22 December 2008

Note the am/pm

Hmm, maybe the local councillors in UK will ban a.m. and p.m. next.

I was looking at the origins of a.m. and p.m.

According to Ask Oxford, these abbreviations are derived from Latin and goes way back to the 17th Century.

Excerpt:

These abbreviations represent the Latin phrase ante/post meridiem, which mean 'before/after midday'.

While on the topic, remember how Greenwich of GMT fame came to be?

From Online Etymology Dictionary:

Royal Observatory was set up in 1675 by King Charles II to "solve the problem of finding longitude while at sea".

It was in 1884 that representatives of 25 countries met up for the International Meridian Conference.

They decided to adopt a single world meridian, passing through the principal Transit Instrument at the observatory at Greenwich, as the basis of calculation for all longitude and a worldwide 24-hour clock.

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