NIELS JØRGEN THØGERSEN
AUGUST And all its 31 days Niels Jørgen Thøgersen This month is named after the Roman emperor Augustus. He ruled in the period 31 BC to 14 AD. The name means The Elevated. He was born in Rome in the year 63 BC and was called Gaius Octavius before he became emperor. He died of natural causes (unlike the vast majority of Roman emperors) as a 77-year-old in the year 14 AD. He was Caesar’s adopted child. It is a frequent misunderstanding that it was Emperor Augustus, who was to blame for that the month of August has 31 days. The legend tells he would not accept that the month he renamed after himself should be shorter than July, which was named after his predecessor and adoptive father, Julius Caesar. The change was previously done by Caesar in the year 45 BC. He extended this month, which originally had only 29 days, with two days. He took them from the month of February. Perhaps to prolong the summer The Latin name of this month was Sextilis (with reference to the fact that it was the sixth month in the previous Roman calendar. It started on 1 March. The old Danish name for this month is MONTH OF HARVEST. The farmers, of course, preferred to do their harvesting in good weather. An old Danish weather warning says that thunder in August means a lot of disease to humans and animals. In the old days in Denmark a number of interesting habits were important during the harvest period in August. One of them was that if a stranger came into the field, where the harvesting took place, all the men would stop working, line up in a long row and hang their caps on the scythes. Then the farm foreman would make 3 loud strokes with his scythe sharpener, and everybody would sharpen their scythes at the same time. For this show the guest had to pay with a bottle of aquavit