A Public Service Announcement... Sort Of...

A word from our sponsor:

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A BigCloset TopShelf TV Announcement

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Due to Independence Day Week, the regularly-scheduled programming for Bobbie C's stories for this coming Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be pre-empted: Instead of the regularly-schuduled stories, The first two installments of "Presidents' Day" will be posted on Wednesday and Thursday, and the latest chapter of "Drew Nance, Girl Detective Book 2: The Hidden Staircase" will be posted on Friday.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

We now bring you back to your regularly scheduled programming...

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Comments

Which Nations...

Daphne Xu's picture

Which nations have July 4th?

-- Daphne Xu

-- Try saying freefloating three times rapidly.

maybe

Maddy Bell's picture

The question should be, who has 4th of July?

Just saying
Lol
Mads


image7.1.jpg    

Madeline Anafrid Bell

Possibly

Daphne Xu's picture

... the right question.

But it's a trick to get one to answer that only the USA has July 4th.

-- Daphne Xu

-- Try saying freefloating three times rapidly.

Its like the Ides of March.

Its like the Ides of March. It's really not that unique - there's an Ides every month.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

A nerd time out: the "Ides"

bobbie-c's picture

When the Roman calendar was invented, the months revolved around three named days, these being the Kalends (sometimes "calends"), the Nones and the Ides. The people would then calculate all the other un-named days of the months around these three.

The Kalends of the months are the first day of every month, whereas the Nones were the 5th day of every month, except on March, May, July, and October when the Nones were on the 7th.

As for the Ides - these were the 13th of every month, except on March, May, July, and October when the Ides were on the 15th.

So, if you wanted to say "October 9" in Middle English, you'd say "the fourth Ide of October," meaning four days before the ide of October.

Sorry, I don't know the phrasing for dates after the 15th, but I suspect if you wanted to say, for example, "October 25," you'd say "the sixth Kalend of September." (I'm not sure about this, though.)

This is the Roman calendar, of course - which is 304 days long, and 10 months of 8-day weeks (I think). Since this calendar didn't synch with the seasons, it required adjustments constantly, and they did this during the first month of the year, which was February (there was no January yet). And some would abuse this need to adjust, thereby lengthening some years, and shortening others (which some Roman Emperors did), and messing up everyone's schedules - for example, it'd be difficult to figure out special days or holidays. In other words, it was a mess.

So using the Kalends, Ides and Nones were a convenient way of tracking dates because the Romans made it confusing.

For Shakespeare's day, it was just the way one colloquially referred to March 15. So, in his play, "Julius Caesar," when the soothsayer said to Caesar "beware the Ides of March," this just means "beware of March 15," because that's when he's supposed to die.

But, because of this play, nowadays, though, when you say "beware the Ides of March," it means it's a warning of death or bad luck, and has no real connection with the real meaning of the phrase.