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Article: Making the calender and solar year coincide has been man's ongoing battle.(Originated from Newport News Daily Press)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- February 28, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Here's a trivia question to use at your next party: How many people were born in Virginia, and the rest of England's American colonies, between Sept. 2 and Sept. 14, 1752?
The answer is easy: none. The hard part is explaining why.
The simple explanation is that those days didn't exist; people went to sleep on Sept. 2, 1752 and awoke on Sept. 14.
The longer explanation gets into the human quest to create a calendar that corresponds exactly to the solar year _ the amount of time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. Those 11 days of 1752 were simply skipped so that winter, spring, summer and fall would begin when they were supposed to.
It's the same ...