How George Washington was born on both February 11th, 1731 and February 22nd, 1732,One interesting q

How George Washington was born on both February 11th, 1731 and February 22nd, 1732,One interesting quirk about George Washington is the fact that he had two birthdays. As shown on his family bible, his birthday is noted as being Feb.11th, 31/Feb 22nd 32. Of course Washington wasn’t born on two different days, but the explanation of this quirk is quite interesting. It all starts with how we measure time and organize our calendar.A tropical year is the time it take for the Earth to rotate around the sun. Since ancient times mankind has developed methods to measure and track the tropical year, dividing the year into 365 days that are 24 hours long. This calendar system is simple, but there is one problem. A tropical year isn’t really 365 days long, it’s 365.25 days long, something the Ancient Greeks began to accurately measure. That extra .25 days may not seem like much, but as the years pass by this lost time can add up (with the calendar falling behind one day every four years), causing dramatic shifts in the calendar compared to the tropical year. Imagine celebrating Christmas sometime in summer because the calendar no longer aligns with the tropical year. The Ancient Romans were having that kind of problem when the Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar decided to do something about it on the year 45 BC. Called the Julian calendar, he reformed the old Roman calendar by adding an extra day to the calendar every four years. The extra day was called a leap day, and years which had a leap day were called leap years. The Julian calendar was adopted by the Roman Empire, and as a result was the common calendar used by Europeans long after the fall of Rome. The Julian calendar was a good idea, but there is one big problem. You see a year isn’t actually 365.25 days long, its actually around 365.242 days long. While the difference between the Julian calendar and the tropical isn’t much, over the centuries that extra time can add up, causing the calendar to progress forward when compared to the tropical year. For example, the Orthodox Christian Church still uses the Julian calendar, hence why Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas this year on January 7th.To solve this problem, in 1552 Pope Gregory XIII commissioned the creation of the Gregorian calendar. The Catholic Church loved to keep precise track of their holy days, and the Julian calendar just wasn’t up to snuff because of the problem of it drifting forward compared to the tropical year. Thus Gregory XIII had some monks create a calendar which made up for the extra time created by the Julian calendar. This was done by eliminating 3 leap years every four centuries. Years that would be divisible by 4 would be leap years, except for years that are divisible by 100. Finally the Gregorian calendar set New Years on January 1st, before the Gregorian calendar most countries celebrated New Years on March 25th as part of the Feast of the Annunciation. The Gregorian calendar fixed the Julian calendar, but there was a problem, countries which were predominantly Protestant rejected the Gregorian calendar because it was a Catholic creation. Protestant nations also continued to have New Years on March 25th regardless of the fact that they weren’t celebrating a Catholic Feast Day. While Protestant countries thumbed their noses at the Gregorian calendar because of it’s Catholic origins, it would only be a matter of time before most European countries would be forced to adopt the Gregorian calendar, or face having really screwed up calendars. George Washington was born on February 11th, 1731, before the British Empire adopted the Julian Calendar. In 1752, the British Empire officially adopted the Gregorian Calendar. A few adjustments were made. First 11 days were removed from the month of September. People in Britain and her colonies went to bed on the night of Sept. 2nd, and woke up on the morning of Sept. 14th.Second, New Years was moved from March 25th to January 1st. With the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, Washington chose to retroactively move his birthday from February 11th, 1731 to February 22nd, 1732. He moved his birthday ahead 11 days to make up for the 11 days lost when the calendar was switched, and moved his birth year to 1732 to make up for switching New Years to January 1st. His birthday according to the tropical year was the same, it still happened on the same day, Washington merely changed his birthday on the calendar to accurately represent his real age according to the tropical year.  -- source link

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