***It turns out Ingenuity will not fly today. The flight date has been moved to April 14, hopefully.***
I was listening to a local morning radio show, and he was talking about why we celebrate April Fool’s Day. He said that New Year’s Day was in April until 1582. That confused me because I was pretty sure Julius Ceasar moved New Year’s Day from March to January. It turns out we were both right.
The new year was celebrated around the beginning of spring until Julius Ceasar officially moved it to January 1. It stayed that way until the middle ages (This is the part I didn’t know.)
Having January 1 as New Year’s Day was considered pagan, and in AD 567, the Council of Tours changed it. New Year’s Day was celebrated on different days from March 1 to March 25 to Easter and other religious holidays.
In 1582, the Gregorian calendar re-established New Year’s Day as January 1. Of course, not all countries adopted this calendar right away, so I imagine New Year’s still wandered for a while.
There you go. It might sound strange to talk about New Year’s Day in April, but I guess people in the middle ages thought it was a good idea.