The Tower of Independence clock on the back of a U.S. $100 dollar bill shows the time as 4:10.

In almost all commercial and print advertisements, clocks and watches read 10:10

In Pulp Fiction all the clocks on the wall in the pawn shop are set to 4:20. The significance of the time 4:20 is that it is slang for smoking marijuana.

A clock's hands overlap 11 times in 12 hours, or 22 times in one day.

Modern clocks are actually more consistent than Earth's orbit around the Sun, which can vary by several milliseconds a year.

The reason clocks run clockwise is because that's the way shadows move across a sundial in the northern hemisphere. The first clocks were designed that way because people wee just used to it.

In an attempt to recover their cultural identity, Bolivians installed an anti-clockwise clock in their Congress building.

Sources Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc,  The Independent 

Calendar

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begun on August 11, 3114 BC.

All Mesoamerican cultures used a 260-day ritual calendar that had no confirmed correlation to astronomical or agricultural cycles. These were used in combination with a separate 365-day calendar to create a 52-year cycle known as a calendar round.

Image of an ancient Mexican calendar

The Ancient Egyptians used 12 months of exactly 30 days, with 5 days of festivities at the end to add up to 365. However, this calendar didn't include a leap day every four years like we have now, so over time it drifted out of sync with the solar year. Despite that, it was remarkably accurate for its time and used for administrative and religious purposes.

The Babylonians created the 7 day week because there are 7 celestial bodies visible to the naked eye (The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).

The ancient Greek calendar was based on the Olympiad, the four-year period between the Olympic games.

The original ancient Roman calendar began in March and ended in December and totaled 304 days. January and February were not given names. Around 713 BC, the semi-mythical successor of Romulus, King Numa Pompilius, is supposed to have added the months of January and February, allowing the calendar to equal a standard lunar year (354 days).

46 BC was the longest year in human history at 455 days. The year marked the change from the pre-Julian Roman calendar to the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar added two extra leap months to re calibrate the calendar in preparation for his calendar reform, which went into effect in 45 BC

When the Julian calendar took effect as the civil calendar of the Roman Empire, it established January 1 as the new date of the new year.

Ukrainian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, created the modern day Christian calendar. His calendar originated from Christ's birth which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Caesar. He made a mistake in his calculations, and it is now believed the birth of Christ was around 4BC. 

The Sun Stone, or Aztec calendar stone, was carved some time early in the sixteenth century. Shortly after the Spanish conquest, the monolithic sculpture was buried in the main square of Mexico City. It was rediscovered on December 17, 1790 during repairs on the Mexico City Cathedral.

Aztec Sun Stone, at National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Mexico. By Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata

The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. It was implemented in Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain on October 4, 1582, the day being followed directly by October 15.

Two centuries later, the Gregorian calendar was adopted by Great Britain and the English colonies on September 14, 1752, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2nd).

March was the first month of the year until the Gregorian calendar began to be used. This meant that March 25th was the official New Year's Day in the UK and US until they switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

The Gregorian calendar isn't perfect—its dates become one day off from Earth's seasons every 3,216 years.

According to tradition, the Advent calendar was created in the 19th century by a Munich housewife who tired of having to answer endlessly when Christmas would come. The first commercial calendars were printed in Germany in 1851.

In 1908 the Russian team turned up 12 days late to the London Olympics because they were still using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar.

Turkmenistan's dictator Saparmurat Niyazov renamed all the calendar months in 2012. Among other changes, January was renamed after himself and April was given his mother's name.