Question:
I won an antique postcard on ebay. It ships from Bulgaria, but ofcourse that doesn't mean it started out there. It appears to be dated,in both the postmark and the hand of the original sender 18.IV.910. Iwould guess this is April 18, 1910, but I could certainly be wrong.The original language of the message on the back seems to be EasternEuropean or Russian and the postmark reads "koynare". I'm mainlyinterested in figuring out the date, but the country and language wouldbe cool too. How do I read this old style date on an antique postcard?

Answer: Looks like Bulgaria. And your guess on the date sounds right: the Europeanshave used Roman numerals to indicate months. I think the use of Roman numerals for months was fairly common -- itmade it clear as to which numbers related to days and which to months.In case it helps, a quick google confirms Koynare is in Bulgaria --latitude 43.35, longitude 24.13 according to this site:http://www.fallingrain.com/world/BU/32/Koynare.html Bulgaria used to use their own rather strange calendar system. Each yearhad 364 "counted" days divided into 12 months and 52 weeks, plus one ortwo "uncounted" days (two for a leap year). Each quarter was 91 dayslong, divided into three months in the pattern 31-30-30. The "uncounted"days didn't belong to any month, quarter or week, which meant that agiven date would be the same weekday every year.However, their year numbering was based on the number of years "sincethe revelation of the true God", and Bulgarian year 910 is 4596 BC inthe Gregorian calendar.I don't know when they switched to using the Gregorian calendar, butthis page suggests that it was only two generations ago