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(Tuesday, March 4, 2008-)
+12:44 PM]*
# It's March! or is it?
Well, March 4th is here. Today U.S Democrats are set to either end or drag the nomination elections. Malaysia is voting sometime soon, though I have no idea when.
Interestings of the week so far?
Nothing much other than news that Yumei is going to Temasek Poly for Psychology! Excitingness! Aiken, hope u can get to know her soon! And of course the exciting part is the stayover at Yumei's on Wednesday, which i plan to go down after my so-called mid terms, which still has electrical engineering in two weeks. Oh well, it's a little celebration i guess? The best part will be falling asleep in the 8am lecture the next day! haha!
Next interesting fact, there was a period of 10 days that didn't exist in certain countries, 11 in others, and 13 for the Russians. Yup, interesting fact learned from my GEM of Heavenly Maths. What's all this nonsense you say? Well, let me give u a crash course in calendars. The calendar we currently use is the Gregorian calendar. Before that, the Julian calendar was in use. It was quite a complete calendar, even with the leap years and all.
Small problem, they had leap years every 4 years, when actually it is needed only about 9x times every 400 years (x is an integer, if u know the value, tag me!) instead of 100 every 400. So the calendar was a bit screwed up cuz the years were actually too long and the calendar had lagged. So this dude Gregory something wanted to correct it, and he proposed skipping the extra 10 leap days (which accumulated over 400 years of wrong leaps) and hence 4 October 1582 was followed by 15 October 1582. So if someone said they were born on 5th October 1582 and they were in a Catholic country, they would be lying, cuz that date simply didn't exist!
Catholic country? Huh? Well, Gregory-san was a proponent of Counter-Reformation and hence was a supporter of the Catholic church, which in those days were much more powerful. So the Reformed protestants thought, this must be a ploy to get us subjected to Catholic rule once again! So if your enemy proposes something, no matter how true it is, your first reaction would be to reject it. And that's what the protestant countries did. Evil Catholics! Trying to get us to follow your calendar!!
Little did the protestants realise they were actually being foolish as their calendar was the wrong one. So they only saw the light that the Catholics were actually smarter than them scientifically and had gotten their calendar right, so, they grudgingly accepted the Gregorian calendar. So this is how Britain had to change their calendar. 2 September 1752 was followed by September 14 1752. Yes, it took them about 200 years to realise the error of their ways. How foolish you may think, but the best is yet to come.
If you were observant enough, they had to skip 11 days instead of the 10 the original Catholic countries had to skip to sync the calendar back. Why? Cuz their 200 year stubbornness resulted in them making another wrong leap, namely 29th February 1700. 29th February 1600 was a correct leap as it obeys the leap year rule (if you know why, tag me!) but they realised in the 18th century a little too late and paid for it by wasting an entire day!
Now let's see who the other "geniuses" are. The Swedish were quite smart, they knew the "wrong" 1700 leap year was coming. And they thought, well, we'll be smart and not skip any days, we'll just ignore leap days for the next 40 years (where 10 leaps would have occurred) and we'll be able to catch up! So they courageously skipped the wrong leap on 29th February 1700 and were March 1 before the British!
Well, that went well didn't it? only 9 more leaps to go! And in 1704, they apparently forgot their grand scheme to take over the world, ok fine, sync their calendar and they had the leap 29th February 1704. In 1708, they forgot, AGAIN... now instead of catching up with the Gregorian calendar that was 10 days ahead, they skipped the correct leap, but did two wrong ones, and were once again 10 days behind. Also, when you are the ONLY country in the world to have a separate calendar, that's a little troublesome for business isn't it?
So along came the hero King Charles XII and put an end to this nonsense and did the 10 day jump. 17 February was nicely followed by 1 March, pretty smart skipping the leap and synching at the same time. Sorry EMIL, but it's true...
So who's the biggest genius of them all? Russia! After the October Revolution in 1917 which actually occurred in November (Gregorian, October if Julian), they decided to go with Greg and do the leap. Due to their even greater stubbornness, they now had to skip 1x days (if u know x, tag me!) due to extra leaps they did in 1800 and 1900. So now, they did the huge jump in 1918 from 31 January to 1x February.
Not sure if this is true, but my lecturer said this. Due to their genius, something interesting happened in 1908. The Olympics was then being held, and everyone won their medals except Russia. Who ARRIVED 2 WEEKS LATE!
ROTFLOL!
Calendars are pretty cool eh? If you think this is complex, check out how the Easter date each year is calculated!
And btw, it's March, so HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! (if you know why for the last time, tag me!)
If you're the first to correctly tag me!, i'll give you a small treat when i meet u!
Cheers!
the story ends like this;
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