2 entries tagged history. All writing.
TECHNOLOGY · SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 Fifty-Two Weeks, No Remainder A study by Prof. Eshbal Ratzon of Tel Aviv University argues that the Qumran sect really did run its famous 364-day calendar in daily life — at least at first — and then quietly stopped, because 364 days is a day and a quarter short of a solar year and the error compounds. Here is what the calendar was for, why a number divisible by seven was worth that much trouble, what the roughly twenty calendrical scrolls actually contain, and why the argument matters to anyone reading Second Temple texts. WORLD · SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 Nobody Wanted to Go First When the UN's 81st General Assembly opens its general debate on September 22, Brazil's president speaks first, as every Brazilian president has, on and off, since the late 1940s. The standard one-line explanation — "a tradition dating to 1955" — is true, but it skips the six years in between when the honor actually changed hands three times.