DOUBTLESS nowadays, with the help of almanacs, diaries, and the daily press, any incident can be dated to its particular day in any week and month as well as to the year in the century. Yet two-thirds of nineteen hundred years had run before almanacs were in vogue at all. Now they have become so very numerous as to need (for classified nomenclature) one bulky foolscap volume in the British Museum Library for themselves. A century ago their circulation was limited and intermittent;[1] it is just six decades since the stamp impost of fifteen-pence was abolished.[2]
139. Almanac is the Arabic al manac (the diary). Verstegen says it is the Saxon al mon aght (all moon heed), and that it refers to the tallies of the full and new moons kept by our Saxon ancestors--one of these tallies may still be seen at St. John’s College, Cambridge.[3]
140. Very recently, certain American authorities suggested a new calendar. In this system, the year would be divided
- ↑ In order to fix a certain date, the parish minister depored as to the accuracy of a marriage certificate, as ‘in remote districts little attention is paid to the calendar, people measuring time as so many days or weeks before or after some well-known event.’ See report of Chacheod’s trial for murder; Inverness, 31st Sep., 1831.
- ↑ By the statute 4 and 5 Will IV, cap: 57. Six years before these Nautical Almanacs were exempted from duty.
- ↑ Brewer, p. 36.
