Since the early 20th century, calendar reformers have fought to smooth global commerce and unite humanity. But can adopting a new calendar bring people together in peace?

IN THE FALL of 1929, Elisabeth Achelis’ life changed dramatically. After her service as a nurse in World War I, the American heiress filled her days playing bridge at the Colony Club, attending the Metropolitan Opera, and meeting for tea with other ladies from New York’s Social Register, a directory of the city’s prominent residents. Her transformation didn’t come as a result of the Wall Street crash in October of that year but rather through reading a proposal to reform the Gregorian calendar. (This calendar, which was introduced in the 16th century, is the one most of us use on a daily basis.) Others had ignored such schemes, but for her, they brought about a near-religious revelation. As she later wrote in her 1959 book The Calendar for the Modern Age, “I then recalled that Moses through the flaming bush, Samuel in the watches of the night, and St. Paul on the Damascus road, had each received his divine message. I knew that clergymen, teachers, doctors, and reformers had been called to their professions and now I had experienced a ‘calling.’”

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