colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (George Sicherman) (02/20/84)
Your perpetual calendar doesn't go back before 1753 because the present system (3 centennial years out of 4 common) was adopted by Parliament in 1752. Pope Gregory had already ordained it for the Catholic world in 1582, dropping 10 days from October to re-sync. Parliament had to drop 11, because 1700 was a leap year in England. If I remember correctly, Pope Gregory preserved the succession of weekdays, but Parliament did not - Monday the 2nd was followed by Saturday the 14th. This makes it impossible to get a meaningful day of the week for any day before September 14, 1752. (I still don't see how Italy and England got together again!) Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!colonel
ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader) (02/22/84)
Col. G. L. Sicherman (sunybcs!colonel) writes:
If I remember correctly, Pope Gregory preserved the succession
of weekdays, but Parliament did not - Monday the 2nd was followed
by Saturday the 14th. This makes it impossible to get a meaningful
day of the week for any day before September 14, 1752. (I still
don't see how Italy and England got together again!)
The following things say that your memory is NOT correct:
- my memory
- the command "cal 9 1752" (see cal(1))
- your own parenthetical comment
- the fact that the Christian church would be most unlikely to go along
with any change which disturbed the 7-day cycle of Sundays -- which may well
have helped stop us from ever changing to a "rational" calendar where one
day of the year (two in leap years) would NOT count as part of any week,
so that a particular date would always fall on the same weekday.
Mark Braderandrew@inmet.UUCP (02/29/84)
#R:sunybcs:-107700:inmet:4000048:000:174 inmet!andrew Feb 25 10:17:00 1984 The Soviet Union did not change over to the Gregorian calendar until 1917; I believe certain Russian Orthodox sects still observe holy days according to the Julian calendar.