I recently came across the following image on my Facebook timeline:

I know it is in Portuguese, and I did try to find its equivalent in English. I’m sure it is out there… But I couldn’t find it, so here is the next best thing: the same hoax that circulated in Aug. 2014:

I particularly enjoy how the author says it is “no laughing matter”. Wrong. It is a laughing matter, and we should all be laughing at whoever believed in this!

The mere fact that I had to go to Aug. 2014 to find a similar “phenomenon” is proof enough that it is not rare at all, the 5 Fridays thing… With only 10 clicks of your mouse you can take the calendar of your PC to January 2016 and see it happening again! The promised 823 years just turned into a few months. Frustrating!

The incomensurability of the week and the month causes this type of confusion. We never know in far advance which day of the month belongs to which day of the week. But to think that the recurrence takes 823 years… that’s just too naïve for my taste!

The month and the week have astronomical origins, and I talked about that when I started this series on the calendar: here.

All I can do is wish for a great week to all my readers, and hope nobody will forward this kind of message! ■