Jim Mcgraw, age 12, of N. O1msted, Ohio, for his question:
What is the 13 month calendar?
Our calendar is an uneven hodgepodge of days and months. With a few changes, it has been checking off the years of history since the days of Julius Caesar. Many sensible people think that it's time we adopted a more orderly calendar which would save endless hours of figuring for all of us.
The peop1e who work in the United Nations have taken many sour looks at our clumsy calendar. Several times the organization has suggested reforms. Bookkeepers and accountants also would like to See a simpler calendar. Someday a better calendar will be adopted by all countries, and almost all of us hope that this will happen soon.
Several peop1e have suggested better calendars than the one We have tried two of these systems have gained a lot of support. One is the World Calendar, the other is known as the 13 t2onth Calendar. Every year brings us 365 days., plus an extra day for leap years. As things stand, a calendar month may bring us 28, 29.9 30 or 31 days. The days of the week fall on different dates of the month and the year.
Calendar reformers wish to simplify this confusion. Every new year, every month and every week, they suggest, should begin with the same day and end with the same day of the week. If you were born on a Monday, you will have a Monday birthday all your life. The idea is simple when you remember that the 365 days of a yeax can be divided into 52 seven day weeks, with one day left over and two left over on leap years.
The 13 pronth Calendar has an extra month named Sol,, tucked between June and July. Every fourth year, Leap Year Day comes at the end of June. The 365th day of the year will be Year Day, at the end of the year. Every month of 28 days begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday,
The World Calendar is also based on 364 days and 52 seven day weeks. It, too has a Year Day and a Leap Year Day, but its weeks are still stuffed into 12 unequal months. This calendar divides the year into four 91 day quarters of 13 weeks. Each quarter begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.
The 13 Month Calendar and the World Calendar are both far, far better than the untidy calendar We use today. We owe it to ourselves to adopt one of them or perhaps another dust as good. Imagine the time We waste remembering dates and checking ahead to make appointments, plus a71 the wasteful work done by bookkeepers and others who keep accounts. A simplified calendar would save all this time and do a lot of our figuring for us.