|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Trivia ~ Man Made
~Time~
Why are there 60 minutes in an hour rather than 10 or 100?
(Sometimes you don't even get 60. Psychiatrists give you an "hour" that runs about 45-50 minutes. And everyone knows that college exam proctors use watches that cheat you out of at least 15 minutes every hour.)Still, why is 60 our reference point? How come our days never went decimal? Because the people of ancient Sumeria, the first to keep time, hated fractions. They used a numbering system based on 60 rather than 10 because 60 could be divided by 10 different whole numbers (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30), whereas 10 can only be divided by 2 and 5 without using fractions. We've kept their 60-minute hour, maybe because there's just never been enough hours in the day to change the faces of every clock in the world.
How long was an hour in the ancient world?
The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians divided the day into 24 hours, but their hours were not all the same length.
The day was divided into ten hours of light, two hours of twilight, and twelve hours of darkness. The timing of the hours in a given day depended on the position of the sun, so the hours' lengths changed with the seasons. It was not until the invention of mechanical clocks in the late Middle Ages that the hours were set to identical lengths.
Most of the earliest clocks used a moving shadow to indicate the passage of time. As early as 3500 BC, there were tall, thin stone obelisks whose shadows crossed the surface of a flat plaza over the course of the day. Those, and later sundials, were marked with varying scales of hours for the different seasons. A related device called the Merkhet was developed in Egypt around 600 BC to tell time at night by measuring the movements of stars.
We've all heard of public corruption. But stealing time itself?
The early Romans used the moon as a measure of the months. The result was a year that came up short… with only 355 days! To keep the seasons straight, the custom of adding extra weeks and months began. But corrupt public officials frequently extended time—stole it if you will—to prolong their terms in office! By 45 BC, the Roman year was a full 2 months off.
That's when Julius Caesar took charge. He changed to a solar calendar, making the year 365 days long. Caesar may have ended calendar confusion, but it would be nice if we could stick in an extra month every now and then… especially during vacation!
But in 1752 When England went to the Gregorian Calendar, September 3rd became September 13th, people in England riot, thinking the government stole 11 days of their lives
While others prattle on about the Ides of March, and how this month comes "in like a lion but . . .," etc, we should keep our eye on what really counts.
This is National Noodle Month, and March also encompasses National Procrastination and National Aardvark Weeks. So stop noodling and don't put it off for another day: take an aardvark to lunch!
Months that begin on Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th"
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time. It's 1/100 of a second.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
