Changing Time

Fiddling around with time has been a pastime of governments for thousands of years. Today's often hotly debated decisions on shifting a time zone by an hour or so seem penny-ante compared to some past machinations.

Roman politicians were known to shift days around to reduce or extend the terms of office of certain officials. Fed up with this, Julius Caesar, in 45 B.C., established a new calendar, the Julian, named for himself. He gave the year 365-1/4 days; made the year start in January instead of March; stole one day from February to add to the month of July, also named for himself, and he invented the leap year. Open complaints likely were few.

The Julian calendar created much-needed order for the conduct of civil and astronomical affairs, but it fouled up the reckoning of church festival dates. Previously these had been dated by means of the Jewish lunar calendar which used years ranging from 352 to 386 days long. Between various segments of the Christian Church, battles raged for the next thousand years in attempts to reconcile the religious and civil calendars.

Most of the Western world shifted over to the Gregorian calendar during the two hundred years starting in 1582. This calendar is similar to the Julian but, unlike it, the Gregorian has provision for fine-tuning to keep the months from slowly shifting through the seasons as the centuries go by.

When Great Britain finally shifted in 1752, the changeover to the Gregorian calendar required advancing the date by eleven days. This caused great opposition, and a few people were killed as opponents rioted in the streets shouting, "Give us back our fortnight."

Russia was among the last to change to the Gregorian calendar. Hence, when Alaska was purchased, the United States and Russia were eleven days out of wack. But since the annexation shifted Alaska across the international date line, the date in Alaska only had to be changed by ten days.