anders@etel.UUCP (Anders Berglund) (05/05/86)
In article <13490@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms (Matthew Wiener) writes: > >Does cal(1) work correctly in other countries, by the way? For example, >Sweden's approach was to cancel leap year for over four decades in the >late 17th century. > Of course not. The output of cal(1) is fully appropriate to "England and her colonies" only, according to the manual entry. This is obvious, of course, and not the reason for my follow-up (...and just for the sake of flame-protection: this is no repudiation of Mr. Wiener; surely I understand his question as a means of getting comments). No, the reason is that I couldn't resist the opportunity to force the peculiarities of the swedish switch from Julian into Gregorian times on to you all, dear net-readers. The scheme was set out as mentioned above, all right. Sweden was to gradually adapt to the Gregorian style by dropping all leap days, starting with the year 1700! Since this would bring us ONE day closer for every fourth year it also would mean that Sweden was to have a unique calendar for the FORTY years it would take to overbridge this ten-day time slip!! Truly a solution of the "splendid isolation" type! However, it didn't work out that way. The king was away on endless war-tours in Russia and the government at home neglected to fulfill the plan (if there was a reason, I don't know it). So, when 1704 came along they happily enjoyed their leap day, and the same happened in 1708. When 1712 was in sight someone obviously had got tired of this one-day-ahead-or-ten-days-after style. It was decided to make an end to it by -listen to this!- going BACK to Julian style! This is why Sweden got two leap days in 1712, making a 30-day February! Is there anything like this on record in any other coutry...? The final change to Gregorian style, by the way, was made in 1753, when March 4 was immediately followed by March 15. _____________________________________________________________________ Anders Berglund, ELLEMTEL, Sweden = ...mcvax!enea!erix!etel!anders