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What are the main genres in literature?
At the most basic level, there are 3️⃣ main genres for literature - poetry, prose and drama - each can be broken down even further, resulting in dozens of subgenres.
📚🖌 Poetry
tends to be written in verses, and typically employs a rhythmic and measured approach to composition. It has melodic tone and uses creative language that is often imaginative and symbolic in nature. It is typically divided into two main subgenres, narrative and lyric, and can be fiction and non-fiction.
The word “poetry” comes from the Greek word poiesis, which essentially means making or creating, which is translated into the “making of poetry”.
📚🖌 Prose
is essentially identified as written text that aligns with the flow of conversation in the form of sentence and paragraph, as opposed to verses and stanzas in poetry, and employs common grammatical structure and a natural flow of speech.
It can be broken down into a number of subgenres including both fiction and non-fiction works. Examples of prose can range from news, biographies and essays to novels, short stories, plays and fables.
The word “prose” derives from Latin prōsa ("straightforward") from the term prōsa ōrātio ("a straightforward speech- i.e. without the ornaments of verse").
📚🖌🎭 Drama
is defined as theatrical dialogue performed on stage and traditionally is comprised of five acts. It is generally broken down into four subgenres including comedy, melodrama, tragedy and farce. In many cases, dramas will actually overlap with poetry and prose, depending on the writing style of the author.
Dramatic pieces can be written in both poetic and prose style, and can be fiction or nonfiction.
ℹ️ Some resources will cite only 2️⃣ genres: fiction and non-fiction, though many classics will argue that fiction and non-fiction can, and do, both fall under poetry, drama or prose.
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What is literature?
📕 Literature is writing that uses artistic expression and form and is considered to have merit or be important.
📗 As an artistic term, literature refers to written works, such as novels, short stories, biographies, memories, essays, and poetry. However, songs, movies, TV shows, video games, and paintings are typically not considered to be literature because the final output is not text.
📘 At the same time, literature is usually thought to only include works of art. Informative works like newspapers, scientific journals, religious texts, press releases, and spreadsheets are generally not considered to be literature.
📙 Yet in scientific study, especially anthropology or history, the word literature is used more broadly to describe everything that a specific society or group has ever written. For example, a researcher may be studying Persian, Indian, Chinese, Russian or English literature.
✍️ The word literature comes from Latin litterātūra “writing.”
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What should you study if you want to study yourself?
If you want to study yourself and all the humanity, you should study anthropology, which is the study of how humans have been different biologically, physically, socially, and culturally over time and space.
It deals with both the biological features that make us human (physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history and evolution), and social aspects (language, culture, politics, family and religion).
So, anthropologists are studying multiple aspects and processes of people’s lives, which define us as human beings.
A few common ❓ posed by anthropology are:
📌how are the societies different and how are they the same❓
📌how has the evolution shaped how we think❓
📌what is culture?❓
📌are there human universals❓
🚹🚺🚼 By taking the time to study peoples’ lives in detail, anthropologists explore what makes us uniquely human. In doing so, anthropologists aim to increase our understanding of ourselves and each other.
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What are 30 countries with the youngest populations?
ℹ️ Among 30 countries with the youngest populations, 28 are African and only 2 are Asian.
1️⃣ 🇳🇪 Niger has 56.9% of its population under 18 years old!
