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From: pg@sanitas.stortek.com (Paul Gilmartin)
Subject: Re: Friday 13th, try it yourself (was Language Wars..)
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Matthew D. Healy (Matthew.Healy@yale.edu) wrote:

: PS: About six months ago when I entered a thread on different dates of
: Julian/Gregorian switching in another newsgroup, I got email from an
: astronomer somewhere in Europe who told me his country (forget which

(quite likely Paul Schlyter :-)

: one) did a _really_ strange number on this: instead of stepping in
: a single year, they had half a century with no leap years until
: they were in sync with the Gregorian calendar!  Stick _that_ in cal's
: pipe and smoke it!

From:    
   Linkname: Calendar FAQ
        URL: ftp://login.dknet.dk/pub/ct/calendar.faq

        This document is Copyright (C) 1996 by Claus Tondering.
        E-mail: ct@login.dknet.dk.

Sweden has a curious history. Sweden decided to make a gradual change
from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. By dropping every leap year
from 1700 through 1740 the eleven superfluous days would be omitted  
and from 1 Mar 1740 they would be in sync with the Gregorian 
calendar. (But in the meantime they would be in sync with nobody!)   
 
So 1700 (which should have been a leap year in the Julian calendar)  
was not a leap year in Sweden. However, by mistake 1704 and 1708
became leap years. This left Sweden out of synchronisation with both
the Julian and the Gregorian world, so they decided to go *back* to
the Julian calendar. In order to do this, they inserted an extra day
in 1712, making that year a double leap year! So in 1712, February had
30 days in Sweden.        

Later, in 1753 Sweden changed to the Gregorian calendar by dropping 11
days like everyone else.

--gil
