THE 13 MONTH SOL CALENDAR Configuration: * Twelve contiguous and identical months of exactly 28 days. * The last, thirteenth month of the year (December) has 29 days normally and 30 days in a leap year. * The new month (Sol) occurs between June and July. Features: * Avoids the use of intercalary days and the disruption of the standard week. * Implementations of 13 period financial calendars are already in wide use in business and accounting. * Placing the new month (Sol) at mid-year minimizes the seasonal displacement of the traditional months. * Placing the extra day(s) year-end allows all months to be identical for their first 28 days in any given year. Peculiarities: * Any year beginning on a Sunday will feature thirteen Friday the 13ths. * Blue moons (a second full moon in a calendar month) will become even more rare since they can only occur in December. * More birthdays will be celebrated on the 28th over the next century, but in declining numbers. Although not perpetual, the calendar does offer an easy method for date/day calculations: To calculate any day or date in a given year you only need three bits of information. First, what day of the week did January 1st fall on? Secondly, is this a leap year? Lastly, remember the numbers 1, 8, 15 and 22 (1, 1+7, 1+14, 1+21). Assume January 1st was a Friday and it's a leap year. That means that the first, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-second day of every month is a Friday. The twenty-ninth day of December (1+28) is also a Friday and, since it's a leap year, Saturday the 30th is the last day of the year. What is the third Monday in May? Again assuming January 1st was a Friday, the third Friday in any month is the 15th so, with a bit of addition, the third Monday is the 18th. What day of the week is August 13th? August 8th is a Friday (as is August 15th) so either adding or subtracting, one deduces the date is a Wednesday. every@ma.sdf.org