Other countries on the list are
2️⃣🇺🇬 Uganda - 55.0 % of population under 18
3️⃣🇷🇴 Chad - 54.6 %
4️⃣🇦🇴 Angola- 54.3 %
5️⃣🇲🇱 Mali - 54.1 %
6️⃣🇸🇴 Somalia - 53.6 %
7️⃣🇬🇲 Gambia - 52.8 %
8️⃣🇿🇲 Zambia - 52.6 %
9️⃣🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of the Congo - 52.6 %
🔟🇧🇫 Burkina Faso - 52.3 %
1️⃣1️⃣🇲🇿 Mozambique - 52.1 %
1️⃣2️⃣🇲🇼 Malawi - 52.0 %
1️⃣3️⃣🇹🇿 Tanzania - 51.6 %
1️⃣4️⃣🇦🇫 Afghanistan - 51.4 %
1️⃣5️⃣🇧🇮 Burundi - 50.9 %
1️⃣6️⃣🇳🇬 Nigeria - 50.4 %
1️⃣7️⃣🇸🇳 Senegal - 50.2 %
1️⃣8️⃣🇸🇹 Sao Tome and Principe - 49.3 %
1️⃣9️⃣🇨🇮 Cote d'Ivoire - 49.3 %
2️⃣0️⃣🇨🇲 Cameroon - 49.1 %
2️⃣1️⃣🇬🇳 Guinea - 49.1 %
2️⃣2️⃣🇸🇱 Sierra Leone - 49.1 %
2️⃣3️⃣🇹🇱 Timor-Leste - 49.1 %
2️⃣4️⃣🇪🇷 Eritrea - 49.0 %
2️⃣5️⃣🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo - 48.9 %
2️⃣6️⃣🇱🇷 Liberia - 48.9 %
2️⃣7️⃣🇸🇸 South Sudan - 48.8 %
2️⃣8️⃣🇧🇯 Benin - 48.8 %
2️⃣9️⃣🇪🇹 Ethiopia - 48.7 %
3️⃣0️⃣🇲🇬 Madagascar - 48.6 %
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What is grandfather paradox?
🔁 This paradox is an example of a problem arising from the effect of time travel on causality, the idea that a cause must precede its effect.
🔁 It suggests that a cause is eliminated by its own effect, thus preventing its own cause and essentially becoming reverse causation.
🔁 The classic analogy for this, and the one that gives the paradox its name, is a time traveler journeying back in time and killing their own biological grandfather before they can sire children. This means the time traveler could never have come to exist and, as a consequence, can't travel back in time and thus can't kill their own grandfather. That means they then are born and can go back in time, hence the paradox.
ℹ️ In a recent study, researchers may have shown mathematically that the universe can self-correct to avoid inconsistencies. If this is true, then even if we could travel back in time, we would never be able to alter events to create a different future.
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What is the Theory of relativity?
As a scientific notion, the Theory of relativity states that space and time are relative, and all motion must be relative to a frame of reference.
It was formulated by Albert Einstein, who sought to explain situations in which Newtonian physics fail to deal successfully with some phenomena, and in doing so proposed revolutionary changes in human concepts of time, space and gravity.
In fact it encompasses 2️⃣ theories:
✔️Special Relativity Theory, dealing with the structure of space-time
and
✔️ General Relativity Theory, stating that objects at rest in the gravitational field and accelerating are identical physically.
Study of relativity led to the emergence of one of the greatest formulas E = mc2, where E is Energy, m stands for mass and c for the velocity of light. This equation answers why the object’s mass increases with its velocity- something many scientists before Einstein had failed to explain.
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What are 6 innovations inspired by origami?
Origami might seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for scientists and engineers, yet its intricate folding patterns are behind six following innovations.
1️⃣Deep-sea grabber that helps scientists to catch delicate deep-sea creatures ⬆️
2️⃣ Bulletproof shield that can be folded into a shape that fits easily into the trunk of a car and protect law enforcement from gunfire ⬆️
3️⃣ Planetary explorer with wheels designed to fold up tight for spaceflight and then swing back into place when the spacecraft reaches its destination ⬆️
4️⃣ Tiny ingestible robots that fold small enough to fit in a pill ⬆️
5️⃣ Star shade that could fold up during launch and then unfurl in space before being positioned in front of a telescope to block starlight and permit detailed observations of exoplanets ⬆️
6️⃣ Artificial muscles that are made of folded “skeletons” encased within fluid-filled sacs and that could power safe for humans “soft” robots ⬆️
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What are the types of calendars?
The motion (or apparent motion) of the Sun and the Moon provide temporal cycles which have strongly influenced the design of most calendars.
