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Red maple (Acer rubrum) leaf in October (Northern hemisphere).October is the tenth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.Its length is 31 days. The eighth month in the old calendar of Romulus c. 750 BC, October retained its name (from Latin and Greek ôctō meaning "eight") after January and February were inserted into the calendar that had originally been created by the Romans.
The Romans did not number days of a month sequentially from the 1st through the last day. Instead, they counted back from the three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st) of the following month. The Nones of October was the 7th, and the Ides was the 15th.
Many know that the prefix oct- means eight, as in octopus or octagon. But why does October, the 10th month of the year, have this prefix?
The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar is 9 February 1649, the date by which his contemporaries in some parts of continental Europe would have recorded his execution. The O.S./N.S. designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the "historical year" (1 January) and the legal start date, where different.
The original Roman calendar is usually believed to have been an observational lunar calendar [2] whose months ended and began from the new moon. [3] [4] Because a lunar cycle is about 29.5 days long, such months would have varied between 29 and 30 days. [5]
Because evening out the lengths of the months is part of the rationale for reforming the calendar, some reform calendars, such as the World Calendar and the Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar, contain a 30-day February. The Symmetry454 calendar assigns 35 days to February, May, August, and November, as well as December in a leap year.
The Gregorian calendar, like the Julian calendar, is a solar calendar with 12 months of 28–31 days each. The year in both calendars consists of 365 days, with a leap day being added to February in the leap years. The months and length of months in the Gregorian calendar are the same as for the Julian calendar.
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