>At 10:30 PM 21/10/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>thats reallly nice,
>would be interesting to find something about alexotas bridge in
kaunas, that crosses the nemunas / njemen river, that was from the third
>division of poland not only the german-russian border until world war
I, but also the border between julian and gregorian calendar. so one
>needed 17 days to cross the bridge, that made the bridge the longest
in the world in that time...
>
>regards, chris
It wasn't 17 days, but between 11 and 13.
It was 11 days difference from the 3rd Partition in Oct 1795, and 13 by
the end of WW1 (buffer states created between Prussia and Russia, and
Russia switched to Gregorian calendar at end of 31 Jan 1918. The next
day was not 1 Feb 1918 but 14 Feb 1918.
Poland switched calendars on 4 Oct 1592 (the next day was 15 Oct) and
Prussia on 22 Aug 1610 (next day was 2 Sept).
For countries changing in the 1500s and 1600s the difference was 10 days,
in the 1700s it was 11, in the 1800s 12 and in the 1900s 13.
Sweden tried to change gradually... "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. "
See
http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html
So it took between 11 and 13 days to cross the bridge, depending on when
you started! :-)
Brendan