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The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.)

The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2021–2024.

Historia Civilis

explainer · evergreen

Open on YouTube

Historia Civilis tells the story of 46 BCE, the 445-day year in which Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar. It covers the political context, including the civil war, Cato and Cicero.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as an entertaining and well-explained account of why our calendar looks the way it does.

people recommended it
4
separate months
3
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2021–2024
“Historia Civilis has a great video explaining how Caeser used the longest year to his advantage in war”
— j-bos, Feb 2024, in “Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion”

What HN commenters said

5 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

hr0mFeb 2024Recommends

Ha, a proof that by watching YouTube videos you learn something. This was covered by one of my favorite series on YouTube. Here is the particular video: ▶ this video

in “Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion” · View on HN

j-bosFeb 2024Recommends

Historia Civilis has a great video explaining how Caeser used the longest year to his advantage in war: ▶ this video

in “Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion” · View on HN

comeonbroSep 2022Recommends

I didn't appreciate until recently that the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar. Like not by some forgotten technocrats incidentally during his time, but Julius Caesar himself as a subject matter expert, as a side-project. With consultation, certainly, but by his initiative, from long-standing engagement with the problem in one of his early jobs from long before he was a main character of the Roman story. Digestable and entertaining (fragment of a) video on the topic: ▶ this video

in “Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar” · View on HN

shagieApr 2022Recommends

The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.) - ▶ this video gets into the "why the year we have is designed the way it is" ... though it takes 22 minutes to get to that part. It wasn't really better as the 30 * 12 + 5 approach needed manual application of the + 5... which is what the new calendar was trying to avoid.

in “3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work” · View on HN

gopalvAug 2021Cites it

> Why don’t we use TAI or GPS time for generic world wide coordinated computer time? I think that is valid as long as systems are talking to systems, but the interface with the world (when things are happening in the world) is where the solar day or year is still relevant. I'm sort of joking, but watching Interstellar made me kinda cringe about what interstellar gravity wells is going to do to time-keeping, even if we use something like an atomic clock to keep time. We will slowly get better at this until we discover something new, but the switch doesn't mean anything until the costs outweigh the change. And the leap second is going look like 46-45 BCE[1]. [1] - ▶ this video

in “Leap Smear” · View on HN

Topics & tags

World historyjulius caesarroman republiccalendarancient romehistory