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When Britain went Gregorian, with the results shown by cal, there were riots where people chanted “Give us back our 11 days!”. The rioters believed that everyon
by vincent-manis 4y ago
When Britain went Gregorian, with the results shown by cal, there were riots where people chanted “Give us back our 11 days!”. The rioters believed that everyone was fated to die on a given calendar date, and thus everybody's life had been shortened.
Actually, cal is showing a rather astonishing thing: the first 2 days of September were on the Julian calendar, the remaining 17 on the Gregorian calendar. Either a pure Julian or a pure Gregorian calendar would have shown all 30 days. However, cal's result is the most useful, as it tells us the dating system that was actually used.
- aquova 4y ago> When Britain went Gregorian, with the results shown by cal, there were riots where people chanted “Give us back our 11 days!”. The rioters believed that everyone was fated to die on a given calendar date, and thus everybody's life had been shortened. Sadly, this seems to be an urban legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750#Reaction_and_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750#...
- vincent-manis 4y agoIt seems that I fell for the myth of the riots. However, it is true that the Tories opposed the change bitterly, in part for sensible reasons (if done improperly, it would have caused a full rent to be payable for a 19-day month), and in part because it was a Whig proposal. Blind opposition because it was the other party's idea? We can all be glad that this no longer happens.
- mbg721 4y ago> When Britain went Gregorian... > ...people chanted... Ah.