Aug 11 2021227 The Rasputin Disclaimer

Nearly every English-language movie has a disclaimer in the credits that says something like “This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” Obviously this isn’t true. Historical epics, biopics, and other movies are clearly based on real people. Why does this disclaimer pretend otherwise?

The answer, it turns out, has a lot to do with Rasputin.

Jan 02 201511 Maps of Time

Happy New Year! It’s January First, 2015, and you probably have a new calendar. Calendars tend to be irregular, weird, and uneven, but some folks have attempted to smooth that out throughout history.

Below is the Soviet Calendar. Workers were assigned colors, and based on the color assigned to you, that would be your day off.

Soviet calendar 1930 color

Related Links:

Read about the Soviet Calendar on History Today (login required)

Convert Gregorian dates into French Republican dates here.

The current time and date according to the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.

Scientific American on the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.

An overview of the Symmetry454 Calendar.