Britain Once Skipped 11 Days in September
Designing a yearly calendar is tricky, since solar days, lunar months, and solar years don’t completely line up. The Gregorian calendar, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and used today throughout the Western world, aligns calendar dates with the seasons by splitting a solar year into 12 parts—not tied to the cycles of the moon—and adding an extra day every four years (with some exceptions). But making the switch to this calendar from its predecessor, the ancient Julian calendar, led to some clunky timekeeping—such as Britain skipping a whole 11 days in September 1752.
Because the Julian calendar under-calculated a solar year by roughly 11 minutes, it gradually got out of sync with the actual seasons. The discrepancy wasn’t noticeable at first, but by Gregory XIII’s papacy in the 16th century, Easter had drifted 10 days from the date the Catholic Church intended it to be celebrated. To remedy this, the pope adjusted the leap day formula and anchored the calendar by tying March 21 to the spring equinox.
Catholic-dominant areas of Europe, such as Italy, adopted the adjusted calendar within a year, and the rest of Europe eventually followed suit, albeit some countries more slowly than others. Britain, for instance, waited nearly 200 years to make the switch, and by that time, the two calendars were 11 days out of sync. In order to align with the Gregorian calendar, Britain skipped 11 days in the year 1752, following September 2 with September 14.
Before Britain implemented the Gregorian calendar, the new year started on March 25. The first New Year’s Day on January 1 was in 1752, but because the previous year still started on March 25, 1751 ended up being only 282 days long—the shortest year in English history. Interestingly, the tradition of beginning the year in March hasn’t completely disappeared: Even today, tax years in the U.K. start in the spring.
Source: historyfacts.com
Contributed by Jane Hart