Everyone around the globe wakes up to 17th June 2019 as the today. Consider how incredible a feat it is for mankind. The whole of humanity applying one synchronized system to keep track of their big blue ball of seven billion people circling around its yellow star. But it wasn't necessarily the case 300-400 years back.
The AD and BC denominations, as you know, come from the religious Julian calendar. And back in the old days, it was obviously the all powerful Church overseeing all the documentation and maintenance of record keeping around Europe- the then epicenter of scientific, artistic and cultural revolution. The average Joe however, had as much awareness about politics, as Donald Trump has today about, well, frankly, about anything.
Politically, the most powerful man in those days would be the Pope. And Pope Gregory the XIII, had become increasingly frustrated with Easter coming way off the schedule by mid 1500s. Easter, centuries before it was heralded as the resurrection day of the Christ, was celebrated across the old world as the day of the Spring Equinox. It typically falls today around 19th, 20th or 21st March every year. But in 1500s, the Julian calendar marked a year as 365 days and 6 hours long. It was about 11 minutes longer from the accurate measurement. Consider this anomaly compounded over nearly 1300 years and you may visualize how many extra days it would add up. So Pope Gregory XIII decreed in 1582 that about 11 days be skipped in the calendar. The edited Julian calendar came to be known as the Gregorian calendar for this reason. This papan bull (or decree by the Pope) was immediately adopted by the dominions of the Vatican. Italy, Spain, Holland, France, Portugal, Poland and other good boys of Europe. The bad boys- Austria, Prussia, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland followed suit in next 50 years. The lazy boys Russia (1918) and Greece (1923) took longer than the rest, in fact skipped 13 days instead of 11. That leaves only Britain now.
A little bit about the then Europe's political situation now. Britain had grown to become a mammoth empire already by 1500s. And owing to their innate narcissistic nature, the church of England had split from the Catholic church (seated at the Vatican) around 1530s. Thus, when Britons fell out of sync with the rest of the world still following the Vatican church, they didn't cede to this important papan bull. One might visualize the plight of merchants trading across ports or common men communicating to their counterparts across Europe. Needless to say, documentation was now in tatters with two different dates needed for every set of record.
Thankfully, 170 years later, better sense prevailed. Britain passed the Calendar Act of 1750. On Sep 2 1752, seven million Britons and countless millions of Britain's commonwealth subjects across Asia, Africa and Americas went to sleep like usual. But they all woke up on Sep 14 1752 instead. 11 days expunged from the calendar. How many birthdays were missed that year who knows. But the Gregorian calendar had arrived uniting the much larger geography now and it would shape the world 300 years later in 20th century, owing to Britain's unprecedented rise to the world dominion.
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