Tuesday

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The god Týr, identified with Mars, after whom Tuesday is named.

For other uses, see Tuesday (disambiguation).

The word "Tuesday" comes from Middle English Twisday, from Old English Tiwes dæg, a rendering of Latin Martis dies. The Romance languages' words for "Tuesday" are variations on this: mardi in French, martes in Spanish and martedì in Italian. The Portuguese uses numbers instead of pagan names and so their word for "Tuesday" is têrça-feira. The English and Scandinavian names are derived from the Nordic god Tyr (in Old English, Tiw, Tew or Tiu. In Swedish, Tisdag, Danish: Tirsdag, Finnish: Tiistai and in Norwegian: Tirsdag/Tysdag, Icelandic: Týsdagur.) Tyr was the Norse equivalent of the Roman war god Mars, hence Martis dies ("Mars's day"). The Russian word for "Tuesday" is vtórnik, meaning "second"; that is, counting Tuesday as the second day of the week.

Quakers traditionally referred to Tuesday as "Third Day" eschewing the pagan origin of the English name "Tuesday".

In the Greek world, Tuesday (the day of the week of the Fall of Constantinople) is considered an unlucky day. The same is true in the Spanish-speaking world, where a proverb runs En martes, ni te cases ni te embarques (On Tuesday, neither get married nor begin a journey). For both Greeks and Spanish-speakers, the 13th of the month is considered unlucky if it falls on Tuesday, instead of Friday.

Tuesday is the usual day for elections in the United States. Federal elections take place on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November; this date was established by a law of 1845 for presidential elections (specifically for the selection of the Electoral College), and was extended to elections for the House of Representatives in 1875 and for the Senate in 1914. Tuesday was the earliest day of the week which was practical for polling in the early nineteenth century: citizens might have to travel for a whole day to cast their vote, and would not wish to leave on Sunday which was a day of worship for the great majority of them.

In business, particularly office work, studies have shown that Tuesday is usually the most productive day of the week.^[1]

1 Tuesday in popular culture
- 1.1 Music
2 Astrology
3 Named days
4 Home Video/Audio Release

[edit] Tuesday in popular culture

Tuesday Morning is a chain of discount gift and home accessory stores.
Tuesday Night Book Club was a short-lived show CBS reality TV series that aired on Tuesday evenings.
Reality Tuesday is the name of a coffee shop in Park Hills, Kentucky.
Grim Tuesday is the name of a book by the childrens author, Garth Nix
Actress Tuesday Weld
Ruby Tuesday (restaurant)
In Rejected Cartoons, "Tuesday's coming, did you bring your coat?"

[edit] Music

The song "Tuesday (I'm Not Ordinary)" by The Most
Last Tuesday (punk rock group)
The Real Tuesday Weld (band)
Til Tuesday (new wave group)
Tuesday Night Music Club is the name of Sheryl Crow's 1993 debut album
The song "Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
The song " Love You Till Tuesday" by David Bowie
The song "Tuesday Heartbreak" by Stevie Wonder
The song "Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon)" by The Moody Blues
The song Tuesday Morning" by Michelle Branch, on her 2003 album Hotel Paper. A different song of the same name by Melissa Etheridge can be found on her 2004 album "Lucky"
"Tuesday's Child" is a song by the band All About Eve sung by "Julianne Regan" on their album "Scarlet and Other Stories"
The song "Ruby Tuesday" from the Rolling Stones

Contradicting other nations, Tuesday is a day of good luck and prosperity in the United States. It is a day for progress and to complete unfinished work. Of course, it's also the day when the September 11 terrorist attacks and the stock market crash of 1929 took place. So that's not really true.

[edit] Astrology

In French, Tuesday is "Mardi", associating it with the planet Mars. Tuesday is also associated with the planet Pluto. This marries Tuesday with ideas of strife, battles to be won and pressing issues and jobs to get sorted. It is not a day to relax. This same meaning can be seen in the Spanish "Martes" and the English "Tuesday" ("Tyr's day.") In India, Tuesday is called "Mangalvar", for the Vedic planet Mangala or Mars.

[edit] Named days

Black Tuesday, in the United States, refers to October 29, 1929, part of the great Stock Market Crash of 1929. This was the Tuesday after Black Thursday. The crash is said to have marked the start of the Great Depression. Black Tuesday, of course, can also refer to September 11, 2001, the day of the terrorist attacks on the United States in New York and on the Pentagon.
Happy Tuesday is a minor holiday celebrated primarily by students in the United Kingdom.
Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of every month when Microsoft releases patches for their products. Some system administrators call this day Black Tuesday.
Shrove Tuesday (also called Mardi Gras - fat Tuesday) precedes the first day of Lent in the Western Christian calendar.
Super Tuesday is the day many American states hold their presidential primary elections.
Twofer-Tuesday—radio stations play two songs by the same artist back-to-back on Tuesdays

[edit] Home Video/Audio Release

In the United States and Canada, most home videos are released on Tuesdays for purchase or rental. Since this policy began, there have been very few exceptions to this common release day. Two examples of exceptions are Shrek 2, which was released on a Friday and Mission: Impossible 3, which was released on a Monday. Some stores have been known to release movies in advance of the street date, but they can be penalized by the movie studios for doing this.

All other major video and audio releases occur on Tuesdays.