Missing Days in 1582

Calendar Changes
In our modern civilised world, we expect our calendar to remain the same, or at least predictable year after year, but it has not always been so, and even our modern stability is slightly illusory. We all know that leap days in leap years are to keep our calendars correct because the earth orbits the sun in approximately 365.25 days rather than the 365 in our calendar. In earlier times, calendars had not been devised with this knowledge in mind. Over any long period of time, this meant that our calendars became inaccurate, and needed adjusting.

Julian Calendar
The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, was an attempt to correct the calendar at the time, but it too was flawed, and had to be corrected eventually. In Britain, this was done in 1582, by missing out the 10 days from October 5th to October 14th inclusive, in the new Gregorian Calendar.

Not Russian
The Russians ignored the change by most of the civilised word to the Gregorian calendar until 1918, who only adopted the Julian calendar in 1709, trailing the Romans by about 17 centuries.
This also means that the famous "October Revolution" of 1917 actually took place in November!

2005 - The Longest Year?
An extra second was added to the year 2005 to compensate for the slowing down of the earth. Obviously this was such a small amount that nobody would have noticed it for any normal practical purposes.

Islamic Calendars
There are a number of calendars which have been used in the Islamic world. These can be very confusing.

Chinese Lunar Calendar
The Chinese lunar calendar is based on a twelve year cycle which is determined by the moon. There are twelve symbols, one for each year of the cycle. The Chinese year usually starts in January. We have ignored the start date, and give below a simplified chart showing the Chinese year symbol for each year of the last century.

French Revolutionary Calendar
Some years after the French Revolution, the French decided to revise their calendar, so that year one started from the date of the revolution. If they had been able to coerce the rest of the universe into cooperation, they would have implemented a 10 or 100 second minute, a 10 or 100 minute hour, a ten hour day, a ten day week, and a 100 day year. Sadly even the best of the revolutionary mathematicians could not devise a suitable solution.

You may wish to visit some of our other pages:-

A to Z of Gemstones
Anniversary List
Birthstones
Hour of Birth Stones
Zodiacs