Why does "cal 9 1752" produce incorrect results?

Jon H. LaBadie jon at jonlab.UUCP
Sat Dec 1 06:14:24 AEST 1990


In article <614 at svcs1.UUCP>, rls at svcs1.UUCP (Bob Strait) writes:
> khenry at umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Ken Henry) writes:
> 
> > Does anybody know why "cal 9 1752" produce incorrect results?
> 
> Much depends on what you mean by "incorrect."  September, 1752,
> was when the English-speaking world adopted the Gregorian
> calendar, a couple of centuries after Pope Gregory and the
> Roman Empire converted.  By that time the Julian calendar was
> eleven days out of sync with the Gregorian calendar so they
> simply dropped the 11 days.  Thus, the next day after
> September 2, 1752, (Julian) became September 14, 1752, (Gregorian).

Except for thinking the naming of the calendars was reversed,
I have no quibble with Bob's answer.  And I have no authority
to support my (previously wrong?) idea.

Bob's answer does lead me to ask a question however.  I have
fequently heard the "+j" option of the date command (which outputs
the day of the year - 1 to 366) referred to the "Julian" date.

Where did this nomenclature come from? 

Jon
-- 
Jon LaBadie
{att, princeton, bcr, attmail!auxnj}!jonlab!jon



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