Art said:- (Snip) All in all, it would have been a lot easier, from a practical point of view, to not drop the 10 or 11 days all at once. The same effectcould have been achieved by just declaring that none of the next 40 or 44years would be leap years. (Snip)
It was done - in Sweden - they missed out the leap years until it was in line with the Gregorian. Must have been difficult for cross border exchanges. We tend to think that there were only two dates when the swap from the Julian to Gregorian happened, 1583 and 1752, but in fact there was quite a spread:- 1583 Most of Cathiolic Western Europe 1587 Poland 1700 Denmark, Germany, Holland 1741 Sweden started (see above) 1752 Britain, America 1873 Japan 1913 China 1916 Bulgaria 1919 Russia, Turkey 1924 Greece I have always wondered about the Greek husband of our Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh. He claims that his birthday is 10th June, but he was born in Greece pre 1924. Did he change his date of birth when the calendar changed? I have considered writing to ask him, but somehow have never got round to it. I think we should also say a word in appreciation of Christopher Clavius - he did all the work, but Gregory XIII got all the glory - all Christopher got was a crater on the moon! Mike [EMAIL PROTECTED] 53.37N 3.02W
