Just to show how pedantic i am . . .

Okay. The length of our year is determined by various things, mostly to do with stuff like the mass of the earth blah blah blah (Clare extemporising because she doesn't actually quite know - any help from all you astrophysicists out there?) . So the length of a year (which, I might add, doesn't actually quite fit the solar year . . .) is pretty randomly determined - if we lived on uranus, an earth millennium would seem like a ridiculously short time. So we are celebrating a thousand (first mistake - that's next year - I have fingers, me. And toes. And I ain't afraid to use 'em!) years (inconsistancy number two - if you really want to go on about predestination and the thousandth revolution of the earth around the sun being significant, then try celebrating it - if yu can find out when it is, what with leap years, changing calendars etc etc) since the birth (. . . there's the little matter of historical accuracy there - all those who know when the guy was born, please raise your hands . . . hmm. Distinct lack of handraising there then - on to the next quibble!) of Jesus ( I won't court disaster by asking why this is important . . .)
Okay, two penn'orth over. (more like two shillings . . .)
Sorry, C xxx
---------------------------------------------------
Fed up with all the hype?
Be yourname@ - only from http://www.funmail.co.uk

I suppose it's not even worth mentioning how we lost a few days one year in
the 1600s ?

BTW Claire you've got some weird mime related effect happening with your
mail...

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Philip Ayres
payres@
www.netcomuk.co.uk/~payres
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Philip Ayres said:
September 1752:
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

That was BECAUSE they'd forgotten about all the leap years up 'till then,
and they DIDN'T WANT TO MOVE the year 1, just correct for all the leap
years they'd missed.

---

Nick Waterman. Senior Systems Administrator, Sony Interactive Services
mailto:nick-sig@ http://www.nilex.co.uk/~nick/
AX25:G7RZQ@#32.GBR.EU #include <stddisclaimer> Team *AMIGA*!
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!

In article <E1298IQ-0001F4-00@>, Nick Waterman <nick@> wrote:
"Pious devil won't heed the witch-queen"
"Poison dissolves in spring wine"
"Old devil dead, new devil coming"
"This one comes to rule our time"

They hadn't forgotten about all the leap-years: they'd had too many. The
old Julian calendar had a leap-year every 4 years, and that is too many.
The new calendar (courtesy of Pope Gregory, elected in May 1572) made the
last year of 3/4 of centuries not a leap-year: hence 1900 was not a leap
year, but 1600 was. So is 2000. Backdating it for 100,200,300,500, etc is
where the ten days came from.

Because the reform was made by the Catholic Church, it was adopted only by
the Catholic countries. This leads to the bizarre state of affairs where
the chronicles of the Spanish Armada are dated differently by the two sides
- one side thinking that they are fighting on, say, Tuesday, while the other
side think it is Friday. It could give a time-traveller a nasty turn, that
could.

The new calendar was adopted in 1752 in what was to become the US - which is
why your cal(1) program uses this date. It was adopted by Act of
Parliament: but you'll notice that they changed the date, not the meanings
of the dates. The equinoxes and solstices are why they originally performed
the correction. There has been no Act of Parliament making the Twentieth
Century 99 years in length.


And no, Darren, these are not matters of opinion, but of mathematical fact.


Simon

---
"This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind" -Ecclesiastes 4:16

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