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Comment by throwaway211 | Hacker News Reader

Reading the article, I wandered into the difference of Old Style and New Style dates and what happened in 1752.

From [1]: By the 18th century, the English legal year – used for legal, financial and other civil purposes – had for centuries begun on 25 March, or Lady Day.[13][i] Thus, for example, 24 March 1707 was immediately followed by 25 March 1708, while the day following 31 December 1708 was 1 January 1708, with 1709 still nearly three months away.

Thank goodness that happened.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_175...

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To this day the UK tax year still begins on April 6th, for reasons [1] that have to do with the migration from Julian to Gregorian calendars almost 300 years ago. I wonder if other countries have so many of these legacy patches from ye olden times.

[1] https://theconversation.com/why-the-uk-tax-year-begins-on-ap...

Though note the wiki page for Carroll's method[1] states:

    1676, February 23
    ...
    Dates before 1752 would in England be given Old Style with 25 March as the
    first day of the new year. Carroll's method however assumes 1 January as
    the first day of the year, thus he fails to arrive at the correct answer,
    namely "Friday".
    ...
    It is noteworthy that those who have republished Carroll's method have
    failed to point out his error"

Indeed, the linked article has this flaw, too (:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determination_of_the_day_of_th...

The linux `cal` utility has special handling to recognize September 1752:

https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/blob/9f15d2de811773...

I just typed "cal 1752" and got a calendar with a September that has no dates between Wednesday the 2nd and Thursday the 14th.

Although disputed by some, apparently the switch to the Gregorian calendar is also the basis for "April Fools' Day."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

I've been amused by this for a while, although I think when I first saw it I didn't realize that there was so much country-to-country variation in what year the Gregorian calendar was legally adopted.

Maybe a better (or much worse!) behavior would be to show the switch in the current locale, so in ru_RU it happens in 1918, but in es_ES (or es_MX, es_CO, es_AR, es_PY, ...) it happens in 1582.

The Romans also used the March-based year; that’s why February has fewer days and why October is literally the eighth month

Not just a year starting in March, a year with 10 months -- and 304 days.

It was quite frosty that June and people were hoping for a warm summer come December.

September-October-November-December: 7-8-9-10

And July used to be Quintilis (5) and August was Sextilis (6), but then Julius Cesar and Emperor Augustus came.. and got their own month names.

Yes, I have been following Pepys (17th century) and the dates confused me a lot until I got the hang of it.

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