Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 30

= December 30 =

GSD


Part of the image to the right depicts Christopher Columbus' first landing, upon discovering the New World; he holds a banner inscribed ''A.D. 1492/G. S. D. 1.'' The first is the year, of course, but what is GSD 1? G. S. D. doesn't exist, G.S.D. redirects to an article about an Italian automotive company, and nothing on the GSD disambiguation page seems to be remotely related to a new era, either something beginning with the reunification of Spain or the discovery of the Americas.

In case you're wondering, the poster is something by the Improved Order of Red Men published in 1889. Nyttend (talk) 05:16, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The Red Men have their own dating system: "Prior to the year A. D. 1865, the Jewish style namely, the Year of the World, was observed by Red Men in dating their documents. At the Council held in G. S. 5626, this system was discontinued and G. S. D., or Great Sun of Discovery, was adopted, the year 1492 being considered G. S. D. 1." (Either that or Chris is providing a public service message about the dangers of glycogen storage disease type I.) Clarityfiend (talk) 09:04, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * (following from edit request) &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  09:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I've done some searching in Google Books and it seems that in the Improved Order of Red Men, a month was called a "moon", a year was a "great sun", and G.S.D. stood for "great sun of discovery", that is, the year counting from Columbus's first arrival in the New World. Although the word "moon" might suggest a lunar calendar, they used the same one we do, just with the months renamed and the years renumbered.  One source I found in Google Books for this is H. L. Mencken's book The American Language, 1945 edition. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 05:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Have a close look at the image. Down at the bottom, directly below the white disc, is a picture of someone - presumably that Italian Spanish  Portuguese bearded explorer himself - carrying a flag with "A.D. 1492 G.S.D. 1" on it. I wouldn't have noticed except for the answers already above. --Shirt58 (talk) 02:29, 1 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I have now added a brief paragraph to the Improved Order of Red Men article using some of the references quoted above, and have added a note to the GSD page. Alansplodge (talk) 14:13, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Fictional Characters with Wikipedia pages?
Do we or don't we, have such a category, I mean. The thought arose in relation to Sloan Sabbith (The Newsroom), where altering a Wikipedia entry is a minor sub-plot. DOR (HK) (talk) 20:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The very top level is Category:Fictional characters - is that what you're looking for? We have many thousands of pages on individual fictional characters. Tevildo (talk) 20:42, 30 December 2015 (UTC)