Trivial Facts
The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.
The alarm clock was invented by Levi Hutchins in 1787.
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Weeks
Measurements of time
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There are only two measurements of time we use that are derived from
nature. A year is the amount of time it takes for the earth to orbit around the
sun, and a day is the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate on its
axis. A third measurement of time - a month - is roughly based on the length of
time it takes for the moon to return to the same position relative to the
earth. All the rest of the time measurements - seconds, minutes, hours, weeks
and months, have been
arbitrarily created by man.
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Why is a week seven days?
For most of the world, a week has been seven days for thousands of years. The
seven-day week has been traced back to the earliest civilisations of the Middle
East. Mesopotamian astrologers assigned one day to the sun, one to the moon,
and one to each of the five major planets visible to the naked eye. The Jews
also adopted a seven day week based on the time it took to create the universe
as quoted in Genesis. They also introduced the Sabbath as a day of rest. It was
the first time a holiday that occurred on a regular basis was invented.
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What day is it, anyway?
Different societies have tried different plans for a week. Ancient Romans
preferred an eight-day week, while West Africans had four days in a week. In
Assyria, six days was a week, in Egypt ten days, and in China fifteen.
Even after the seven-day week became universally accepted, attempts were made
to change it. In 1791 the leaders of the French Revolution introduced a new
calendar in which each month was divided into three ten-day "decades". The plan
never caught on, and Napoleon abandoned it in 1805.
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As recently as 1929, attempts have been made to revise the week. The Soviet
Union tried a five-day week with one day of rest. The days were given colours
as names: yellow, orange, red, purple and green. I can picture a Russian boy
asking a girl for a date. "What are you doing next purple?"
Each worker was given a different day of rest. Thus a husband might have red as
his day off while his wife rested on green. This created mass confusion, so in
1932 they changed to a six-day week with the days having numbers instead of
colours. That didn't work either. In 1940, Russia rejoined the rest of the
world in a seven-day week.
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