Most calendars usually attempt to accord either with the solar cycle (the cycle of the seasons) or with the lunar cycle (the cycle of the phases of the Moon) or with both.
There are over forty calendars currently in use, and many others that have been used or have been invented.
Calendars thus come in many forms and, according to specialists, may be divided into five kinds:
1️⃣ Purely lunar calendars
Those which are based on the natural cycles of the Moon, which have months which attempt to stay as closely as possible in sync with the lunar phases, and whose years (composed of months) have no close relation with the solar cycle. A good example of this type is the Muslim Calendar.
2️⃣ Purely solar calendars
Those which are based on the cycle of the seasons, which results from the motion of the Earth around the Sun (and the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation is tilted significantly with respect to the Earth's plane of rotation about the Sun). These calendars have years, which accord with the seasonal cycle and begin at or near a fixed point in that cycle (for example, the vernal equinox). Years in a purely solar calendar may be composed of months, but the months have little if any connection with the lunar cycle, for example, the the Gregorian Calendar (Common Era Calendar with years designated according to the astronomical system) commonly in use today.
3️⃣ Lunisolar calendars and Solilunar calendars
These calendars aim to be both solar calendars and lunar calendars.
Lunisolar calendars are more successful in tracking the seasonal cycle than the lunar cycle. Such a calendar consists of years which accord closely with the seasonal cycle and months which accord more-or-less closely with the lunar cycle. An example of a lunisolar calendar is the Hindu calendar.
Solilunar calendars are more successful in tracking the lunar cycle than the seasonal cycle. They consist of months which accord closely with the lunar cycle and years which accord more-or-less closely with the seasonal cycle, for example, the Chinese Calendar or the Hebrew Calendar.
Usually solilunar calendars and lunisolar calendars are regarded as forming a single class: 'lunisolar calendars'.
4️⃣ Lunistellar calendars
Some experts suggested that a classification of calendars should also include the category of 'lunistellar'. The Egyptian Calendar is considered to be such a calendar.
5️⃣ Other calendars
Some calendars apparently make little or no attempt to accord with the cycles of the Moon or of the Sun. For example, the Tzolkin and the Long Count in the Maya Calendar. Some of these calendars may accord with other astronomical cycles, such as that associated with the planet Venus.
What calendars have 13 months?
Two traditional calendars of Africa have 13 months.
The Coptic calendar, also called the Alexandrian calendar, help orthodox Copts worldwide to determine the dates of religious holidays and rituals. It derived from the ancient Egyptian calendar and is still officially used in 🇪🇬Egypt.
It is divided into 13 months. The first 12 months have 30 days. The last month, called Pi Kogi Enavot or Nasie and referred to as an epagomenal month, has 5 days in a common year and 6 days in a leap year.
Year 1 in the Coptic c. started on August 29, 284 in the Julian c.
It is one the oldest calendar system still in use.
The Ethiopian calendar has the same system of the calculation of 13 months as the Coptic calendar.
The main difference is the calculation of the date of the birth of Jesus - the Ethiopian c. is 7 to 8 years behind the Gregorian c.
The main calendar in 🇪🇹Ethiopia, it is also used by the Orthodox Tewahido Church in 🇪🇷Eritrea.
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What calendar is used by Muslims?
☪️📆The Hijri calendar or the Muslim/Islamic calendar is used by Muslims around the world to determine the dates of religious events and observances.
🌕Its time reckoning is tied to the Moon phases. Each month lasts for a full lunation, the time span from one New Moon to the next.
📌It has 12 months with 29 or 30 days. The months of Rajab, Dhū al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Ḥijjah, and Muḥarram are considered sacred.
📌This calendar is completely detached from astronomical seasons. So, an Islamic year is about 11 days shorter of the solar year and for practical reasons most Muslim countries officially use the Gregorian calendar.
🕛Islamic time reckoning begins in 622 CE when the Muslim prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina. This event is referred to as Hegira or Hijrah.
ℹ️Since the Islamic calendar years are shorter than Gregorian years and the current year number is lower, the year numbers of the two calendar systems will coincide on May 1, 20874 CE/AH.
