The Medieval Guide to Predicting the New Year

(Photo by the Royal Library)

What will the new year be like? Medieval science informs us with precise accuracy. In the Fourteenth Century text Zibaldone da Canal, an Italian merchant explains that the day of the week on which January 1 falls determines the major events of the new year. This year, that's a Friday. The blog Medievalists quotes the manuscript:

If the first of January comes on a Friday, the winter will be temperate, and the summer and autumn, dry. Grain will be cheap. There will be eye diseases, and many infants will die, and there will be movement of knights, and there will be much oil in some places.

That's spot-on correct so far.

-via VA Viper