The Julian Calendar The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE (Before Common Era) and

replaced the Roman calendar. The Julian calendar has a regular (common) year of 365 days divided into 12 months with a leap day added to the month of February every four years (leap year). This made the Julian year 365.25 days long on average, and needless to say, this extra .25 day caused several issues. A new solar calendar The Roman calendar was very complicated. It required a group of people to decide when days should be added or removed in order to keep the calendar in track with the seasons, which are marked by equinoxes and solstices in the calendar. In order to create a more standardized calendar, Julius Caesar consulted with an Alexandrian astronomer named Sosigenes and created a more regulated civil calendar based entirely on the Earth's revolutions around the sun. The calendar was used throughout the Roman Empire and by various Christian churches. Introducing Leap Years The Roman calendar consisted of 12 months for a total of 355 days. The new Julian months were formed by adding ten days to the pre-Julian Roman year of 355 days, creating a Julian year of 365 days. Two extra days were added to the months Ianuarius (January), Sextilis (August) and December, while one extra day was added to Aprilis (April), Iunius (June), September and November. The Months of the Year The Julian calendar introduced the Leap Year every 4 years. At the time, Leap Day was February 24, because February was the last month of the year. However, leap years were not observed in the first years after the reform due to a counting error. In the first years of the calendars existence until 12 AD every third year was a leap year due to a calculation error. Too many days The Julian calendar introduced an error of one day every 128 years, which meant that every 128 years the tropical year shifts one day backwards with respect to the calendar. This made the method for calculating the dates for Easter inaccurate. The solution to this error was to replace the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar in 1582 in nearly all countries. Why are some days missing in the 1752 calendar? The Julian Calendar in Modern Society Although the Gregorian calendar has become the international civil calendar, the Julian calendar was still used by some countries into the early 1900s. Some Orthodox churches still use it today to calculate the dates of moveable feasts, such as the Orthodox Church in Russia. Others who still use the Julian calendar include the Berber people of North Africa and on Mount Athos.

The Julian Period for astronomers The Julian period or the Julian Day system provides astronomers with a single system of dates that could be used when working with different calendars to align different historical chronologies. It assigns a Julian Day (JD) to every year without having to worry about B.C.E or C.E. It was invented by French Scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger in 1583, who proposed that the Julian Period starts at noon on January 1, 4713 B.C.E. (Julian calendar) and lasts for 7980 years. This was determined because it is a time period long enough to include all of recorded history and includes some time in the future that would incorporate the three important calendrical cycles, the Golden Number Cycle, the Solar Cycle, and the Roman Indiction. The Golden Number Cycle is a cycle of 19 years, while the Solar Cycle is a cycle of 28 years and the Roman Indiction repeats every 15 years. Thus the Julian Period is calculated to be 7980 years long or 2,914,695 days because 19*28*15 = 7980. The Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is today's internationally accepted civil calendar and is also known as the "Western calendar" or "Christian calendar". It was named after the man who first introduced it in February 1582: Pope Gregory XIII. Calendar features The calendar is strictly a solar calendar based on a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths. Each month consists of either 30 or 31 days with 1 month consisting of 28 days during the common year. A Leap Year usually occurs every 4 years which adds an extra day to make the second month of February 29 days long rather than 28 days. Realigned with the equinox The Gregorian calendar reformed the Julian calendar because the Julian calendar introduced an error of 1 day every 128 years. The introduction of the Gregorian calendar allowed for the realignment with the equinox, however a number of days had to be dropped when the change was made. Read more about the switch and find the missing days in our calendars Calendar types Gregorian calendar Julian calendar Mayan Calendar Roman calendar Chinese calendar

The Gregorian calendar was first adopted in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain in 1582. The Gregorian reform consisted of the following changes: 10 days were dropped in October 1582. New rules were set to determine the date of Easter. The rule for calculating Leap Years was changed to include that a year is a Leap Year if: 1. The year is evenly divisible by 4; 2. If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless; 3. The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.

Is there a perfect calendar? February 30 was a real date For example, the years 1900, 2100, and 2200 are not Leap Years. However, the years 1600, 2000, and 2400 are Leap Years. The Julian calendar is currently (between the years 1901 and 2099) 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar because too many Leap Years were added. The Gregorian calendar is off by about 1 day every 3236 years. Switching to the Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar would not be adopted until much later in Great Britain and America. It wasnt until September 1752 that 11 days were dropped to switch to the Gregorian calendar. Sweden and Finland had a "double" Leap Year in 1712. Two days were added to February creating a date of February 30, 1712. This was done because the Leap Year in 1700 was dropped and Sweden's calendar was not synchronized with any other calendar. By adding an extra day in 1712, they were back on the Julian calendar. Japan replaced its lunisolar calendar with the Gregorian calendar in January 1873, but decided to use the numbered months it had originally used rather than the European names. The Republic of China originally adopted the Gregorian calendar in January 1912, but it wasnt used in China due to warlords using different calendars. However, the Nationalist Government formally decreed the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in China in January 1929. Who designed the Gregorian calendar? Although the Gregorian calendar is named after Pope Gregory XIII, it is an adaptation of a calendar designed by Italian doctor, astronomer and philosopher Luigi Lilio (also known as Aloysius Lilius). He was born around 1510 and died in 1576, six years before his calendar was officially introduced.