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What is the Hindu calendar?
The Hindu calendar, also called Panchanga, was developed in ancient times on the Indian subcontinent. The earliest mentions of Hindu time reckoning can be found in the Vedas, a body of sacred texts of Hinduism, some of which date back to around 1200 BCE.
It offers a multi-dimensional method of structuring time, combining information about lunar and solar days/months, the movements of the Sun and the Moon in relation to stellar constellations, and other astronomically defined time spans.
In fact, there is not one single Hindu calendar, and there are many regional variations of it.
🇮🇳🇮🇩 The Saka Samvat is used officially in India since 1957 and by Hindus in Java and Bali. It starts from 78 AD and is based on the tropical zodiac signs rather than the sidereal year - the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun.
🇳🇵🇮🇳 The Vikram Samvat is used in Nepal and some Indian states, starts from 57 BC and uses lunar months and the sidereal year.
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Why did the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian calendar?
The Julian calendar was the predecessor of the Gregorian calendar.
The Julian calendar was proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar, took effect on 1 January 45 BC and was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria. It had 365 days divided into 12 months but it did not correctly reflect the actual time it takes the Earth to circle once around the Sun.
In the Julian calendar, a leap day was added every four years, which is too frequent, and progressively important religious holidays were out of sync with the fixed dates for astronomical events.
The introduction of the Gregorian calendar allowed for the realignment with events like equinoxes and solstices.
Because of this error of the Julian calendar, a number of days had to be dropped when the Gregorian calendar was adopted ⬆️.
The gap between these two calendar systems will increase to 14 days in the year 2100.
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What is the oldest calendar still in use?
The Jewish calendar, derived from the ancient Hebrew calendar, has remained unchanged since about AD 900.
It is the official calendar of the modern state of Israel and is used by the Jewish people throughout the world as a religious calendar.
The starting point of Hebrew chronology is the year 3761 BC, the date the World was created according to the Old Testament.
The Jewish calendar is luni-solar, based on lunar months of 29 days alternating with 30 days. An extra month is intercalated every 3 years, based on a 19-year cycle.
It’s interesting to note that, while many Jews outside of Israel have adopted the Gregorian calendar, they do not generally use the abbreviations A.D. and B.C. related to Christianity. Because Jews do not believe that Jesus is Lord, dates of the Jewish calendar are designated AM (Latin anno mundi, "the year of the world"), C.E. (Common or Christian Era), and BCE (before the Common Era).
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What is the world’s oldest calendar?
🏴 In 2013, archeologists announced the discovery at Warren Field in Scotland ⬆️ of what they claim as the world’s oldest calendar – a series of 12 large pits that were designed to mimic the various phases of the moon and aligned perfectly on the midwinter solstice in a way that would have helped the Mesolithic hunter-gathers keep accurate track of the passage of the seasons and the lunar cycle.
At nearly 10,000 years old, these pits are pre-dating by several thousand years the Bronze Age monuments in Mesopotamia.
The geophysical evidence suggests the pits had been periodically reshaped until at last the calendar-monument seemed to fall out of use around 4,000 years ago.
First discovered by aerial photography in 2004, their significance was recognized only 10 years later, using the latest-generation remote-sensing technology and software that worked out the positions of sunrises and sunsets in the landscape 10,000 years ago.
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What is astrology and is it a science?
Astrology can be defined as the study of the connection between celestial activity phenomena and earthly events.
In some context astrology is also described as the primitive study of celestial bodies, which formed the basis of astronomy and began with the ancient civilizations.
Those who practice astrology are called astrologers.
Astrology maintains that each person is born under a particular sign of the zodiac.
Some divide astrology in 3️⃣ branches:
🟢 Mundane A. (predictions about national and international affairs)
🔵 Interrogatory A. (predictions about subject’s life)
🟣 Natal A. (predictions based on the date of a person’s birth)
Even though astrologers use mathematics and astronomy to make their calculations, there is no evidence that astrological predictions are accurate and thus astrology is a pseudoscience.
