For as long as humans have looked to the sky and soil to predict upcoming events, almanacs have existed to help them. The word “almanac” itself dates so far back that no one can agree on its origin—guesses range from a Spanish Arabic derivation to a play on the Ancient Greek word for “calendar.”

With its roots in astronomy, early iterations of the almanac were calendars that charted moon phases and the rising and setting times of the sun. The Ancient Greeks and Egyptians included festival dates in their almanacs, while Romans pinpointed lucky and unlucky days to do business and Medieval versions added holy days.

Once the first printed version was distributed in Europe in 1457, their popularity became widespread. Starting in the 1600s, almanacs emphasized scientific developments and researched data over unfounded prophecies, and they eventually evolved throughout Europe and America to include weather predictions, tide tables, proverbs, jokes, short stories, and health and gardening advice. By the 1700s, almanacs were as popular as the Bible—everyone from farmers to fishermen to domestic workers relied on their compelling mixture of scientific and folkloric alchemy.

Benjamin Franklin authored one of colonial America’s bestselling publications, Poor Richard’s Almanack, from 1732 to 1758; his singular wordplay and witticisms helped sell upwards of 10,000 copies a year. And in 1792, the Old Farmer’s Almanac was founded—it remains America’s oldest continuously published periodical. In his days as a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln famously used an 1857 copy of the publication to win a murder trial by debunking witness testimony with the almanac’s lunar chart. Long before the National Weather Service was established, the Old Farmer’s Almanac utilized a top-secret mathematical formula to create its long-range weather forecasts, which farmers still routinely plant and harvest by. To this day, it claims an 80% accuracy rate and distributes about three million copies a year.

To maintain relevance, modern publications like the UK’s Whitaker’s Almanack and the US Almanac of American Politics have broadened their scope to cover subjects including government, education, history, geography and transportation. Almanac archives live on as detailed time capsules of social and environmental trends, and though technology has mastered many of their elements, the almanac’s appeal is rooted in wisdom ancient enough to outlive even the smartest phone or GPS satellite.