The Curious Thing That Happened in
Talbot County on September 3rd, 1752
by
Gary D. Crawford

 

The year 1752 was an unusual one in terms of the calendar, not only in Talbot County but throughout the English world. In those days, England and her Dominions still were using the Julian calendar, while the rest of Europe had switched over, country by country, to a calendar put forward by Pope Gregory in 1582. England refused to get in step with the rest of the world. Undoubtedly it had something to do with the King being Anglican and the Pope being Catholic.
Even school children know there’s a problem with the calendar. The year isn’t exactly 365 days long. It’s a bit longer. After 365 “days” (i.e., 365 earth rotations, or sunrises), the earth hasn’t quite gotten back to the same point in its orbit around the sun. One full revolution isn’t quite complete.
But who cares? Well, the error puts the calendar ahead of the sun. And that throws off the solstices and equinoxes, which defines the seasons. And the seasons link to weather patterns that are used to govern plantings, harvests, holidays and all manner of things. So, yes, it’s a real problem.
In 46 BC, the old Roman calendar was in advance of the sun by a whopping 67 days. Julius Caesar was an amateur astronomer and had written a book on the subject. He also was head of the Roman Empire, so he decided to fix the calendar.
Caesar had his people contact the best expert they could find, a celebrated Greek astronomer in Alexandria (Egypt) by the name of Sosigenes. After careful measurement, Sosigenes announced that the earth went around the sun in 365 days and six hours, about a quarter of an extra day.
Fortunately (like the rest of us), Sosigenes disliked fractions. So, rather than add six hours every year, he suggested to Caesar that they just let things slip quietly until, after four years, the discrepancy would add up to 24 hours – one full day. Then they could simply add one day to that year, and bingo! – the calendar would be in synch with the sun again. Easy to remember: extra day every fourth year.
And Julius Caesar saw that it was good. He decreed that a 29th day would be added to February every fourth year, which we now call a Leap Year. And it was his calendar – the Julian calendar – that England was still using in 1752, nearly 1800 years later.
But there was still this little problem. The earth doesn’t go around the sun in 365 days and 6 hours, exactly. It’s close to that, but in fact that is 11 minutes and 12 seconds too long – which is enough to throw the calendar off by more than a day every century. I’ll bet Caesar and Sosigenes knew perfectly well that six hours was a bit too long. Sensibly enough, however, they left it for future authorities to make adjustments every few centuries. They would never have imagined that their 365¼-day calendar would remain in use, unchanged, for over 16 centuries!
Amazingly enough, however, that is precisely what happened. Consequently, by 1582, the calendar was off again by ten whole days – more than enough to be troublesome. Pope Gregory did as Caesar had done before him: he called in the experts.
The astronomer Lilio reasoned that, if adding a day every four years was too much, then some Leap Years ought to be skipped. After careful calculation, he concluded that one Leap Year should be skipped in three out of every four centuries. Got that?
The rule can be expressed this way – every century there is a “century year,” like the year 1500 or 1700 or 1900, when the year is divisible by 100. Those years do not get an extra day, even though (being divisible by 4) they re Leap Years. But a “century year” which is also divisible by 400 (like the year 1600 or 2000) escapes this restriction and remains a Leap Year, so February gets its extra day.
Pope Gregory saw that it was good and made it so. The Gregorian calendar and its century rule aren’t perfect, but they are very, very close.
Clear as mud? Anyway, this new calendar worked fine, and one by one the European countries adopted it, but not all. Finally, 170 years later, the English Parliament in 1752 threw in the towel and switched to the Gregorian calendar. By then, of course, their Julian calendar was off by 11 days. A correction was needed. Parliament decreed that the correction should happen in September, when 11 days simply would be dropped.
By the way, Parliament that year also decreed that January 1st would be the first day of the new year. Until then, the Church, and hence the courts, said the new year didn’t begin until the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th. This is why you sometimes see historians writing dates like February 4, 1763/4; which means the date is in the year 1764 even though the contemporary record reads 1763.
So what happened on September 3rd, 1752 in Talbot County? Absolutely nothing, because there wasn’t one. That year, the first Wednesday in September was the 2nd. The next day was Thursday, naturally, but it wasn’t the 3rd. Suddenly it was the 14th of September. That must have been fun for the accountants calculating compound interest.
Imagine what that little trick would do in today’s computerized world....

Gary Crawford and his wife, Susan, operate Crawford’s Nautical Books, a unique bookstore on Tilghman’s Island.