ℹ️ A pseudoscience is a field that pretends to use scientific methodology, but does not follow the scientific method.
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What is a genre?
📚🎭🎨🎥 Genre (from French genre 'kind, or sort') is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria.
🔺 Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new subgenres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Works can fit into multiple genres by borrowing and recombining these conventions.
🔸 Genre theory is a branch of critical theory.
🔹 Genre began as an absolute classification system for the ancient Greek literature.
▪️ Patterns for one genre would not be appropriate for another.
▫️Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense of unpredictable art. As art is often a response to the state of society, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing discourses.
🔘 As far back as ancient Greece, new art forms were emerging that called for the evolution of genre.
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What are subfields of Anthropology?
Anthropology is usually divided into several subfields.
✅ Archaeology is a major subfield of anthropology, well known thanks to major discoveries and pop culture. Archeology involves the study of human culture by recovering artifacts of past peoples.
✅ Cultural anthropology is the study of humanity’s different cultures. This subfield can overlap with archaeology and often involves information discovered from it. Unlike archaeology, cultural anthropology might study not only past but also present cultures, especially with how they differ from each other.
✅ Physical, or biological anthropology, focuses on how humans have physically and biologically changed over time. It also looks at how humans are different from other animals, especially chimpanzees and other primates. Anthropologists will often do this by analyzing bones of ancient humans or remains of animals that science considers to be relatives or ancestors of humans.
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What should you study if you want to study yourself?
If you want to study yourself and all the humanity, you should study anthropology, which is the study of how humans have been different biologically, physically, socially, and culturally over time and space.
It deals with both the biological features that make us human (physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history and evolution), and social aspects (language, culture, politics, family and religion).
So, anthropologists are studying multiple aspects and processes of people’s lives, which define us as human beings.
A few common ❓ posed by anthropology are:
📌how are the societies different and how are they the same❓
📌how has the evolution shaped how we think❓
📌what is culture?❓
📌are there human universals❓
🚹🚺🚼 By taking the time to study peoples’ lives in detail, anthropologists explore what makes us uniquely human. In doing so, anthropologists aim to increase our understanding of ourselves and each other.
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What is the most timeless video game ever created?
🟥 According to multiple sources, the most timeless video game ever created is Tetris.
It is also arguably an all-time bestseller with 520 million copies sold.
🔷 The game requires players to strategically rotate, move, and drop a procession of Tetriminos that fall into the rectangular Matrix at increasing speeds. Players attempt to clear as many lines as possible by completing horizontal rows of blocks without empty space, but if the Tetriminos surpass the Skyline, the game is over.
🇷🇺 It was created in 1984 by a Soviet Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov, who was inspired by his favorite puzzle board game, Pentominos. The resulting design was an electronic game that used seven distinctive geometric pieces, each made up of four squares. Pajitnov called this game “Tetris,” a combination of “tetra” (“four” in Greek) and “tennis” (his favorite sport).
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Is time travel possible?
For most people “time travel” means traveling faster than 1 second per second.
Real-life time travel occurs through time dilation, a property of Einstein’s special relativity.
The faster you travel, the slower you experience time.
⏱✈️⏱Scientists have shown that this theory is true. They used two clocks set to the exact same time. One clock stayed on Earth, while the other flew in an airplane going in the same direction Earth rotates. After the airplane flew around the world, scientists compared the two clocks. The clock on the fast-moving airplane was slightly behind the clock on the ground. So, the clock on the airplane was traveling slightly slower in time than 1 second per second.
In order to send a traveller years into the future, we would either have to take advantage of the intense gravitational acceleration caused by black holes or send the traveller rocketing into space at close to the speed of light (about 1 billion km/h).
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What are three laws of motion?
Sir Isaac Newton's three laws of motion describe the motion of massive bodies and how they interact.
Presented in 1686, these three laws are:
1️⃣ Objects in motion or at rest remain in the same state unless an external force imposes change. It is the concept of inertia.
