I was rereading a page from my Mormon Missionary journal and was going to write about how I was dealing with a broken finger in 1980, how the doctor poked a hole in my fingernail with a heated paperclip to relive the pressure of the swelling. But that seemed boring.
I could have written that the number one song in the country on Oct 15, 1980 was Another One Bites The Dust by Queen. A little bit more interesting.
But then I googled October 15th and found the lost days of October.
From Wikipedia: The last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday, 4 October 1582 and this was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582 (the cycle of weekdays was not affected).
Apparently Pope Gregory VIII decided that the world clock was off sync. And he reset the calendar to account for Leap Year. The Gregorian solar calendar is an arithmetical calendar. It counts days as the basic unit of time, grouping them into years of 365 or 366 days; and repeats completely every 146,097 days, which fill 400 years, and which also happens to be 20,871 seven-day weeks. Of these 400 years, 303 (the "common years") have 365 days, and 97 (the leap years) have 366 days. This gives an average year length of exactly 365.2425 days.
But still, why take away 10 days? Apparently the Catholic Church used (and still uses) the vernal equinox (a Pagan holiday) to calculate Easter Sunday. But then they didn't want Easter to be too close to another Pagan holiday celebrating the birthday of Rome in late April. Huh!
I'm no Catholic Church scholar and I could be wrong... I'm just going by what Wikipedia says. So Gregory dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons.
It kind of boggles the mind to think about it. Does that mean we are really 10 days off? Is today really October 5th? Is Jimmas really August 18th? Is it really 2009 or should it be the Jewish year 5770?
Oh well. I guess we have to live today for what it is; today!
4 comments:
My mind can't even begin to understand how they compute all this stuff. LOL.
I'll just trust my Gods of Football calendar.
Interesting, even if a bit confusing! I hear they have to recalculate everything, since the world isn't perfectly round. Isn't it amazing that a little bulge can cause so much havoc? It's more then just how my jeans don't fit! LOL
I feel smarter even if a bit more confused. When do we get those 10 days back? and will it be considered paid vacation?
did you know there were riots when this came out?
People protested the pope was taking away 10 days of their lives!
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