Calendar year

Generally speaking, a calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. To reconcile the calendar year with the astronomical cycle (which has a fractional number of days) certain years contain extra days.

The Gregorian year, which is in use in most of the world, begins on January 1 and ends on December 31. It has a length of 365 days in an ordinary year, with 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, and 31,536,000 seconds; but 366 days in a leap year, with 8,784 hours, 527,040 minutes, and 31,622,400 seconds. With 97 leap years every 400 years, the year has an average length of 365.2425 days. Other formula-based calendars can have lengths which are further out of step with the solar cycle: for example, the Julian calendar has an average length of 365.25 days, and the Hebrew calendar has an average length of 365.2468 days.

The astronomer's mean tropical year which is averaged over equinoxes and solstices is currently 365.24219 days, slightly shorter than the average length of the year in most calendars, but the astronomer's value changes over time, so William Herschel's suggested correction to the Gregorian calendar may become unnecessary by the year 4000.

Leap Years

Leap Years is a 2001 drama television series that aired on the Showtime cable network. The show was created by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, who had created the American version of the series Queer as Folk. It followed a group of friends in New York City. Set in the main in 2001, the show was uniquely structured as a series of flashbacks to 1993 and flashforwards to the then-near future 2008.

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Flat Earth

The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. That paradigm was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and the notion of a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl was common in pre-scientific societies.

The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.

Historical development

Ancient Near East

In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account of the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods." The Israelites likely had a similar cosmology, with the earth as a flat disc floating on water beneath an arced firmament separating it from the heavens.

Four Hundred Years

Four Hundred Years was a melodic screamo band.

History

Four Hundred Years began in Tucson, Arizona, following the break-up of Groundwork, and eventually found a home in Richmond, Virginia. The band's albums capture a frenzy of hardcore intensity, built around simultaneously emotional and political themes. Four Hundred Years formed in 1996 with Daron Hollowell on vocals and guitar, Ash Bruce on drums, Erin Housholder on bass and Dave Jackson on guitar and vocals. The band began to write intense hardcore songs with a sound descended from Rites of Spring, Fugazi and Hoover. Their full-length debut, Transmit Failure was released on Lovitt Records in September 1998. The record combined melody and dissonance stunningly and the group soon found themselves with a large, loyal following. Suture and Other Songs was released in 1999. In 2000, after a lineup change, with Bull (bass, formerly of Policy of Three and Montag) replacing Erin Housholder, The New Imperialism was released on Lovitt.