On social media, people noticed something wrong with their phone calendar. When they scrolled to the year 1582, it jumped from October 4th to October 15th, apparently missing 10 days in the middle.
This wasn’t a bug or a joke added by a bored programmer, these 10 days never actually existed in history. These 10 days were not erased from history by some cosmic time device. In fact, in 1582, people went to bed on the 4th of October and woke up on the 15th.
To understand why, we need to go back to the 16th century, when there was a major shift in the way we organized days, weeks, months and years.
CHANGE AFTER 1500 YEARS
The last change made to the calendar we use today, Roman Catholic Church The Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Roman Emperor in October 1582. Before this, most of Europe had adopted the Gregorian calendar in 45 BC. Jules Caesar He used the Julian calendar, which was made by
The Julian calendar was actually very similar to the Gregorian calendar. Both were 12-month solar calendars with 28 to 31 days. In addition, in certain years, an extra day was added to February, making a total of 365 days in a year.
DUE TO THE DEFECTS OF THE JULIAN CALENDAR…
The main difference between these two calendars was when a leap year occurred. The Julian calendar added a day to the calendar every 4 years, while the Gregorian calendar did not add a leap year when the year was divisible by 100 but not by 400.
The main purpose of doing this was the deviation arising from the calculation of 1 year as 365.25 days in the Julian calendar. The 0.25 day surplus time added to the end of a year should actually have been calculated as 0.2422. Since this was not done, there was an surplus of one day in the calendar in 128 years.
It may sound like a small difference, but it was a big deal for the Catholic Church because Easter feastIt seriously interfered with the timing of Easter. Since the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, it had been stated that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox on March 21.
But over the centuries, the spring equinox had drifted away from this date. This small influence upset the timing of Easter, with the spring equinox falling on March 11 in the 16th century.
IT TOOK 10 DAYS TO DELETE
To resolve this crisis, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar. To realign the new calendar with the movements of the Sun, it was necessary to delete 10 days that had accumulated due to the imperfection of the Julian calendar.
October was chosen as the month to lose 10 days because it did not coincide with any major events in the Christian calendar. Aziz FrancisFollowing the feast of October 4, the Gregorian calendar was adopted and the world suddenly jumped to October 15.
This is why most digital calendars do not include the 10 days between October 4 and October 15 in 1582.
Source: www.cumhuriyet.com.tr
