eli5: Why does July & August have 31 days but February has only 28 ?
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February was historically the last month of the year because the Calendar would start in spring.
In the earlier Roman era they weren’t entirely sure how long the year was, so in winter they would have a period of days that was outside the calendar. It was winter and nothing of significance was happening anyway.
Eventually they reformed the calendar to make it more consistent year by year and added a couple more months so that the calendar would apply to a whole solar year. Once they figured out the year was actually 365 days long they added whatever remaining days required to February which wasn’t quite the 30 they needed. Hence Feb ended up with 28.
The first month of the year was March, which corresponded (at least for a time) when the Romans would pick their new leaders and it was when the Armies could march.
(March’s name is derived from Mars the God of war, and so is the word march)
So why didn’t the even out the days? or change the months to make them make more sense?
It’s a case of “We’ve been doing this way for almost 2000 years, so why change it?”
The changes we have made to the calendar since were to add Leap years
January and February were originally at the end of the year, and replaced what was originally just an open period of “winter.” Since it just kind of got whatever was left over at the end, February wound up with the fewest amount of days. It kept this short stature when it was moved to before March, and when the Julian calendar was introduced it stayed the shortest month but was standardized as 28/29 days.
You’re onto something. Next line of questioning is why is September the 9th month when the prefix Sep usually denotes the number 7. And why is October the 10th month when oct mean 8. Furthermore, how goes it that December is the 12th month when Deca is 10. January is named after the Greek god Janus. February is named after a Greek purification rite. July is an homage to Julius Ceasar and obviously an imposter for the 7th month. And, August, a truncation of Augustus Ceasar, clearly has no etymological claim to being the 8th month. Moral of the story is time-as-we-know-it, is arbitrary and we don’t fully understand even what it is in the first place.
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BLame cezar, the romans created the calendar. It was originally that march was the beginning of the year as it was marching season. But then we decided later to start in January. In addition, july is for julius and august is for augustus and they are the best months being sunny so they decided to make them the longest months
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A couple thousand years ago they had 12 months of 30 days with 5 days set aside for celebration
31 was considered a lucky number by the romans. So when they made the Julian Calendar and added the months July and August (Named for Julius and Augustus Caesar) they wanted them to have 31 days.
March was the first month of their calendar, so they took the extra two days from the last month, February.
Calendars were created to know when day and night are equally long and also to know when the longest and shortest days were. These four days stand out and are important for agriculture and culture.
Now, spring and summer are the longest in northern hemisphere with 93 and 94 days. Fall is 91 days and winter is 89 days. With all other months being 30 or 31 long, February just needs to be shorter. Esp. If you want to stick the four stand out days to the same date (in the long run).
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