CALENDAR CALCULATIONS

For reasons I can't quite remember, I've been working out how to tell what day any date was in history.

What a useless waste of time. You can just look it up.

Nonetheless, it's lead me to some discoveries. One is that the day and date repeat without fail every twenty eight years. Whatever day it is today, it was exactly the same 28 years ago, and, 56, and of course, 112, and so on. That was helpful.

The second thing I've found out is that the calendar actually changed in 1752, and in the UK, we actually lost ten days from existence while we switched from Julian to Gregorian. September 1752 was 20 days long. That made my calculations really annoying, not to mention the fact that Europe as a whole, didn't complete that switch until (would you believe) the 1920s.

The next interesting thing is that the dates also repeat every 6,5,6 and 11 years, but the order depends on whether it's a type 1, type 2, type 3 or type 4 (leap) year, and whether the current date is before February 29th or after it. 2019 for example, is a type 3 year: the dates after February were the same in 2013, 2002, 1996 and 1991.

As if that wasn't complicated enough, century years (-00) that aren't divisible by 400 aren't leap years. So any date in the Seventeenth Century (1600-1699) has to shift three spaces along to account for 1700, 1800, and 1900, if you're calculating it based on a current date.

What a system! And all because it actually takes the Earth 365 and a quarter days, rather than exactly 365 spins, to make its way around the sun. Oh, and that there are twelve months with a weird number of days in them, and awkwardly enough, seven days in the week. I'd be adding another day to the weekend if it were me.

I tested it and got September 1st, 1666 right without looking it up. Then I tried some more convolutions and realised that I'd just fluked it. My maths isn't great.

There's got to be a better system, surely? I mean I know we're kind of limited by the physical constraints of the planet's motion through our Solar System, but maybe a ten month calendar with each month having 36 days in it, and then a five day break at the end of the year? Or how about days that are just ever so slightly longer than twenty four hours to compensate, and gradually shift to get longer in the summer and shorter in the winter? Computers could sort it all out for us, couldn't they?

Well that's a can of worms isn't it. I'm not starting Skynet.

I think I'd just like a three-day weekend to be a thing. Actually I'd really like that.

Happy Friday.