Tales From The Travels

So, I get this email from my sister saying that she and her husband have

been watching the mini series North and South over the past week. I found it interesting that Jackson and Lee signed the documents ending the Civil War on Palm Sunday April 5th. Which just so happens yesterday, April 5th, was also Palm Sunday.

She called it useless trivia, but I didn’t see it quite that way.

The date for Easter every year is based on the lunar calendar and falls on the first Sunday after the the first full moon after the spring equinox. There have been 144 years since 1865. Since they both fall on the same date (1865 and 2009), there must be an integer number of cycles in that number of years. So, if we were to divide 144 by the integers we can find out how many days there are that can be Easter. The only number that gives a reasonable result is 4, which goes in 36 times. 3 goes in 48 times and that’s too many. 5 does not go in an even number of times and 6 goes in 24, which is too few. So, there must be 36 different days that can be Easter, in one year or another.

If the lunar cycle completes one cycle in 36 years, then this is the 4th April 5th Palm Sunday since Lee and Grant signed the documents. And, since this means there are 36 days that can be Easter, the date range would start with the equinox and count forward from there, which means the date range is from March 22 to April 27. Comparing this to the actual range, March 22 to April 25, we can see this is just about right on. The difference is the way the equinox is defined by the Church, as opposed to the way it is defined in astronomy.

So, you see, it wasn’t entirely useless.

Just something to do during my lunch break.