From Julian to Gregorian Calendar

https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html

by techolic • 9 years ago

56 31 9 years ago

martimoose2• 9 years ago

Fun fact: astronomers (and Nasa) use the Julian calendar for events (for example eclipses) before october 1582. You'd think they use UT, but they don't, so you can match historical dates with celestial events. Also worth noting, astronomical year numbering has a year 0, whereas BC/AD system does not, so that year 0 is 1 BC.

You have to make time corrections when you program something related to astronomy. In most things we program, UT is an absolute on which we can rely, but when we go very far away in the past it's not that clear anymore.

thriftwy• 9 years ago

...and then there's Julian Day (JD).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day

martimoose2• 9 years ago

... and then there's JD combined with Delta T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%94T

nradov2• 9 years ago

The Serbian Orthodox Church still hasn't switched from the Julian calendar. So now their religious holidays like Christmas are a couple weeks off from the rest of the world and will continue diverging.

madcaptenor3• 9 years ago

Isn't that all Orthodox churches, not just the Serbian?

My wife's a bit of a Russophile. So in years where we forgot to do the holiday shopping, we exchange gifts on Russian Christmas (i. e. January 7, Gregorian). Or, if we're really forgetful, Russian New Year.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

Curiously, January 7 is also when many Spanish families exchange gifts, supposedly as a celebration of the arrival of the Magi/Three Wise Kings (who brought gifts to Jesus).

This is much to the annoyance of Spanish kids with foreign friends :)

nradov2• 9 years ago

Not all. Some have switched to Gregorian calendar.

RightMillennial2• 9 years ago

At least in the U.S., the Antiochian and Greek Orthodox churches primarily use the Gregorian calendar (e.g., Christmas is on Dec. 25). However, Pascha and its related feasts are still determined using the Julian calendar which happened to fall on the same day as the Western Easter this year (Apr. 16).

dijit• 9 years ago

(not so) interesting fact: Russians celebrate new years much like we celebrate Christmas (gift giving, family meal etc;)

This is due to the Soviet Unions downplaying of religion, but understanding the need of a yearly get-together.

So, my girlfriend celebrates NYE as if it were Christmas, Christmas is seen as "not really important" and she didn't even have a concept of Christmas being on Dec 25th (which, consequently was when she was born herself)

rdtsc• 9 years ago

Nah it depends. Romania is also an Orthodox Christian country but uses the Western calendar. They still have Easter on the same day because that's calculated separately, but they celebrate Christmas on different days - Dec 25th vs Jan 7th.

Grustaf3• 9 years ago

It's basically the slavic orthodox countries that use the old calendar, plus certain groups that have more or less broken out of other churches. The monasteries on Athos also use the old calendar, even the monasteries that belong to new calendarist jurisdictions. A fun fact is that visas to Athos, which is a semi-autonomous island in Greece where only men are allowed (not even female animals!) and that prince Charles loves, are issued in the Julian calendar.

It's worth noting that even most new calendarists, like the Greeks, still celebrate Easter at a different date than the Catholics.

The calendar question is extremely infected and especially the Russians consider it a very crucial issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Athos

abruzzi2• 9 years ago

If you ever read Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum" this is a key plot point. Specifically some shadowy "conspiracy" group was set to meet, but the meeting never happened because some countries had revised their calendar and some hadn't so they missed each other. Its a great novel about secret societies, conspiracy theories, and peoples willingness to believe them.

jonathanpoulter• 9 years ago

Is this a spoiler for the novel?

twic• 9 years ago

It's not the kind of novel where knowing something like that will make a difference.

mikeash• 9 years ago

I was glad to see that this included my favorite calendrical fact: the existence of February 30th, in just one year in Sweden.

It misses another good one, which is what happened in Alaska. Alaska's transition from Julian to Gregorian happened when ownership of the territory transferred from Russia to the United States. This also involved moving Alaska to the other side of the International Date Line (or more correctly, moving the Date Line to the other side of Alaska). The net effect was that, in Alaska, Friday, October 6th, 1867 was followed by Friday, October 18th.

ceautery• 9 years ago

That's cool, I hadn't ever heard about Sweden's double-leap years.

I did some research on calendars a while back, and notably, the conversion to Gregorian had a lot of religious overtones. Here's what I wrote about it:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xrRtua...

(edit ...and Google cache is being ornery right now.)

acomjean• 9 years ago

Unix seems to handle it well:

$cal 9 1752

    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

there is a Bug on the man page, which has more to do with "what country are we in" BUGS The assignment of Julian--Gregorian switching dates to country codes is historically naive for many countries.

madcaptenor3• 9 years ago

ncal allows me to specify the country, so even though I'm in the US I can get the following:

  $ ncal -sES 10 1582
      October 1582
  Mo  1 18 25
  Tu  2 19 26
  We  3 20 27
  Th  4 21 28
  Fr 15 22 29
  Sa 16 23 30
  Su 17 24 31

(Alas, ncal -sSW 2 1712 doesn't get February of 1712 right in Sweden...)

Avernar• 9 years ago

"Switch Took More Than 300 Years"

I sure hope the complete switchover from IPv4 to IPv6 also doesn't end up taking that long.

From Julian to Gregorian Calendar

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