French Republican time and dates

Posted Jul 14, 2022 10:53 UTC (Thu) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
In reply to: French Republican time and dates by Wol
Parent article: Native Python support for units?

http://dpgi.unina.it/giudice/calendar/Adoption.html says Great Britain's adoption of the Gregorian calendar was in 1752 and at the same time the beginning of the year was changed from March 25 to January 1, commencing with the year 1752. So you might see double years between 1582 and 1752? And before 1582 they just didn't care?

French Republican time and dates

Posted Jul 16, 2022 13:03 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Well, before 1582 New Year's day was 25th March (the Spring Equinox - yes I know that's now March 25th) all over Europe so it's not they didn't care, it just wasn't the case, Jan and Feb and most of March were at the end of the year.

The reason they used both years between 1582 and 1752, was because Europe was on the New System, and we were on the old, so as soon as anything showed any hint of Internationalism you had to make sure it was clear which system you meant.

(Oh - as for the Roman calendar, January is named after Janus, the Roman God who looked both backwards at the old year, and forward to the new. So March was the first month of the year, December was the last, and yes what is now Jan and Feb was "winter".

Cheers,
Wol