World Calendar - Background and History

Background and History

The World Calendar has its roots in the proposed calendar of the Abbot Marco Mastrofini, a proposal to reform the Gregorian calendar year so that it would always begin on Sunday, January 1, and would contain equal quarters of 91 days each. The 365th day of the solar cycle would be a year-end, "intercalary" and optionally holy day. In leap years, a second "intercalary day" follows Saturday, 30 June.

Elisabeth Achelis founded The World Calendar Association (TWCA) in 1930 with the goal of worldwide adoption of The World Calendar. It functioned for most of the next twenty-five years as The World Calendar Association, Inc. Throughout the 1930s, support for the concept grew in the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations. Achelis started the Journal of Calendar Reform in 1931, publishing it for twenty-five years, and wrote five books, on the calendar concept.

Following World War II, Achelis solicited worldwide support for The World Calendar. As the movement gained international appeal with legislation introduced in the United States Congress, awaiting international decisions, Achelis accepted advice that the United Nations was the proper body to act on calendar reform. At the United Nations in 1955, the United States significantly delayed universal adoption by withholding support "unless such a reform were favoured by a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States acting through their representatives in the Congress of the United States." Also, Achelis wrote in 1955, (JCR Vol. 25, page 169), "While Affiliates and Committees have over the years and still are able to approach all branches of their governments, the Incorporated (International) Association was prevented from seeking legislation in the United States lest it lose its tax exempt status. Because of this I have been prevented from doing in my own country that which I have been urging all other Affiliates to do in theirs."

By 1956, she dissolved The World Calendar Association, Incorporated. It continued as the International World Calendar Association through the rest of the century with several directors including Molly E. Kalkstein, who is related to Achelis, and who provided the Association's first official website during her 2000–2004 tenure. The Association reorganised in 2005 as The World Calendar Association, International. It is currently active with resumed efforts towards adoption of The World Calendar in 2012. The World Calendar Association's current director is Wayne Edward Richardson of Ellinwood, Kansas.