Spoils of War: Date Confusions
Created | Updated Sep 13, 2015
Do YOU know what day it is?
Date Confusions
Time can't just disappear. It's a universal invariant!
Special Agent Dana Scully, being wrong as usual.
Does date confusion have anything to do with wars? Sure, it does. Just ask a scholar about the unpleasantness surrounding the Easter Date. Or why England and Spain had different calendars for a couple of hundred years…which brings us to the Gregorian calendar. In the 16th Century, Pope Gregory tried to sort out the mess by changing the calendar. This didn't sit well with Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Just who did that Pope think he was, Christ's representative on Earth? So they resisted the change – in some places, all the way into the 20th Century. They changed in Bulgaria in 1916, which put them ahead of the Russians in something, anyway… The Greeks didn't change until 1923.
In and throughout all his Majesty’s dominions and countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, belonging or subject to the crown of Great Britain, the second day of September in the said year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-two inclusive; and that the natural day next immediately following the said second day of September shall be called, reckoned, and accounted to be the fourteenth day of September, omitting for that time only the eleven intermediate nominal days of the common calendar.
An Act for regulating the Commencement of the Year, and for correcting the Calendar now in use., 24 G.2.c.23, 1750-51.
September, 1752, was a confusing month for English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic. They went to bed on 2 September and woke up on 14 September. And no ground hogs were involved. This made a lot of people very angry, because they could count, and darn it, they wanted those days back. Explaining it only made it worse, as some h2g2ers will tell you who remembered trying to explain the Easter Date to me…
Calendars can give you a headache. And 'experts' are not nearly as sure about things as they pretend to be. Take this information gleaned from archive.org:
Obviously, these calendars can't both be right. So who got it wrong? Apparently, the first one. That, naturally, is the one labeled 'absolutely correct'. Of course.
DayoftheWeek.org also has the calendar wrong, but does know that 14 September 1752 was a Thursday. They add, 'If you are trying to learn French then this day of the week in French is jeudi.' Also, that if you were born on this day, you're now 262 years old, so happy birthday.
Are you one of those maths wonks who likes to do calculations in your head? (We know you're out there.) Then try Lewis Carroll's algorithm for finding the day of the week for any given date. And don't bother me, because counting back that far makes me get my fingers in a knot.
Anyway, happy 14 September. Be glad it wasn't the 2nd yesterday.
