almanac -- Command

Print an almanac entry for this date
almanac [month day]

The  command almanac  prints on  the  standard output  an almanac  entry of
noteworthy births,  deaths, and events  that occurred on  this date.  month
and day  give the date  whose listing you  wish to see.  month  must be the
name of the month.  For example, the command

    almanac November 23

prints something like the following on your screen:

    BIRTHS:
    1221: Alfonso X (el Sabio), monarch and music collector, Toledo.
    1876: Manuel de Falla, composer, Cadiz.
    1887: William Henry Pratt (Boris Karloff), actor.
    1888: Adolph "Harpo" Marx, comedian & musician, New York City.
    DEATHS:
    1585: Thomas Tallis, composer, Greenwich.
    EVENTS:
    1923: Height of German inflation: 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar.
    1935: First "Porky Pig" cartoon premieres.

If  you do  not supply  any  arguments on  the command,  almanac prints  an
almanac listing for today.

almanac reads its  information from the files almanac.birth, almanac.death,
and almanac.event, which are kept in directory /usr/games/lib. Each has the
same format: the date encoded by the first three letters of the name of the
month (with an  initial capital letter), followed by the  day of the month,
followed by the body of the entry.  For example:

    Nov 23 1221: Alfonso X (el Sabio), monarch and music collector, Toledo.

You are encouraged to modify these files to suit your tastes and interests.

See Also

commands

Notes

almanac does not check for bogus  dates before it reads its data files.  It
also is quite rigid in how it expects its data base to be laid out.

The data files reflect the tastes  of the person who compiled them, and can
be rather idiosyncratic.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness