The Iranian calendars or Iranian chronology are a succession of calendars invented or used for over two millennia in Iran known as Persia. One of the longest chronological records in human history, the Iranian calendar has been modified time and time again during its history to suit administrative and religious purposes; the modern Iranian calendar is the official calendar in Iran. It begins at the midnight nearest to the instant of the vernal equinox as determined by astronomical calculations for the Iran Standard Time meridian, it is, therefore, an observation-based calendar, unlike the Gregorian, rule-based. The Iranian year begins within a day of 21 March of the Gregorian calendar. A short table of year correspondences between the Persian and Gregorian calendars is provided below; the earliest evidence of Iranian calendrical traditions is from the second millennium BCE and even predates the appearance of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster. The first preserved calendar is that of the Achaemenids, a royal dynasty of the 5th century BCE who gave rise to Zoroastrianism.

Throughout recorded history, Persians have been keen on the idea and importance of having a calendar. They were among the first cultures to use a solar calendar and have long favoured a solar over lunar and lunisolar approaches; the sun has always been a religious and divine symbol in Iranian culture and is the origin of the folklore regarding Cyrus the Great. Old Persian inscriptions and tablets indicate that early Iranians used a 360-day calendar based on the solar observation directly and modified for their beliefs. Days were not named; the months had three divisions depending on the phase of the moon. Twelve months of 30 days were named for activities of the pastoral year. A 13th month was added every six years to keep the calendar synchronized with the seasons; the following table lists the Old Persian months. There were four farming festivals, symmetrical about maidyoshahem: Two more festivals were added, creating the six gahanbar: The first calendars based on Zoroastrian cosmology appeared in the Achaemenid period.

They evolved over the centuries. The unified Achaemenid Empire required a distinctive Iranian calendar, one was devised in Egyptian tradition, with 12 months of 30 days, each dedicated to a yazata, four divisions resembling the Semitic week. Four days per month were dedicated to Ahura Mazda and seven were named after the six Amesha Spentas. Thirteen days were named after Fire, Sun, Moon and Geush Urvan, Sraosha, Fravashi, Bahram and Vata, the divinity of the wind. Three were dedicated to the female divinities, Daena and Arshtat; the remaining four were dedicated to Asman, Manthra Spenta and Anaghra Raocha. The month names and their modern versions are given in the following table; the calendar had a significant impact on religious observance. It fixed the pantheon of major divinities, ensured that their names were uttered since at every Zoroastrian act of worship the yazatas of both day and month were invoked, it clarified the pattern of festivities. In 538 BC Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and the Babylonian luni-solar calendar came into use for civil purposes.

Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525 BC. He was accompanied by Darius, a Zoroastrian who became ruler of the Persian empire in 517 BC; the Zoroastrians adopted the wandering Egyptian solar calendar of twelve months of thirty days plus five epagomenal days. As their year began in the spring the epagemonai were placed just before norouz. In Egypt the star Sirius had significance since every 1460 years its heliacal rising marked the Egyptian new year and the inundation of the Nile. In Persia the star had significance, since its heliacal rising there coincided with the coming of the rain; the fourth Persian month was Tishtrya. The vernal equinox at Greenwich fell on the first day of the first month from 487 to 483 BC. Adopting S H Taqizadeh's date of 28 March 487 BC for the reform the calendar for that year is as follows: The fourth month includes 20 July, the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius. In the first year the people carried on using the old calendar, anticipating festival dates by five days; as each day is named after a god, it is important to observe the celebrations on the right day.

Thus the fravasis festival, which in the old calendar was kept between sunset on 30 Spandarmad and sunrise on 1 Frawardin, was now observed throughout the epagemonai. In the second year of the reform, the old 30 Spandarmad was the new 25 Spandarmad, so from on the festival covered eleven days, up to the new 1 Frawardin. Five days was considered enough for other festivals, however. In all the lands where the Persian calendar was used the epagemonai were placed at the end of the year. To offset the difference between the agricultural year and the calendar year the start of the araji year was delayed by one month every 120 years. A Roman historian, Quintus Curtius Rufus, describing a ceremony in 33

The River Valley Conference is a high school sports Conference in northeastern and two high schools in a southern suburbs is "Illinois Lutheran and Beecher High School in Illinois, United States. The conference is part of the Illinois High School Association; the conference started around 1940 as the Kankakee Valley Conference, making up schools from the Kankakee County and Will County area. The conference had split into two divisions in 1953 to make football scheduling more manageable, but maintained the conference in basketball and other sports. With the Iroquois and Vermilion Valley conferences folding, the KVC took on some of their members, prompting the change to its current name; the biggest shift since occurred in 2006, as its larger schools left to join schools with similar membership, leaving the RVC as a rural, smaller school conference. Note: records before 1948-49 are incomplete; some teams may have played in the conference before the date recorded, other schools may have played in the conference's early years.

Known as Crete until 1948. Known as Reddick until 1950. Known as St. Patrick until 1955. Herscher played concurrently in the KVC and VVC from 1950 to 1954. List of Illinois High School Association member conferences

A Summer to Die was Lois Lowry's first novel. Meg, the younger of the two sisters, is the story's narrator and primary protagonist, their father, an English professor at a university, has decided to take a year off from teaching to write a book that he, only half jokingly, claims will shake the world of literature. This means the family relocates to a small country house where his daughters are upset they will be sharing a room. Like most sisters and Molly quarrel over silly things, Meg is jealous of her sister's blonde curls and long eyelashes; the owner of the house the family is renting lives down the road in a smaller house on the same property. The sisters soon establish a rapport with the elderly Will Banks, who learns about photography with Meg and teaches Molly about the abundant wildflowers covering the estate. A few months after coming to the country, Molly begins having constant nosebleeds that the doctor blames on the cold weather, it is not until Molly's bed is soaked in blood that she is rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a fatal disease: acute myelogenous leukemia.

After treatment, she seems to recover though the pills she's taking are causing her hair to fall out. Shortly thereafter, Ben Brady and a pregnant Maria Abbott, whom the townspeople incorrectly assume not to be married, arrive to make the third Banks house their home, all the inhabitants of the property enjoy each other's company for a while; the unthinkable happens, Molly is rushed back to the hospital. She asks Meg to tell the baby to wait to be born until she comes home, Meg obliges her, asks the baby to be born in the daytime since she's been invited to take pictures of the birth, they named. In the end, Molly dies and the family moves back to the city. Through it all, with help from those who love her, Meg finds the jealousy she once had for her sister has changed into pure love, she must choose to accept that bad things happen to good people. In the end, she does. Lowry drew upon her own experience of losing her sister at a young age, she states in a 2002 lecture, "A Summer to Die wrenched open the excruciating door of loss.

My beloved sister had died young. She was the one. "My family, stoic and Nordic, was silent after the loss.... Shakespeare tells us to give sorrow words, but it took me so many years to do so, coming from a tradition such as mine, which taught me not to open a door on such darkness. Having done so—having felt the weight of the closed door lifted—I began to hear from the children and families affected by the book, and only for the first time, did I perceive that when I, as a child, sought from stories something that I had no name for, it had been unquestioning intimacy I needed. A place to listen with one's heart. Glimpsed light spilling from a warm kitchen into the dark staircase where I sat alone."