{"id":36175,"date":"2014-10-13T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T07:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=36175"},"modified":"2017-08-30T18:40:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T01:40:28","slug":"day-history-october-13th-almanac-spy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/day-history-october-13th-almanac-spy\/","title":{"rendered":"This Day in History: October 13th- The Almanac and the Spy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The_Old_Farmer's_Almanac\"<\/a>This Day In History<\/a>: October 13, 1792<\/strong><\/p>\n

Way back on October 13, 1792, when George Washington was serving his first term as president, the first issue of what is today known as The Old Farmer’s Almanac<\/em> went on sale for the asking price of six pence (nine cents). It was a big hit, tripling its circulation from 3,000 to 9,000 by the time its second issue was published.<\/p>\n

There were many almanacs available providing the same content, such as tidal information, astronomical events and weather forecasts, so what made – and makes \u2013 The Old Farmer\u2019s Almanac<\/em> more popular than all the others?<\/p>\n

For starters, Robert B. Thomas, the Almanac\u2019s editor, had a secret method of weather forecasting that was (supposedly) surprisingly on the money. He devised a unique way of interpreting natural cycles that gave him an 80 percent accuracy rate, and to this day his method is locked away in a box at the Almanac office in Dublin, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

When Thomas died in 1846 (legend has it he was proofing the 1847 edition at the time), The Old Farmer’s Almanac<\/em> was the best selling periodical in the United States. So even if the weather forecasts came up short here and there, he was definitely doing something right. (It probably helped that this particular item was not only useful for reading, but also wiping after going the old number two. At the time, toilet paper was virtually non-existent in the western world. The Almanac even helpfully came with a hole in it so it could easily be hung in outhouses. It wouldn’t be until the early 20th century that toilet paper became a thing in the United States<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

John H. Jenks, the new editor, officially added the world \u201cOld\u201d to the title of the Almanac in 1848 (previously it was known as The Farmer\u2019s Almanac<\/em>.) In 1851, the cover was changed to include an illustration of the four seasons by artist Henry Jenkins, which has graced every issue since.<\/p>\n

During the late 1800s, the editors of The Old Farmer\u2019s Almanac<\/em> added features geared towards a general audience. One hapless editor dropped the weather forecast in the 1930s, but the reader backlash was so negative that the poor guy\u2019s reputation at the magazine was shot.<\/p>\n

Robb Sagendorph, who founded Yankee<\/em> magazine four years earlier, bought The Old Farmer’s Almanac<\/em> in 1939. His mission was to return the magazine to the style and format of its original editor Robert B. Thomas. The Almanac became filled with New England wit and charm once again, and its sales picked up after falling to an all-time low a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

The Old Farmer\u2019s Almanac<\/em> record of continuous publication was threatened when a German spy was caught by the FBI \u2013 and he happened to have a copy of the Almanac in his coat pocket. The U.S. Government surmised he was using it for its weather reports, so it seemed the Almanac was indirectly supplying information to the enemy.<\/p>\n

A nervous Sagendorph managed to convince the Feds that if the magazine published weather indications rather than forecasts, they would not be violating the \u201cCode of Wartime Practices for the American Press.\u201d The FBI was cool with that, so the Almanac\u2019s perfect run continued unbroken (and does to this day). (Though it seems a lot of fuss for forecasts that, in reality, are about as accurate as flipping a coin. In fact, while this particular publication has a reputation for being one of the most accurate long term weather forecasting outlets out there, according to Dr. John Walsh, an Atmospheric Science professor at the University of Illinois, after reviewing their monthly forecast predictions over 5 years, he found The Old Farmer’s Almanac<\/em> only correctly predicted deviations from normal annual averages at a rate of 50.7% accurate for monthly temperature forecasts and 51.9% for precipitation forecasts, when compared to actual weather station readings for the time periods.)<\/p>\n

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