A closer look

Because simply counting days is for amateurs, Mayan timekeepers decided their year needed a little apocalyptic spice. The Haab calendar featured 18 months of 20 days, leaving five awkward leftover days at the end of the cycle. Instead of treating this like a long weekend, society considered it a terrifying period of ultimate bad luck where people actively avoided washing, leaving home, or doing absolutely anything productive just to survive the calendar-mandated chaos.