The average price for a 2021 calendar right now is $10 on Amazon. They are beautiful calendars that come with a beautiful picture each month. There are many choices, such as Ansel Adam pictures, weekly Dilbert or National Geographic. Each month or week you will get a new picture to review and then a monthly list of dates.

Contrast that to a 1946 Calendar made by the Friedler Calendar Company in New Haven Connecticut. Instead of a minimum of 12 pictures, you get one picture of a landscape labeled “Green Pastures. The artist is not identified, but a picture search shows it was drawn by Thomas Moran, of the Hudson School.

I happen to have a 2021 calendar, so I wanted to check two points on this 1946 Calendar: 1) What are the differences in historical milestones between 1946 and 2021 and 2) Did the 1946 Calendar get any entries wrong.

Here is an analysis of points 1 and 2. Unless noted, names are birthdays. The differences are in bold. The incorrect entries are in red:

January

• 1946: New Year’s Day, Benjamin Franklin, Robert E. Lee, Franklin D. Roosevelt
• 2021: New Year’s Day, Holiday (Scotland), Martin Luther King Day

February

• 1946: Ground Hog Day, Abraham Lincoln, St. Valentine’s Day, George Washington’s
• 2021: Ground Hog Day, Chinese New Year, Abraham Lincoln, Flag day, President’s/Family Day, George Washington

March

• 1946: First Congress under Constitution - 1789, Saint Patrick’s Day, First Day of Spring
• 2021: ST. David’s Day, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Daylight savings time, St. Patrick’s Day, First Day of Spring, British Summertime Begins, Mothering Sunday

April

• 1946: Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Ulysses S. Grant
• 2021: Tartan Day, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Passover, St. George’s Day, Earth Day.

May

• 1946: Mother’s Day, Lindbergh Flies N.Y to Paris - 1927, Memorial Day
• 2021: Cinco de Mayo, Bank Holiday, Mother’s Day, Victoria Day, Memorial Day, Spring Bank Holiday

June

• 1946: Flag Day, Battle of Bunker Hill - 1775, Longest Day of the year, First U.S Troops reach France - 1917, Germany signed peace treaty - 1919
• 2021: Flag Day, Father’s Day, First Day of Summer,

July

• 1946: Battle of Gettysburg, Independence Day, World War Began
• 2021: Independence Day, Battle of the Boyne Day

August

• 1946: First Cable Message across Atlantic - 1858, First Locomotive - 1829, Panama Canal Opened -1914, Women’s Suffrage effective 1920
• 2021: Civic Holiday, Summer Bank Holiday, Summer Bank Bank Holiday

September

• 1946: Labor Day, World War 2 Began, Beginning of Autumn
• 2021: Labor Day, Grandparent’s day, Patriot Day, Constitution Day, First Day of Autumn, Rosh Hashanah

October

• 1946: Columbus Discover America, Cornwallis Surrender, Theodore Roosevelt, Halloween
• 2021: Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, British Summer Time Ends, Halloween

November

• 1946: Armistice Day, Thanksgiving Day
• 2021: Daylight Saving Time Ends, Guy Fawkes Day, Veterans Day/Remembrance Day, Thanksgiving Day, St. Andrew’s Day

December

• 1946: Remember Pearl Harbor, U. S Entered World War 2, Capt. Colin P. Kelly, JR. sank the Haruna - 1941, Landing of the Pilgrims, First day of Winter, Day
• 2021: Pearl Harbor, First Day of Winter, Hanukkah, Christmas Day, Boxing Day/Kwanzaa

Given that I was listing differences, I started judging the two calendars. Which was better than the other based on the milestones listed? The 2021 edition felt much more cosmopolitan, but the 1946 dates had some feel-good American dates. I scanned the dates again and I really don’t have a winner; I ideally would like to combine the milestones to get a list of events in our multi-cultural society while also listing some important dates.

One interesting point about the dates is the December 1946 Milestone for Capt. Colin P. Kelly, Jr. Sank the Haruna. I never heard about that event, so I read through a Wikipedia entry. Surprisingly, the event appears to be wrong:

On 13 December 1941, an erroneous report was published in the U.S. media that an American B-17 heavy bomber had bombed and mortally damaged Haruna during battle off Lingayen Gulf off the Philippines. No Japanese battleships were present, and Haruna was 1,500 nmi (2,800 km; 1,700 mi) away in the Gulf of Siam at the time.[21]

Thus even though this calendar was published five years after the event, the calendar writer still got the details wrong.