A New Day in History

The first recorded celebration of the new year was in Mesopota-mia in mid-March 2000 BC—the beginning of spring during the vernal equinox. The early Romans, whose calendar had just 10 months (March through December), also picked March as the start of the new year. However, ancient cultures such as the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians commemorated the new year with the autumnal equinox in mid-September. And the Greeks chose the winter solstice, in mid-December, for their New Year’s celebration.

Around 700 BC, the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, added the months of January and February to the Roman lunar calendar. But it wasn’t until about 153 BC that January 1 was celebrated as the first day of the new year. Historians say this was because January 1 was the day that newly elected Roman consuls began their one-year term in office. However, many people throughout the Roman Empire continued to mark March as the start of the new year.

Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reworked the calendar again, and January 1 officially became New Year’s Day. Most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar right away, but not everyone was quick to jump on the change. Protestant countries such as Great Britain, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire—and its American colonies—still celebrated the new year in March.

For many people these days, the new year begins when the lighted metal ball on the roof of New York City’s One Times Square “drops” down a flagpole. The ball drop countdown

begins at 11:59 p.m. and ends at exactly 12 a.m. on January 1. Nearly a million people gather around Times Square to watch it happen, and as many as a billion more watch it on television. America isn’t alone in its New Year’s celebrations. People worldwide gather the evening of December 31 and continue celebrating through the night into New Year’s Day.

LANGLEY ADULT DAY PROGRAM

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Day of the Dragon

Why wait every 12 years for the Chinese Year of the Dragon when you can enjoy Appreciate a Dragon Day every year on January 16? These massive flying, fire-breathing beasts are enough to appreciate in and of themselves, but perhaps even more fascinating is how the belief in dragons evolved independently among ancient peoples living in China, Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Anthropologist David E. Jones thinks the widespread belief in dragons grew from the discovery of dinosaur fossils or whalebones that seemed to back up superpredator myths. With real-life 18-foot Nile crocodiles in Africa and eight-foot Australian perentie lizards, it seems that humans already have plenty of reptiles—of the non-fire-breathing variety—to wrangle.

January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after Janus, the god of

beginnings and transitions; the name has its beginnings in

Roman mythology, coming from the Latin word for door (ianua)

since January is the door to the year.

The Children of Invention

January 17 is the day of the K.I.D.—that’s Kid Inventors’ Day for short. This special day honors Benjamin Franklin’s birthday on January 17. While most people know Franklin to be the inventor of bifocals and an experimenter with electricity, what many don’t know is that at age 11 he also invented swim flippers that attached to the hands.

But he’s not the only kid inventor. Perhaps the following inventions by kids will inspire you to take your own unique product from idea to “patent pending” (through the federal Patent Office) someday soon.

In 1905, an 11-year-old kid from San Francisco named Frank Epperson stirred some sugary soda powder with water and left the mix outside all night. He awoke to discover it had frozen solid in the cold. When he licked it straight from the wooden stirrer, he knew he had accidentally made something delicious. The “Epsicle,” as he called it, was the first Popsicle.

On the last day of middle school, Sarah Buckel watched as a friend struggled to scrape the glue used to stick posters and other décor to the locker wall. Over the summer break, Buckel came up with a solution: magnetic wallpaper. Fortunately, Buckel’s father ran a magnet manufacturing company. In no time, her decorative magnetic wallpaper could be found at Staples, Target, and other huge chains. Since 2009, sales of her simple product have totaled more than a million dollars.

Want more examples? Chester Greenwood invented earmuffs at age 15. Louis Braille invented braille, the alphabet for the blind using raised dots, at age 15. Hart Main, 13, conceived a line of candles for men called “Man Cans,” offering manly scents like sawdust. Param Jaggi, at 15, conceived the idea to insert algae into a car’s muffler to eat up carbon dioxide before it entered the atmosphere. And Mattie Knight, dubbed “Lady Edison” by fans, developed a safety device at age 12 that became a standard fixture on looms. How’s that for ingenuity?

Birthstone – Garnet

The garnet is both the birthstone

for January and the gem to celebrate

a second anniversary. Though it’s most

frequently known for its brilliant red

colora�on, the garnet also grows—as

crystals inside metamorphic rock—in

orange, fuschia, yellow, and even blue.

According to the Gemological Ins�tute of

America, rarer s�ll is the green garnet,

known as a tsavorite, found outside a

na�onal park in Kenya in 1967. Use any

color of this stone in January to celebrate

Flower – Snowdrop

January has two flowers of the

month—the mul�-colored carna�on

and the white snowdrop. In the northern

hemisphere, the snowdrop is usually the first

flower of the year, emerging as green shoots

with downturned flowers of six white petals

(typically three long and three short). An

ac�ve substance in snowdrops is

galantamine, an alkaloid rumored to be the

“moly” from Homer’s Odyssey (the an�dote

against Circe’s poison) that’s now used to

treat nervous system disorders from motor