WORLD CALENDAR

The World Calendar is a proposed reform of the Gregorian calendar created by Elisabeth Achelis of Brooklyn, New York in 1930.

The World Calendar is a 12-month, perennial calendar with equal quarters. It is perennial, or perpetual, because it remains the same every year.

Each quarter begins on Sunday, ends on Saturday. The quarters are equal: each has exactly 91 days, 13 weeks or 3 months. The three months have 31,30, 30 days respectively. Each quarter begins with the 31-day months of January, April, July, or October.

The World Calendar also has the following two additional days to maintain the same new year days as the Gregorian Calendar.

WORLDS DAY: This is the last day of the year following 30 December. This additional day is dated ‘W’, which equals 31 December, and named Worldsday, a year-end world holiday. It is followed by Sunday, January 1 in the new year.

LEAPYEAR DAY: This day is similarly added at the end of the second quarter in leap years. It is likewise dated ‘W’, which equals 31 June, and named Leapyear Day. It is followed by Sunday, July 1 within the same year.

The World Calendar treats Worlds day and Leapyear day as a 24-hour waiting period before resuming the calendar again. These off-calendar days, also known as "intercalary days," are not assigned weekday designations. They are intended to be treated as holidays.

Elizabeth Achelis founded The World Calendar Association (TWCA) in 1930, with the goal of worldwide adoption of The World Calendar. It functioned for most of the next twenty-five years as The World Calendar Association, Inc. Throughout the 1930s, support for the concept grew in the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations.

Proponents refer to its simple structure. In each year, every weekday is assigned to the same date. Quarterly statistics are easier to compare, since the four quarters are the same length each year. Economic savings occur from less need to print calendars because only the year number changes. Work and school schedules do not need to unnecessarily reinvent themselves, at great expense, year after year after year. The World Calendar can be memorized by anyone and used similar to a clock.

Because The World Calendar is perpetual, there is no need to change out copies of it every year.

The main opponents of The World Calendar in the 20th century were leaders of religions whose adherents strictly interpret scripture to require them to worship every seven-day cycle (on one of several weekdays, individually chosen to match personal, individual beliefs). They pointed out that the intercalary days that are counted outside the usual seven-day week disrupt the traditional weekly cycle.

Another similar religious-based objection has maintained that Sabbath days must come exactly 7 days apart and that a week with a Worlds Day would be 8 days apart, causing the Sabbath day to drift by one day each year (2 on a leap year), relative to The World Calendar week. The problem, long alleged, is that the day of rest would no longer coincide with the weekend.

The justification for this lacks authority and should be put to rest without the following pieces of information: 1) On what day of the week was the Earth created? Without this knowledge, protection from "drift" ties the calendar week more to tradition than fact. 2) How did a traditional seven-day week become inviolable when previous calendars did not use weeks or used "weeks" with other than seven days? 3) The calendar year and days that compose it each are exactly defined by solar system occurrences. What solar system equivalent similarly defines the man-made week, thus making slight modification to 5 in 208 impracticable?

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MORE INFORMATION AT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Calendar