21 June 2014
Calendars! History researchers have many of them to contend with as their research leaps across time and space. The Nameday Calendar and the Book of Hours. The Advent Calendar. The French Revolutionary Calendar. The French Republican Calendar. Chinese, Hindu, Icelandic, and Medieval Calendars. Are you confused yet?
Both Calendar Zone and Michael Douma's Calendars through the Ages offer marvelous resources. There are calculators, aps, and glossaries. There are history lessons and day-by-day accounts of what happened during the Civil War. There are tables showing when each country—or corners of a country—changed from the Julian to the Gregorian. And Douma offers the most basic need of all: a perpetual calendar so that we can place any historical date into the social ebb-and-flow of the society in which we are working. Exploring these two sites and their many links is an education in itself.
IMAGE SOURCE: "File:1943–44 Jewish calendar for the Canadian Armed Forces.JPG," Wikimedia Commons (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/1943%E2%80%9344_Jewish_calendar_for_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces.JPG : downloaded 16 June 2014), contributed by "Canadian Jewish Congress in Montreal, Quebec (http://www.jewishmuseum.ca/node/192)," public domain image.