Calendar Factory Fired Me For Taking a Day Off 2 Quiz

Answer: Chamaco

Chamaco is an affectionate Spanish term for a little boy or kid, used in Mexico and Central America, derived from the word "chan maák" meaning "small person" in the original Yucatec Mayan language.

The Mayan calendar dates back to at least the 5th century BC, and by 900 AD had been tweaked into a complex, highly accurate calendar, even more accurate than the modern Gregorian calendar used today. While the Gregorian calendar gains three days every 10,000 years, the Mayan calendar loses just two days in 10,000 years.

Amongst the main calendars used by the Mayans, the Tzolk'in calendar used a 260-day sacred cycle of 20 named days, combined with 13 numbers, creating 260 unique date combinations. The Haab' calendar was a 365-day solar year with 18 months of 20 days each, with a 5-day period called Wayeb' at the end of the year, which was considered an unlucky time. The Calendar Round was a 52-year cycle that combined the Tzolk'in and the Haab'. It was similar to our concept of a "century" in that a specific Calendar Round date wouldn't repeat for 18,980 days.

Answer: The Mayan Long Count Calendar (c. 1000 BC - AD 900)

The Mayan Long Count Calendar never was forecasting the "end of the world" - it was simply marking the end of a cycle, like a car's odometer rolling over. The famous "Mayan apocalypse" idea came from a misinterpretation of what the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun meant. The calendar's complex base-20 system counted days continuously from a mythic starting point in 3114 BC, and 13th bʼakʼtun ended on December 21.

Answer: Alexandrian Calendar

The Ethiopian calendar, or Coptic calendar, is a direct descendant of the Alexandrian Calendar, which itself was a reform of the Ancient Egyptian civil calendar. The Alexandrian calendar, with its leap year, was formally introduced by Ptolemy III Euergetes, in the 3rd century BC, but it wasn't implemented until the 1st century BC, under Roman Emperor Augustus.

The Ethiopian Church adopted this Alexandrian calendar system, and it evolved into the Ethiopian calendar used today. So, the Alexandrian Calendar is the parent of the Ethiopian Calendar, and the Ancient Egyptian Calendar is the grandparent of the Ethiopian Calendar.

Answer: Babylonia c. 2000 BC

The Babylonians in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) divided months into weeks of seven days, tied to lunar phases (first visibility of crescent moon), with the number 7 sacred due to seven visible "planets" (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). Tablets from Nippur around 2000-1800 BC mark seven-day cycles with rest/omen days. A Babylonian tablet in the British Museum refers to the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days as "days of rest for the heart."

Answer: Lunisolar

The current Hebrew calendar is about 1,700 years old. In its Biblical Period, prior to the 6th century BC, the calendar was based on lunar months, with periodic addition of a leap month to align with the solar year. Months began upon the sighting of the new crescent moon. During the Babylonian Exile, beginning in 586 BC, the Hebrew names for the months were replaced with the Babylonian names that are still used today, but the lunisolar structure of the calendar remained.

In 359 AD, fixed mathematical rules with predetermined months and leap years were established by Jewish Patriarch Hillel II.

This eliminated the dependence on direct moon sighting. In the 8th-10th centuries astronomers made more astronomical adjustments, occasionally adding the extra month, Adar II, to keep aligned with the solar year.

Answer: Lunar calendar

The Islamic calendar's starting point is the Hijra, the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. It is a lunar calendar, (based on cycles of the Moon); each of its 12 months begin with the sighting of the new crescent moon. Since it is roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year, Islamic months and holidays such as Ramadan, gradually shift through the seasons over a 33-year cycle, meaning that Ramadan can occur in summer, winter, spring, or fall depending on the year.

Answer: Earth's orbit relative to the fixed stars, not the Sun

"Sidereal" means "related to the stars", so a sidereal year is how long it takes Earth to go all the way around the Sun relative to the fixed stars - not relative to the Sun itself. It measures the time Earth lines up with a distant star to the next time it lines up with that same star, and that comes to about 365.256 days. That's as opposed to a solar year, which measures from one spring equinox to the next, coming to about 365.242 days.

The roughly 20-minute difference is due to the Earth's axis wobbling, which makes the position of the Sun shift slightly against the background stars each year.

Answer: The Julian Calendar

In 46 BC, Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, and upon the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar realigned the calendar with the seasons, by adding two additional months (Intercalaris Prior and Posterior), plus two extra weeks inserted into February, for a total adjustment making that first year 445 days long. 46 BC became known as the "Year of Confusion." The next year, 45 BC, saw the new Julian calendar start fresh with a normal 365 days.

The Julian still had a flaw in it though, that caused the calendar to drift from the solar year by roughly 11 minutes annually, which meant it gained one day of error every 128 years - but by the 1500s, that still added up to ten days off.

Answer: Pope Gregory XIII

Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar on 24th February 1582, to realign the calendar with the solar year, and fix the drift. Ten days were skipped in October 1582, so the day after October 4 became October 15. Also, a more accurate way of calculating leap years, in which a year is a leap year if it is divisible by 4, unless it is also divisible by 100, but not by 400, was devised. That explains why the year 2000 was a leap year, but 1900 was not.

Answer: Greece

Largely Protestant countries were skeptical of The Gregorian calendar, some even believing the calendar was the work of the Antichrist. But mostly, it was suspected of being a grab for influence. It was first adopted in 1582 by several Roman Catholic countries in Europe: the Papal States (Italy), Spain, Portugal, and Poland-Lithuania.

It spread to most of the rest of the world very gradually thereafter. Germany didn't switch to the Gregorian calendar until 1700, while England and the British colonies in America held out until 1752.

The last European country to adopt the calendar was Greece, in 1923, primarily due to its Eastern Orthodox faith and national politics. While a bit more accurate than the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar in use today still differs from the solar year by 26 seconds each year, which comes to one day every 3,323 years.