Mike Williams wrote:
> Wasn't it David Harper who wrote:
>>
>> According to histories of the calendar, February has never had more
>> than 29 days, even in the time of the Roman Republic before Julius
>> Caesar's overhaul.
>>
>> Thus any appearance of 30 February in historical records is certainly
>> the result of clerical ineptitude or inebriation :-)
>
> In Sweden and (what is now) Finland, they started to use a weird system
> for slowly changing from Julian to Gregorian calendar systems. A few
> years later they changed their minds and reverted back to the Julian
> Calendar by having two leap days in 1712, the 29th and 30th of February.
>
> http://www.naturalistsalmanac.com/0230.html
How bizarre.
I stand duly corrected, and I learnt something new. Thank you for
sharing that fascinating piece of information.
> In the Soviet Revolutionary Calendar, all months had 30 working days,
> and the year was padded out with 5 or 6 "monthless" holidays. The Soviet
> Revolutionary Calendar doesn't appear to have actually been used.
>
> In the French Republican Calendar, all months had 30 days and the year
> was padded out with 5 or 6 "monthless" holidays, called sansculottides .
> However, the French Republican months don't correspond with the months
> of the Gregorian calendar, since its year starts at the autumnal equinox
> (September 23 plus or minus 1 day).
The French Republican Calendar was deliberately modelled on the ancient
Egyptian solar calendar, which also has 12 months of 30 days plus 5 days
at the end of the year. The Egyptians didn't bother with leap years and
were content to let their calendar slip through the seasons every 1461
years.
I imagine that the Soviet Revolutionary Calendar was modelled on the
French version.
David Harper
Cambridge, England
|
