The Missing Days: Calendar Problems.

Think what will happen if 3 September instantly becomes 14 September 2009 and you lose eleven days? When my friend first experienced a Jet lag, losing a day while moving from east to west, she was saddened at the thought of her life being shortened by a day. She became desperate for a return journey to set the account straight. She later told me how painful a thought it was to lose a day never to get it back, until you plan a return trip. Don't we hear people telling us that we lose half of our life to sleep, so if we are anyways living half lives, one more day is not a very big loss or may be, to reason it out the other way, as my friend had insisted, how disastrous to to lose a day from an already half lost life.

That was a matter of few hours, but what if you lose eleven days? What if there is no return journey to retrieve them? It happened in Britain in 1752 when Britain decided to change its calendar from Julian to Gregorian. The Calendar most of the world's countries and cultures use today is Gregorian. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it in 1582. Gregorian Calendar, as we all know, has twelve months or three sixty five days with a leap year every four years. Most countries swiftly changed from their ancient Calendars to the Gregorian for many reasons. Some non-Catholic countries like Britain refused to adopt the Gregorian Calendar at first. The Julian Calendar previously used in Britain was based on a Solar year, the time taken for the earth to rotate around the Sun, which was 365.25 days and fractionally too long (365.24219). The Calendar thus, steadily fell out of liner with seasons. It was in 1752 Britain decided to correct this and thus changed to the Gregorian.

By doing so, 3 September became 14 September- and as a result nothing what so ever happened in the History of Britain between 3 and 13 September 1752. Many people believed their lives would be shortened.( this reminded me of my friend).

People of Britain protested in the streets, demanding, "Give us back our eleven days!"

read more about Calendars and missing days on http://webexhibits.org/calendars

Reference. Whitaker's World of Facts by Russell Ash.