First voyage of James Cook Cook had lost not a single man to scurvy, a remarkable and practically unheard-of achievement in 18th-century long-distance seafaring. Adhering to Royal Navy policy introduced in 1747, Cook persuaded his men to eat foods such as citrus fruits and sauerkraut. At that time it was known that poor diet caused scurvy but not specifically that a vitamin C deficiency was the culprit. Sailors of the day were notoriously against innovation, and at first the men would not eat the sauerkraut. Cook used a "method I never once knew to fail with seamen." He ordered it served to himself and the
Names of the days of the week nundinal cycle with the seven-day week. Our earliest evidence for this new system is a Pompeiian graffito referring to the 6th February ("viii idus Februarius") of the year AD 60 as "dies solis" ("Sunday"). Another early witness is a reference to a lost treatise by Plutarch, written in about AD 100, which addressed the question of "Why are the days named after the planets reckoned in a different order from the actual order?". The days were named after the planets of Hellenistic astrology, in the order Sun, Moon, Mars ("Ares"), Mercury ("Hermes"), Jupiter ("Zeus"), Venus ("Aphrodite") and Saturn ("Cronos"). The