Now, see believe it or not, I spend a lot of time just repeating the first two lines over and over to myself as needed. I guess you're supposed to memorize the whole thing though: Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine each leap year. MOTHER GOOSE. BTW is this really Mother Goose (she had at least two incarnations too, in case you didn't know)? That's what the internet says. Someone should really look into that. Oh, plus what I do is try to remember the actual story behind things, to help me remember. You know, the ancient Romans thought odd numbers were lucky. Plus 31 numbered months were just longer. So they reserved them for their favorite months, naturally. July and August were named after Caesar and Caesar Augustus. Enough said. January and December were beginnings and ends, which were auspicious. So they had to be thirty-one. But June was named after a female deity, Juno. So it got thirty. You get the picture . Anyone gonna use this now?
I was taught to count my knuckles and valleys in between left to right, stop at July on a knuckle, tap again for August, and go back to the left. The knuckles are the 31 day months and the valleys are the 30 day months. You just have to remember that February is 28 or 9.
Why does February have 28 days? The Origins in Ancient Rome and the Rivalry between Cesare and Augustus. From ancient Rome to the October revolution, calendars have historically been revised, and February is the month that has undergone the most changes "Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty- one, Except for February…” Thanks to the nursery rhyme we learned as children, it is easy to remember that the month of February is shorter than the others, and the only one to have 28 days (which becomes 29 only in leap years). But what is the reason for this "anomaly"? The subdivision of the months of the year dates back to ancient Rome, and the length of February may depend on a dispute between Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus.
