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January 1st - this day

Writer's picture: Nicholas HodgsonNicholas Hodgson


Happy New Year to all you happy people!

Now that the clock has ticked over midnight in most of the world, I thought it would be fun to debut a new blog feature.

Looking at fascinating historical events which happened... today!

Now I can't promise to post one of these every day. But I'll try my best to keep them reasonably routine.

Starting with today.


January 1st.


The first day of the year.


Except that... it wasn't always.


Didn't expect that did you?


Well... if you were to travel back two thousand and sixty-nine years to the year 45 BCE, you'll find yourself experiencing New Years Day on January 1st for the very first time.

Thanks to a Roman fellow you might have heard of called Julius Caesar.



See, Caesar was the leader of Rome in 45 BCE, which means he was essentially the most powerful man in the world. And one of the few people who had the power and the ability to change the calendar.


And so he did.


In 45 BCE the Julian Calendar, consisting of a year of 365 days (366 once every four years) was established by edict and January 1st was officially made the first day of the year. January was chosen because it is named for the Roman God Janus - the God of Beginnings.

(I definitely won't make a joke about how if you remove one letter then he could also be a Roman God of endings... of a sort)


Prior to that - the Roman calendar had been 355 days because it followed a lunar cycle and as a result, the seasons happened at slightly different times each year.


But under the Julian Calendar system, which was quickly adopted by most of the civilised world (helps when Roman soldiers are occupying your part of the world), the year was lengthened to 365 days in order that the seasons matched up year to year.

It was a solar calendar.



Fun Fact: Because the previous calendars had thrown things so badly out of whack - it was decided to lengthen the year prior to 45 BCE (which of course is not how the Romans referred to the years - not knowing the impending birth of a Jewish kid with unclear parentage four decades hence was going to rewrite the calendars too). So 46 BCE actually had 455 days.

Lucky they didn't have Christmas in those days because waiting for it that year would have seemed so interminably long!


Fun Fact 2: The Julian Calendar was still slightly off. Because later calculations would determine that the Earth orbits the sun every 365.22 days rather than the 365.25 days that the leap year accounted for. It might not seem like a major different but over a couple of thousand years it makes a difference... and in the 16th Century Pope Gregory issued the Gregorian Calendar to adjust for the slightly wrong length of the year. By then the calendar was out by 11 days. The Gregorian Calendar is the one we use today.


Fun Fact 3: It took centuries to get all countries to adopt the Gregorian calendar. For instance in Russia, they only made the switch in the year 1918. Hence in 1918 the Russian calendar jumped straight from February 1st to February 14th. Which would be a shame if your birthday fell in the early half of Feb!


FFF (Final Fun Fact): Even when the Julian calendar was adopted, the months were still different to how we know them today. For a start there was only ten of them. And two of them had an extra few days added to make up for the change in length. It would take another century before the solution we know of - making twelve months instead of ten, was decided.


The two new months were named for the first Roman Emperor and for the Roman leader who had changed the calendar in the first place.

I bet you can guess which was which.

































That's right.

July for Julius Caesar

August for Emperor Augustus

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