Re: HELP! YEAR 2000 BUG: How will it affect you?

>From: jb85@dial.pipex.com (Simon) >Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 10:30:59 GMT >X-Informix-List-Id: <news.29311> > >abennett@cruzio.com (Andrew Bennett) wrote: >>By 1582 the accumulated error was estimated to amount to 10 days. In >>that year Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following Oct. 4, >>1582, should be called Oct. 15, thus dropping 10 days and initiating >>what became known as the Gregorian calendar. > >I thought it was 1752 that this happened, and it was September... > >The date after the 2nd September 1752 was the 14th September 1752. >Check it out on UNIX "cal"! It depends on which country you are in. By 1582, England had set up the Church of England (Protestantism) and no longer recognised the authority of the Pope. Therefore, England and its colonies (including that place between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a rather dominant influence on Unix -- aka USA) did not change their calendars until some 170 years later than the rest of Europe. Oh, and 1600 was a leap year in Europe but not in Britain, which accounts for the fact that Britain had to drop 11 days to get back into sync whereas the rest of Europe had to drop 10. Don't forget that the previous version of the calendar only came into effect sometime in the early part of the 1st millenium, and dates prior to about 400 AD are even more suspect than those prior to 1753. And also don't forget that the Russian revolution -- the October Revolution -- actually happened in November as far as the rest of the world was concerned because the Russians didn't change their calendar until the 20th century! Yours, Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h>