How do calendars and weeks get organized?
Have you ever wondered why a week has seven days? Not six, not ten — seven. And why do some months have thirty days while others have thirty-one, with February sneaking in at twenty-eight? It turns out our calendar is a wild patchwork quilt stitched together from ancient sky-watching, stubborn emperors, and one very important pope.
Long before clocks or smartphones, humans looked up. The moon changed its face every night — crescent, half, full, dark — cycling through in about twenty-nine days. That became a month. The sun rose and set in a predictable loop. That became a day. But the week? The week came from watching seven wandering lights in the sky: the sun, the moon, and five bright "stars" that moved differently from the rest. We now know those five were planets, but ancient people named a day after each wanderer. Sunday for the sun. Monday for the moon. The rest for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.
