Who Invented The Weekend?

Who decided we should work FIVE days a week, and only rest for two? Quill has a hammock. Quill has never once finished a nap in it. Somebody is to blame. We follow 4,000 years of the week, from Babylonian stargazers and a Roman emperor to British workers who skipped Mondays, a New England mill, Henry Ford, and two calendars so unpopular they were scrapped. Then: why the week stopped shrinking, and what happened when 61 companies tried four days. 🧡 Got a question for Quill? Leave it in the comments! 0:00 Monday, 7 a.m. 0:24 Why seven days? Blame the Moon 1:30 Rome, market days and the first Sunday off 2:36 Britain and "Saint Monday" 3:58 America and the whole Saturday 5:23 The weeks that failed 6:56 The week that never shrank 8:17 So… who decided? 📚 Sources Origins of the days of the week (Live Science): https://www.livescience.com/45432-day... Nundinae, Rome's eight-day market week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae 7 March 321, Constantine's Sunday law (History Revealed): https://www.historyrevealed.com/on-th... The history of the two-day weekend (The Conversation): https://theconversation.com/history-o... "Week-end" first in print, 1879 (Grammarphobia, OED citations): https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/1... Where the five-day workweek came from (The Atlantic, via Portside): https://portside.org/2014-08-24/where... Ford workers get a 40-hour week (HISTORY): https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h... The 40-hour revolution (TIME): https://content.time.com/time/special... 40 hours, 5 days (Library of Congress): https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/20... 75 years of the Fair Labor Standards Act (EPI): https://www.epi.org/blog/celebrating-... The French Republican Calendar (World History Encyclopedia): https://www.worldhistory.org/French_R... The Republican calendar (napoleon.org): https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-o... For 11 years the Soviet Union had no weekends (HISTORY): https://www.history.com/articles/sovi... Keynes's 15-hour week and working hours since (NBER, Benjamin Friedman): https://www.nber.org/papers/w21713.pdf UK four-day week pilot results (Autonomy, via APO): https://mcp.apo.org.au/node/322792 Animation, script & sound: Quill's Questions Music (Pixabay): Joris Vermeer – Playful Mischief, Playful Cartoon Orchestra, Cute Cartoon Comedy Background, Whimsical Cartoon Adventure · prettyjohn1 – Calm · mmaudio – Start Somewhere Good · Musinova – Minimal Underscore Piano Pulse · John Garnet – Cheeky Chase · geoffreyburch – How Do You Feel · Alban Gogh – A Lullaby Sung in Canon by a Choir #history #weekend #fourdayweek #explained #QuillsQuestions