Today, I learned about:
Have you ever thought about why the week contains seven days, at least in Western cultures? In Western cultures, it seems that 7 is a holy number used in many contexts, although Asians many times consider it a number that brings bad luck. More about that can be found in reference #1, under the heading History.
As I told you in my 10-year post on 9’2026 (2026-01-09) , during the upcoming posts I will review some of the older posts, and in fact, in the very second post on 10’2016 (2016-01-10), I mentioned that according to the international standard ISO 8601:2004, there is a normalized manner of writing dates in the format of “YYYY-MM-DD”.
But there are many more things to be considered in that standard, e.g. it states that the first day of a week is a Monday. However, you may live in a country that has the tradition of using Sunday as the first day of the week. Where I live, in Brazil, that is the normal way of thinking. And as a consequence, the days in Portuguese are named as Domingo, Segunda-feira, Terça-feira, Quarta-feira, Quinta-feira, Sexta-feira, and Sábado. You probably understand the meaning of what Monday through Friday is in Portuguese, but where does it come from? The Portuguese word “feira” means a sort of street market, where you can go and buy fruits, vegetables etc. In ancient Portugal, Sunday was the first day of the week with such a market, Monday was the second day, thus Segunda-feira, etc.!
Today’s header photo was taken in Schwerin, Northern Germany, by my friend Alfredo Acosta. It shows the castle built in the 12th century, replacing the ruins of a former slavic fortress and that is also the birth date of the city of Schwerin. More about Schwerin can be found in reference #2. (Alfredo’s wife, Laura Ponce, contributed with a photo from another German city, Greifswald, in my post 151’2025 (2025-05-31). Thank you both for your valuable contributions!
That’s what I learned in school today!
Ref.:
1: Week history
2: Schwerin
What did you learn in School today? 