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October 14, 2024

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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This was hard-earned

This is the story of how the world lost 10 days.

It begins during the time of Julius Caesar, who sought to fix a problem. Before Caesar, Romans kept track of time by using a calendar that was pretty good, but not great, because it divided the year into 12 months, but added up to only 355 days.

The Romans understood that this was short, so they'd periodically announce a Mercedonius ("work month"), which added days to the year. However, this system gave politicians the power to announce the Mercedonius, so human nature being what it is, it was often used for political advantage.

Imagine if you could lengthen your allies' terms in office, or cut your enemies' short, by deciding to add (or not add) a Mercedonius to the calendar?

Caesar gets credit for having come up with the idea to fix this: a 12-month calendar during which the months had set lengths, with a leap year added every fourth year to reach 365.25 days on average.

It was brilliant! It was groundbreaking! It required no political calculations!

But it had a problem of its own, which is that an Earth year isn't actually 365.25 days long. Instead, it's 365.2422 days, which means that each year it adds 11 minutes. That's not a lot of course, but it means that every 131 years, it drifted a full calendar day.

Fast forward into the past, October 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull called Inter Gravissimas ("Among the most serious") that reformed the Julian calendar to the point that it was eventually referred to simply as the Gregorian calendar.

The main difference (as dreamed up over several years by a team led by a Jesuit priest, mathematician and astronomer named Christopher Clavius, S.J.): three fewer leap years over each 400 years than the Julian calendar.

The rule is actually easier to calculate than you might imagine. As explained by the U.S. Naval Observatory:

Why was the Pope concerned with the calendar? In short, because of the complexity of calculating the date of Easter every year. The rule there is that Easter falls on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, which is another way of saying after the first full moon after the astronomical vernal equinox.

(This is to associate the date of Easter as closely as possible with the Jewish celebration of Passover, which is the day on which Jesus was crucified according to three of the four books of the Gospel.)

The astronomical vernal equinox is March 21 -- but March 21 itself would have drifted by 10 days between the adoption of the Julian calendar in the year 43 B.C. and the Gregorian calendar 1,625 years later. And that meant it was easy to miscalculate Easter.

The quirk was that making the switch meant catching up for lost time -- literally. And so, the parts of the world that adopted the Gregorian calendar fast-forwarded en masse from October 4, 1582 to October 15, 1582, which means that tomorrow is the anniversary of the year in which we skipped 10 days.

I say "we" because we use the Gregorian calendar now. At first, it was adopted only by the Papal States (part of modern Italy), and Spain. The British waited until 1752 (as a country whose head of state was also the head of the Church of England, they didn't want to use a Catholic innovation; they eventually adopted the calendar without citing its origins.)

And since we here in the United States and most of the world for that matter followed suit (only four countries still opt out entirely as far as I can tell): Ethopia, Nepal, Iran, and Afghanistan, it's become the world standard.

There is still some opposition that arises from time to time, again because it was originally created as a papal bull to solve a problem in celebrating the most important Christian holiday. I think we see the same thing with some corners pushing for the use of CE and BCE for "common era" and "before the common era" instead of B.C. and A.D. (for "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini, meaning "year of the Lord.")

But on that, I'll defer -- and give the quote of the day -- to Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author -- and person who is often claimed by atheist but who describes himself (and updated his own Wikipedia page) to correct that he's actually agnostic -- as he put it on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast a few years ago:

Now you know if you didn't before. See you tomorrow!

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Did you see ...

(By the way, we're so close to the election now that I'm going to include some political news both in this newsletter and Understandably. If you come here for "no politics ever," I just don't see how I can ignore this enormous story over the next 22 days!)

• First off the polls: Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are deadlocked nationally at 48% to 48%, with Trump bolstered by Republicans coming back home to support him after last month’s rough debate and a subsequent polling deficit, as well as by a favorable voter assessment of Trump’s term as president. If the election were held today, Trump would win the Electoral College (and with it the presidency), regardless of the popular vote. (NBC News)
• Next, where Harris and Walz are: They'll spend this week criss-crossing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the trio of battleground states that are key to most of their paths to the White House. Worth noting: this is the "Blue Wall" that the Clinton campaign took for granted in 2016, ignored at the end at its peril, and lost. They also picked up a celebrity endorsement from Jon Bon Jovi, if that's worth anything. (Bloomberg, The Hill)
• Former president Trump held a rally in Coachella Valley, California, a state he's very unlikely to win, calling California a “Paradise Lost” and blamingHarris for turning into into what he described as a hellscape flooded with murderous gangs. He picked up an endorsement from Dennis Quaid, if that's worth anything. (Politico, The Wrap)
• Surrounded by the damage left behind by hurricanes Helene and Milton, people across Florida are facing the daunting task of cleaning up, but many lack the electricity and fuel to do it. Hampered by roads blocked by fallen trees and flooding, fuel suppliers and power companies are working to get the infrastructure of daily life back up and running, and police are aiding recovery efforts by providing escorts to fuel tankers trying to reach those most in need. President Biden spoke in St. Petersburg Sunday, thanking first responders and local officials for their efforts and empathized with Floridians who had lost everything, saying they are “heartbroken and exhausted, and their expenses are piling up.” (CNN)
• About 11 percent of Americans in a poll said they believe Adolph Hitler leader had some "good ideas" that offset his barbarity and evil. A DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners poll found that more than one in five (21 percent) of both Gen Z and black voters and 19 percent of Hispanic voters agreed with the statement. (Daily Mail)
• The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday, after using DNA analysis to tackle a centuries-old mystery. Several countries have argued over the origins and the final burial place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas. (Reuters)
• How choosing solitude can free your mind and lift your mood. (Washington Post)