Some of you might find this interesting and maybe it will explain a few facts when researching family trees!! Chris and Caroline Not everybody knows what the term "Gregorian" means and maybe assumed that here this was a trick question going back to the ten month system , nor does everybody know that before the Gregorian system (Introduced in England and its Colonies in 1752), we still had 12 months (12 month system first introduced in 45 BC), BUT between 45 BC and 1752 we counted our years differently. Everyone knows about the original Pre-Julius Augustian ten month system, and how new months were added to make the end of the year meet the start of the next new year without every one needing to stand around and wait nine weeks doing nothing. If you have ever done any research into events of the pre 1752 times, you will find an odd report occasionaly, such as someone being executed in March for some hideous crime or other, then actually doing the crime in November of that Year, or being Sentenced for that same crime in February or March of that same year! Did they have preminitions? Was their Detection rate so good that they could solve and hold trial of a crime before it had even been committed? i.e. that a Brother born in January 1621 is the younger brother of his elder brother who was born in December of that same year! - or - another example, that when two brothers were born, one in say December 1621 and another in January 1622, it is not a miricle short (30 day) pregnancy, nor twins with a prolonged delivery delay, but rather the older brother is correctly the one born in December, and the next brother was born 13 Months (and not just one) later. Why? Simply that before the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, the year started on March 25th (Ladies day) and ended on March 24th. Here is an extract of what I wrote about this on a History site a couple of years ago... (Between the lines) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before 1752 (in Britain and their colonies) the year officially began on March 25th (Lady Day). Any dates between January 1st and March 24th were therefore at the end of the preceeding year rather than the beginning. In most modern transcribed printings, and hopefully most on-line sources however two different conventions exist to try to avoid old-date to new-date conversion confusion; 1). dates in the pre-1752 range are marked with an asterisk e.g. 12 March 1654* where the old date (for accuracy is given and an one must be added to get the real date e.g. 12 March 1655 2). dates are occasionally seen in the form 12 March 1654/5. Knowing this info may add to more confusion, then sometimes it is easier simply not to know this, unless researching your geneology and finding two children born to same mother one end of March 1625 and then the second in early March 1625 ??? in reality the births are nearly a year apart, but apparently in wrong order ad only a few weeks apart! It is also important to know this when reading case law and seeing that a person was charged with a crime in February 1720 and oddly for the untrained eye apparently then subsequently committed the crime say "months later" in June 1720... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Decision making back then was almost as slow as getting plannin permission from your council, or Disable benifits from the DHSS is today... For example it took Eight hundred years to invent the Year AD 1 and BC counting... Bede, the eighth-century English historian, began the practice of counting years backward from A.D. 1 And since a lot of Religions and People did not comprehend negative numbering or counting, in some cases it took till 1800 (1000 years after Bede) to totally accept the system. History of the Gregorian Calendar The Gregorian calendar resulted from a perceived need to reform the method of calculating dates of Easter. Under the Julian calendar the dating of Easter had become standardized, using March 21 as the date of the equinox and the Metonic cycle as the basis for calculating lunar phases. By the thirteenth century it was realized that the true equinox had regressed from March 21 (its supposed date at the time of the Council of Nicea, +325) to a date earlier in the month. As a result, Easter was drifting away from its springtime position and was losing its relation with the Jewish Passover. Over the next four centuries, (a Four Hundred year long meeting to discuss time!) scholars debated the "correct" time for celebrating Easter and the means of regulating this time calendrically. The Church made intermittent attempts to solve the Easter question, without reaching a consensus. Pope Gregory XIII orded the world to stop turning till the moon phases and religious holidays caught up with each other, and then to start a ney system of counting with the Leap year thrown in to save having to buy Birthday cards and presents for children born on Feb 29th. Pope Gregory XIII worked out that thus with carefull family planning (which thereafter the Catholic church felt was their perogative to define how and when people should have sex, and/or children for ever more) he could save up to 75% of expenditure for Birthday