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Contemporary Almanacs Currently published almanacs such as Whitaker's Almanack have expanded their scope and contents beyond that of their historical counterparts. Modern almanacs include a comprehensive presentation of statistical and descriptive data covering the entire world. Contents also include discussions of topical developments and a summary of recent historical events. Other currently published almanacs (ca. 2006) include TIME Almanac with Information Please, World Almanac and Book of Facts, The Farmer's Almanac and The Old Farmer's Almanac. In 2007, Harrowsmith Country Life Magazine launched a Canadian Almanac, written in Canada, with all-Canadian content. Major topics covered by almanacs (reflected by their tables of contents) include: geography, government, demographics, agriculture, economics and business, health and medicine, religion, mass media, transportation, science and technology, sport, and awards/prizes. Other examples include The Almanac of Ame...

Early Modern Almanacs By the second half of the 16th century, yearly almanacs were being produced in English by men such as Anthony Askham, Thomas Buckminster, John Dade and Gabriel Frende. In the 17th century, English almanacs were bestsellers, second only to the Bible; by the middle of the century, 400,000 almanacs were being produced annually (a complete listing can be found in the English Short Title Catalogue). Until its deregulation in 1775, the Stationers' Company maintained a lucrative mononpoly over almanac publication in England. Richard Allestree (who is not the same as Richard Allestree) wrote one of the more popular English almanacs, producing yearly volumes from 1617 to 1643, but his is by no means the earliest or the longest-running almanac. In British America, William Pierce of Harvard College published the first American almanac entitled, An Almanac for New England for the year 1639 Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard became the first center for the annual publi...

Medieval Almanacs After almanacs were devised, people still saw little difference between predicting the movements of the stars and tides, and predicting the future in the divination sense. Early almanacs therefore contained general horoscopes, as well as the more concrete information. In 1150 Solomon Jarchus created such an almanac considered to be among the first modern almanacs. Copies of 12th century almanacs are found in the British Museum, and in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1300, Petrus de Dacia created an almanac (Savilian Library, Oxford). This was the same year Roger Bacon, OFM, produced his as well. In 1327 Walter de Elvendene created an almanac and later on John Somers of Oxford, in 1380. In 1386 Nicholas de Lynne, Oxford produced an almanac. In 1457 the first printed almanac was published at Mainz, by Gutenberg (eight years before the famous Bible). Regio-Montanus produced an almanac in 1472 (Nuremberg, 1472), which was continued in print for several cen...

Ephemerides, Zijs And Tables The origins of the almanac can be connected to ancient Babylonian astronomy, when tables of planetary periods were produced in order to predict lunar and planetary phenomena. Similar treatises called Zij were later composed in medieval Islamic astronomy. The modern almanac differs from Babylonian. Ptolemaic and Zij tables in the sense that "the entries found in the almanacs give directly the positions of the celestial bodies and need no further computation", in contrast to the more common "auxiliary astronomical tables" based on Ptolemy's Almagest. The earliest known almanac in this modern sense is the Almanac of Azarqueil written in 1088 by Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Latinized as Arzachel) in Toledo, al-Andalus. The work provided the true daily positions of the sun, moon and planets for four years from 1088 to 1092, as well as many other related tables. A Latin translation and adaptation of the work appeared as the Tables of...

Hemerologies And Parapegmata The earlier texts considered to be almanacs have been found in the Near east, dating back to the middle of the second millennium BCE. They have been called generally hemerologies, from the Greek 'hēmerā', meaning 'day'. Among them is the so-called Babylonian Almanac, which lists favorable and unfavorable days with advice on what to do on each of them. Successive variants and versions aimed at different readership have been found. Egyptians lists for good and bad moments, three times each day, have also been found. It is not really known how these prognostics were produced but they seem invariably connected with celestial events. The flooding of the Nile valley, a most important event in ancient Egypt, was expected to occur at the summer solstice but as the civil calendar had exactly 365 days, over the centuries the date was drifting in the calendar. The first heliacal rising of Sirius was used for its prediction and this practice, the o...

E arly Almanacs An almanac is text listing a set of events forthcoming in the next year. A calendar, which is a system for time keeping, in written form is usually produced as a most simple almanac: it includes additional informations about the day of the week on which a particular day falls, major holidays, the phases of the moon etc. The set of events noted in an almanac are selected in view of a more or less specific readers e.g. farmers, sailors, astronomers or others.

Etymology The etymology of the word is unclear, but there are several theories: The word almanac derives from the Greek word almenichiaka, which means calendar. The earliest almanacs were calendars that included agricultural, astronomical, or meteorological data. One suggestion is that alamanac was originally an Arabic word, al-manākh, meaning the climate, this refers to the natural change in weather. In the modern sense too an almanac, or almanakh, is the average weather forecast for a certain period of time that is characterized by relatively stable weather conditions covering a specific area, also called climate. However, the earliest documented use of the word in any language is in Latin in 1267 by Roger Bacon, where it meant a set of tables detailing movements of heavenly bodies including the moon. One etymology report says: "The ultimate source of the word is obscure. Its first syllable, al-, and its general relevance to medieval science and technology, strongly s...

Almanac  Calendarium cracoviense, an almanac for the year 1474. An almanac (also archaically spelled almanack and almanach) is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and tabular information often arranged according to the calendar. Astronomical data and various statistics are found in almanacs, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches, and so on.