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also held the day to be unlucky. Thus, similar to the Jews (but for a different reason, the unluckiness of the day), the seventh day had restrictions on certain activities to avoid dire consequences from the inherit unluckiness of the day. The final “seventh day” of the month for the Babylonians was a day of rest and worship.
    The a ncient Romans, during the Republic, did not use a seven-day week but rather went with eight days. One “eighth day” of every week was set aside as a shopping day where people would buy and sell things, particularly buying food supplies for the following week.
    Rather than labeling the days of the week with actual names, at this time the Romans labeled them with letters, A-H . You might think from this that the “H” was always the shopping day, but this isn’t correct. You see, the calendar year did not divide evenly by eight. Thus, the day of the week that was the day to go shopping changed every year, but they still often referred to a particular day based on its proximity to the shopping day.
    For reasons not entirely clear, within a century after the introduction of the Julian Calendar in 46 BC, the eight-day week started to diminish in popularity in favor of the seven-day week. The full switch was not sudden, happening over centuries. For a time, as the seven-day week grew in popularity, both the seven and eight-day weeks were used in Rome simultaneously. Finally, after the popularity of the eight-day week diminished almost completely, Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, made the seven-day week official in AD 321. Due to the influence of both Rome and Christianity, this has stuck in most regions of the world ever since.
     
     
     
    BONUS FACT
     
    For a very brief time in France and the USSR, the seven-day week was abandoned. The French abandoned the seven-day week in favor of a ten-day week beginning in 1793 thanks to the French Republican Calendar developed in France at that time. This was abandoned nine years later when the Roman Catholic Church was re-established in France. The official switch back to the seven-day week happened on April 18, 1802, Easter Sunday.
    Starting in 1929, the USSR abandoned the seven-day week in favor of at first a five-day week, then a six-day week. This was abandoned and the seven-day week was re-established in 1940.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Why A Typical Work day is Eight  Hours Long
     
    During the Industrial Revolution, companies attempted to maximize the output of their factories by keeping them running as many hours as possible, typically implementing a “Sun up to Sun down” workday. Wages were also extremely low, so employees often needed to work these long shifts just to get by financially. The typical workday at this time lasted anywhere from 10-18 hours per day, six days a week. This all began to change in the nineteenth century.
    The first person to suggest an eight-hour workday for everyone was a British man by the name of Robert Owen, who was also one of the founders of socialism. Owen felt that a day should be divided into thirds, with workers getting equal time to themselves and to sleep as they do for work. Thus, in 1817, he began campaigning for an eight-hour working day for all workers, coining the slogan, “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” Unfortunately, this did not catch on for some time, though throughout the nineteenth century a series of Factories Acts were passed that steadily improved working conditions and reduced work hours for factory workers. For instance, The Factories Act of 1847  stipulated that women and children were to be granted a ten hour workday, thus only having to work 60 hours per week, as opposed to the former amount which in many cases was over 100 hours per week.
    The eight-hour work day cause was taken up once again in Britain, in 1884, by Tom Mann who was part of the Social Democratic Federation. Mann subsequently formed an “Eight Hour League”