14/09/2026
If, in 1752, you'd arranged to do anything on any day between 2 September and today, you'd have had a hard time getting it done. Because those days didn't exist – the British Calendar Act of 1751 had abolished them.
Until this day in 1752, was using the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46BC, which had 365 days, with 366 days every fourth year. But that missed out a day every 128 years, which meant the year was effectively 11 minutes short, when compared with the solar year.
That was a big deal, especially to the Pope. Before 1582, Easter was celebrated on the spring equinox, which everyone agreed would be 21 March. The trouble was, with every year being 11 minutes too short, Easter was hurtling towards Christmas at the rate of just over a week every thousand years.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar that would help regulate Easter more reliably. And so, the Catholic countries of France, Italy, Portugal and Spain changed calendars, and lost ten days.
However, Britain stuck to the Protestant way of doing things for another 200 years, by which time we were 11 days out of sync. It wasn't until 1752, following the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750, that the UK and other British colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar.
