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From: @S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC.ARPA:mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re:  Tropics
Message-ID: <2924@mordor.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 15:41:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: mordor.2924
Posted: Fri Aug  2 15:41:30 1985
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From: mcgeer%ucbkim@Berkeley (Rick McGeer (on an aaa-60-s))


>>        Incidentally, the world shifted to the Gregorian calendar at varying
>> times.  The Roman Catholic world did it first, in the 16th Century -- but
>> that was after the Schism, and so England didn't follow suit. For 200 years
>> England's calendar trailed the European by first 9, then 10, then 11 days.
>> England finally converted in the mid-18th Century, to riots (11 days were
>> dropped from the calendar at the stroke of a pen)...
>
>I believe the reason for the riots was that people were forced to pay a whole
>month's rent for the short month.



	Rents in those days were charged by the quarter.  Anyway, you're
right, but that was, sad to say, secondary.  People were really upset
because they'd been made 11 days older at the stroke of a pen..."Give us
back our 11 days", they cried...

	A notable exception to this nonsense was an American planter named
Washington.  In the middle of the kerfuffle, he simply changed his birthdate
in the family bible from February 11 to February 22.  An eminently sensible
individual.

					Rick.