Re: Friday 13th, try it yourself (was Language Wars..)

[dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)]

In article <Matthew.Healy-2309960924350001@pudding.med.yale.edu> Matthew.Healy@yale.edu (Matthew D. Healy) writes:
 > PS: About six months ago when I entered a thread on different dates of
 > Julian/Gregorian switching in another newsgroup, I got email from an
 > astronomer somewhere in Europe who told me his country (forget which
 > one) did a _really_ strange number on this: instead of stepping in
 > a single year, they had half a century with no leap years until
 > they were in sync with the Gregorian calendar!

From Sweden probably and told wrong.  It was the intention that starting
1700 they would omit leap years until they were in sync with the Gregorian
calendar.  So 1700 was not a leap year.  But they forgot about that or
something and they made 1704 and 1708 leap years, so they did not gain
on the Gregorian calendar and were one day out of sync with the Julian
calendar.  In 1712 they got back in sync with Julian by adding a
February 30.  They finally changed later that century (1768 if I remember
right).

But what this is doing in all those newsgroups...
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland, +31205924098
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/