5 - 14 October 1582: the ten days that never existed - Trattoria Zà Zà (2024)

FAQs

Why were 10 days missing in October 1582? ›

The most surreal part of implementing the new calendar came in October 1582, when 10 days were dropped from the calendar to bring the vernal equinox from March 11 back to March 21. The church had chosen October to avoid skipping any major Christian festivals.

The Gregorian Calendar was then introduced on October 4th 1582 and, to realign it to the Julian Calendar, it was necessary to eliminate ten days by passing directly to October 15. And therefore from 5 to 14 October no one was born, no one died. Nothing happened …

By that stage, the Julian Calendar had added ten days too many to the calendar, so Pope Gregory decreed that the day after the 4th of October 1582 should be the 15th of October 1582, thus correcting the error. In Great Britain, the new calendar was adopted in September 1752.

In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar, Europe adhered to the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Since the Roman emperor's system miscalculated the length of the solar year by 11 minutes, the calendar had since fallen out of sync with the seasons.

The missing 11 days in September 1752 occurred due to the delayed adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Great Britain and its colonies. They made the adjustment to align their calendar with the rest of Europe, skipping the 11 days to synchronize with the Gregorian calendar.

Even though the year is divisible by four, we don't add a leap day in the years that end in 00. But there's an exception to this rule too. If the year is a multiple of 400 then we do add in an extra leap day again.

It is the 2024th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 24th year of the 3rd millennium, the 24th year of the 21st century, and the 5th year of the 2020s decade.

The Julian calendar is the one that was introduced in the year 46 BC by Julius Caesar to all of the Roman Empire, and it is the calendar that was used during the life of Jesus Christ and at the time of the early Church.

On Sosigenes' advice, Caesar added another two never-before-seen months to the year 46BC, one of 33 days and one 34, to bring the calendar in line with the Sun. The additions made the year the longest in history at 445 days long, with 15 months.

What calendar is the oldest? ›

The ancient Sumerian calendar, roughly dated to 2,100 BC, divided a year into 12 lunar months of 29 or 30 days. Each month began with the sighting of a new moon. Sumerian months had no uniform name throughout Sumer because of the religious diversity.

This year saw the beginning of the Gregorian calendar switch, when the papal bull Inter gravissimas introduced the Gregorian calendar, adopted by Spain, Portugal, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and most of present-day Italy from the start.

In 45 B.C., Julius Caesar ordered a calendar consisting of twelve months based on a solar year. This calendar employed a cycle of three years of 365 days, followed by a year of 366 days (leap year). When first implemented, the "Julian Calendar" also moved the beginning of the year from March 1 to January 1.

In many cases, the New Year was not on 1 January, the leap day was not on the traditional bissextile day, the old month names were retained, the lengths of the reformed months did not match the lengths of Julian months, and, even if they did, their first days did not match the first day of the corresponding Julian ...

Twelve months are named and ordered the same as those of the Gregorian calendar, except that the extra month is inserted between June and July, and called Sol.