Many of us have spent our entire lives assuming that everyone in the world uses the same calendar -- not so. Turns out there are a LOT of calendars used worldwide. I probably learned about The Gregorian Calendar in first grade history class (!). The Jews use the Hebrew Calendar; Muslims use the Islamic (Hijri) Calendar; Iranians use the (modern) Persian calendar, and the Chinese use the Chinese Yin Calendar (not to be confused with the Chinese Yang Calendar).
our New Year's Day
| day | month | year | calendar adopted in | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 23 | Eleventh | 4705 (rat) | |
| Gregorian | 1 | January | 2008 C.E. | 1752 CE |
| Hebrew | 23 | Tevet | 5768 A.M. | |
| Hindu | 78 CE | |||
| Islam | 22 | Dhu al-Hijjah | 1428 A.H. | |
| Persian | 11 | Dey | 1386 | 1925 CE |
For simplicity sake, I'm avoiding an explanation of the Chinese Lunar and Solar calendars, which are based on the ruling dynasty, among other things.
their New Year's Day (sorted chronologically)
| Gregorian | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Christian Era 2008 | 1 January 2008 | ||
| Islam 1429 (Muharram) | 10 January 2008 | ||
| Chinese 4705 | 7 February 2008 | ||
| Persian 1386 (Norouz) | 21 March 2008 | ||
| Hindu 1929 (Ugadi) | 6 April 2008 | ||
| Hebrew 5769 (Rosh Hashanah) | 29 September 2008 | ||
I like using the ISO-8601 calendar for embedding into filenames, so that Untitled.txt becomes 2008-01-01-Untitled.txt -- that way, it's always obvious when the file was created, even if it's been emailed or copied. There's a nice Calendar Converter on Fourmilab which I used to generate this data.
Example: using this converter, I can see that Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 took place on Day 1, Fifth Month, Ji Si Year (Republic Dynasty). To me, it's still 4 June 1989.
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