The Last Person Who Remembered The 13th Month Was Alive In 1927 — And She Revealed Everything

Summary

The video tells the story of Hannah Pell, a 101-year-old woman living in a Lincolnshire almshouse in 1927. When young reporter Arthur Lyle asks her about a proposed 13-month calendar, she laughs and says it isn’t new: she remembers an old summer month her grandmother called the Sun month.

For four weeks between haymaking and harvest, she says, rents, wages, and debts were put on hold. The month was a time for visiting, fairs, dancing, and weddings.

Lyle’s notebook and a newspaper proof of his story were kept for decades, but the story never ran. An editor’s blue-pencil note says “Not this,” and the month’s name was scratched out. The video uses this mystery to explore how calendars have changed, pointing to Rome’s extra month of Mercedonius, Britain’s 1752 calendar change, and Russia’s 1918 switch to the Gregorian calendar. It suggests that calendar reforms repeatedly redistributed or removed days, often affecting when people were paid or when debts came due.

Calendar Connections

The narrator connects Hannah’s memory to Moses Cotsworth’s 13-month calendar proposal, which was considered in the 1920s and used by Kodak for decades. In Hannah’s remembered system, every month began on Sunday, making every Friday the 13th a market day—not an unlucky date.

The video contrasts this with modern superstition around Friday the 13th, while speculating that the number’s bad reputation helped obscure the old calendar.

The “Sun” Month

The central reveal comes from Hannah’s cryptic note to Lyle: “Count the ends.” The narrator counts the days beyond the first 28 in today’s months and finds 29 extra days in a common year. The video interprets those scattered days as remnants of a thirteenth month, “cut up” and distributed across the calendar.

Finally, the obscured word in Lyle’s notebook is reportedly recovered as “Sun,” which the narrator links to Cotsworth’s proposed midsummer month, Sol.

The video ends without claiming to prove that the old Fenland month was the source of Cotsworth’s idea. Instead, it leaves the connection as an open question—and closes with Hannah’s image of a whole countryside briefly living through a month “that owed nothing.”

People Mentioned

• Hannah Pell — The elderly woman who remembers the Sun month.
• Arthur Lyle — The young reporter who interviewed her.
• Moses Cotsworth — The calendar-reform advocate.
• George Eastman — Kodak founder and supporter of Cotsworth’s calendar.
• The narrator — Recounts the notebook’s discovery and investigates its claims.