2️⃣ The force acting on an object is equal to the mass of the object multiplied by its acceleration. In other words, you can calculate how much force it takes to move objects with various masses at different speeds.
In mathematical form it is F = ma, where F is force, m is mass, and a is acceleration. The bold letters indicate that force and acceleration are vector quantities – they have both magnitude and direction.
3️⃣ For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
They formed the basis for our understanding of mechanics and gravity and in Newton’s time were considered revolutionary.
The thing that could’t be explained by these laws is light.
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What is Origami?
Origami art is the traditional Japanese craft of folding a sheet of paper into objects and figures. Ori translates as “folded” and kami means “paper”.
Paper was introduced to Japan in the 6th century. At that time, the practice of paper folding emerged as a ceremonial Shinto ritual. It was not until Japan's Edo Period (1603 – 1868) that origami also became a leisurely activity and an art form.
Any paper, of any size, can be used for making origami. The origami sheets are typically prepackaged and sold in 6- or 7-inch (15.5- or 17.8-cm) squares. As a rule, each sheet is colored or decoratively patterned on one side and solid white on the other. Sometimes, this contrast is critical to a folded figure’s design.
Of the thousands of recorded sculptural art forms made by folding paper, as much as 95% of them start as a perfect square.
The iconic figure of origami paper art is the bird, and the undisputed masterpiece is the flying crane.
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What is a calendar that consists of three separate calendars?
it is the Mayan Calendar, that consists of three separate corresponding calendars: the Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar), and the Haab (civil calendar). Each of them is cyclical, meaning that a certain number of days must occur before a new cycle can begin.
Being used simultaneously,
📍the Tzolkin and the Haab identify the days, but not the years
📍the Long Count date comes first, then the Tzolkin date, and last the Haab date.
A typical Mayan date would read: 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Kumku.
A date is specified by its position in both the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars. This creates a total of 18,980 unique date combinations, which are used to identify each day within a cycle lasting about 52 years. This period is called the Calendar Round.
The Mayan c. is still in use in some Mayan communities. It dates back to the 5th century BCE, but the same system was also used by other indigenous peoples of America.
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What is one of the world's most accurate calendar systems?
The Gregorian calendar deviates from the solar year by 1 day in 3236 years.
The Solar Hijri calendar, also known as Persian Calendar, Iranian Calendar, and SH Calendar, used in 🇮🇷Iran and 🇦🇫Afghanistan, is more accurate.
A year in this observational calendar has 12 months. The first 6 months have 31 days, and months 7 through 11 have 30 days. The last month, Esfand, has 29 days in a common year and 30 days in a leap year.
One of complex mathematical rules that determine the distribution of leap years in it achieves a degree of accuracy very similar to that of the observational version, requiring about 110,000 years to accumulate an error of 1 day.
Its first version, the Jalali calendar, was developed in the 11th century by astronomers including the Persian scientist Omar Khayyam.
Although the Solar Hijri calendar shares this start date with the Islamic Hijri calendar, the calendar systems are not related otherwise.
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What is the traditional Chinese calendar?
Although modern-day China 🇨🇳 relies on the Gregorian calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar still governs the dates of important holidays such as the Chinese Lantern Festival, and is used to select auspicious dates for weddings, funerals, moving, and starting businesses.
This calendar’s origins can be traced as far back as the 14th century BCE.
It has 12 months of 29 or 30 days that each begin on the first day of a new moon. Leap months, rather than days, are added as needed.
Each month can be referred to by an animal name or a number within each 60-year cycle, which also correspond to particular hours of the day, as well as years in the zodiac cycle. This pattern dates back about 2000 years.
In order of occurrence, the animals are
🐀
🐂
🐅
🐇
🐉
🐍
🐎
🐑
🐒
🐓
🐕
🐖
🇰🇵🇰🇷🇻🇳🇯🇵 Variations of the traditional Chinese calendar are used in Korea, Vietnam and the Ryukyu Islands.
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Who first introduced a leap day and a 24-hour day?