gifts. Now problems come in with Leap years, then not every fourth year has a leap year... ??? True, there are Leap-leap years, which are ignored and retain 28 days meaning that in such cases it can be eight years between February 29ths... When and Why??? Leap years are determined according to the following rule: Every year that is exactly divisible by 4 is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100; these centurial years are leap years only if they are exactly divisible by 400. As a result the year 2000 is a leap year, whereas 1900 and 2100 are not leap years. These rules can be applied to times prior to the Gregorian reform to create a proleptic Gregorian calendar. In this case, year 0 (1 B.C.) is considered to be exactly divisible by 4, 100, and 400; hence it is a leap year. The Gregorian calendar is thus based on a cycle of 400 years, which comprises 146097 days. Since 146097 is evenly divisible by 7, the Gregorian civil calendar exactly repeats after 400 years. Dividing 146097 by 400 yields an average length of 365.2425 days per calendar year, which is a close approximation to the length of the tropical year. Comparison with Equation 1.1-1 reveals that the Gregorian calendar accumulates an error of one day in about 2500 years. Although various adjustments to the leap-year system have been proposed, none has been instituted. Within each year, dates are specified according to the count of days from the beginning of the month. The order of months (except the problem of Jan, Feb and March comming at the end of the year, that I mentioned at the start of this post) and number of days per month were adopted from the Julian calendar. Well it is unfair to claim Gregory invented the Leap year, then it was calculated correctly in the Julian system, only the Catholic Church missread the system user manual when they added the AD-1 revison, and instead of using every forth February to add the spare day, added it every third year, which soon accumulated when (long before Cook invented Australia to send our Sheep Stealers), meant Chrismas soon became a summer holiday! A bit about the Julian Calendar Caesar created a solar calendar with twelve months of fixed lengths and a provision for an intercalary day to be added every fourth year. As a result, the average length of the Julian calendar year was 365.25 days. This is consistent with the length of the tropical year as it was known at the time. Following Caesar's death, the Roman calendrical authorities misapplied the leap-year rule, with the result that every third, rather than every fourth, year was intercalary. Although detailed evidence is lacking, it is generally believed that Emperor Augustus corrected the situation by omitting intercalation from the Julian years -8 through +4. After this the Julian calendar finally began to function as planned. Through the Middle Ages the use of the Julian calendar evolved and acquired local peculiarities that continue to snare the unwary historian. There were variations in the initial epoch for counting years, the date for beginning the year, and the method of specifying the day of the month. Not only did these vary with time and place, but also with purpose. Different conventions were sometimes used for dating ecclesiastical records, fiscal transactions, and personal correspondence. Caesar designated January 1 as the beginning of the year. However, other conventions flourished at different times and places. The most popular alternatives were March 1, March 25, and December 25. This continues to cause problems for historians, since, for example, +998 February 28 as recorded in a city that began its year on March 1, would be the same day as +999 February 28 of a city that began the year on January 1. Days within the month were originally counted from designated division points within the month: Kalends, Nones, and Ides. The Kalends is the first day of the month. The Ides is the thirteenth of the month, except in March, May, July, and October, when it is the fifteenth day. The Nones is always eight days before the Ides (see Table 8.2.1). Dates falling between these division points are designated by counting inclusively backward from the upcoming division point. Intercalation was performed by repeating the day VI Kalends March, i.e., inserting a day between VI Kalends March (February 24) and VII Kalends March (February 23). By the eleventh century, consecutive counting of days from the beginning of the month came into use. Local variations continued, however, including counts of days from dates that commemorated local saints. The inauguration and spread of the Gregorian calendar resulted in the adoption of a uniform standard for recording dates. Cappelli (1930), Grotefend and Grotefend (1941), and Cheney (1945) offer guidance through the maze of medieval dating. Parts of the Above histories of calendar systems are from this web site... http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html There are many other calendar systems described there as well. --- All of our outgoing mail is checked and certified Virus Free by regularl updates Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.788 / Virus Database: 533 - Release Date: 01/11/2004