Calendar History

Someone at snurgle pointed this out to me. I understand that things like this can happen, but when I type "cal 9 1752", it seems strange to see this output:

September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Posted by Jon Daley on August 28, 2007, 8:15 am | Read 8216 times
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Comments

That's from the change-over from Julian to Gregorian calendars, which happened in 1752 in Britain and its colonies. They had to skip several days to make the adjustment.

Posted by Peter V on August 28, 2007, 8:51 am

You should try being a genealogist, which sometimes seems to require an advance degree in calendarology to figure out dates. Different countries made the switch from Julian to Gregorian at different times. Quakers (and some others) didn't use the familiar month names, but rather numbers, e.g. "10th month." October, right? Well, maybe. We also switched the beginning of the new year from March 25 to January 1 at one point (and not always the same year; depends on the country).

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to why one would start the new year on March 25?

Posted by SursumCorda on August 28, 2007, 10:10 am

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