🔺 Ancient Egyptians were the first to realise the need for a leap day. They discovered that the star Sirius lined up with the rising sun around the time of flooding every year and also noticed that Sirius lined up with the sun for about six hours (a ¼ a day) different every year. They inserted a leap day into their calendar for a while but then abandoned it.
🔺 They also invented the 24-hour day, divided into two cycles of 12 hours each, and helped pioneer the concept of time as an entity.
🔺 In the ancient Egyptian calendar, the year had 365 days and consisted of 3 seasons: Akhet (Flood), Peret (Emergence) and Shomu (Summer), plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside the year proper. Each season included 4 months of 30 days.
🔺 According to scientists, the ancient Egyptian calendar was highly accurate, a miracle of its time and contributed to the development of different ancient calendars.
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What is the most widely used civil calendar in the world?
❗️📆 The Gregorian Calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today.
It was first introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
It has a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths.
11 of the months have either 30 or 31 days, while the second month, February, has only 28 days during the common year. However, nearly every four years is a leap year, when one extra—or intercalary—day, is added on 29 February, making the leap year in the Gregorian calendar 366 days long.
The days of the year in the Gregorian calendar are divided into 7-day weeks, and the weeks are numbered 1 to 52 or 53.
ℹ️ Although the Gregorian calendar is named after Pope Gregory XIII, it is an adaptation of a calendar designed by Luigi Lilio, also known as Aloysius Lilius (1510-1576), who was an Italian doctor, astronomer, and philosopher. He died six years before his calendar was officially introduced.
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Who used the first written calendars?
Man's interest in the sky is at the heart of three separate stories - astronomy, astrology and the calendar.
So, it’s not surprising that the Babylonians, who seemed to be the first great astronomers, began to use the first written calendars in the ancient cities between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Clay tablets marked by cuneiform writing indicate that those Babylonian cities would have had their own calendars with their own names for the months of the year.
All cities had a month called, “Extra,” allowing them to reset the calendar in the same way as a leap year.
Each Babylonian week lasted seven days. Each seventh day was a rest day on which officials were prohibited from engaging in certain activities that couldn’t be done on the 28th day of each month, either.
Perhaps the strangest aspect - during the lunar cycle, the Babylonian month, lasting 29 or 30 days, made it so the last week of each month lasted eight or nine days.
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What is calendar?
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes.
This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years.
A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system.
Periods in a calendar are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon.
Many civilizations have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs.
🗓 A calendar is also a physical device. This is the most common usage of the word.
📱💻 Other similar types of calendars can include computerized systems, which can be set to remind the user of upcoming events and appointments.
📝 A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar.
The English word calendar is derived from the Latin word ‘kalendae’, the Latin name of the first day of every month.
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What is the zodiac?
The zodiac is the line on the celestial sphere (the full pattern of stars as seen in the night sky) along which the sun seems to move during a full year. The position of the sun on any day can be discovered by observing which stars are just above the horizon at the point where the sun is about to rise or has recently set. They will be the same group of stars at the beginning or end of the same day, even though appearing in the east at dawn and in the west at dusk - for the sun's position in relation to the stars, as seen from earth, hardly changes within a day.
The concept of the zodiac was introduced by the Babylonians who realized that the zodiac can serve as a yardstick of celestial time if divided into recognizable and equal segments. They selected twelve constellations to represent these segments and gave them the names of animals.
The Greeks later provided the term for the zodiac when they describe it as the 'animal circle' (zodiakos kyklos).
In succession these constellations are ⬇️
♈️ Aries (the Ram)
♉️ Taurus (Bull)
♊️ Gemini (Twins)
♋️ Cancer (Crab)
♌️ Leo (Lion)
♍️ Virgo (Virgin)
♎️ Libra (Scales)
♏️ Scorpio (Scorpion)
♐️ Sagittarius (Archer)
♑️ Capricornus (Goat)
♒️ Aquarius (Water Carrier)
♓️ Pisces (Fishes)
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