As you hang up that new Beefcake Men of the Australian Outback or Adorable Kittens Doing Adorable Things calendar you received as a Christmas present on this first day of the year 2012, mathematicians and economists from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have devised a new calendar for the world: one that always remains the same!
The economists claim that having a standard year without a leap day added would save the global economy billions of dollars each year, due to the predictability of when a date falls, such as Christmas, New Year, as well as personal dates such as anniversaries and birthdays.
Under the new Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, if Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2011 it would also fall on a Sunday in 2012 and every year after. This would be a big change from the current Gregorian calendar the world uses, which adds an extra day to the calendar month of February every four years. (2012 will be a Leap Year, by the way). The Gregorian calendar was first introduced by Pope Gregory XIII and has been in use since the year 1582, replacing the earlier Julian calendar.
