The Julian Calendar

About The Julian Calendar

The Julian calendar, a reform of the Roman calendar, was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and came into force in 45 BC (709 ab urbe condita). It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year, known at least since Hipparchus. It has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, and a leap day is added to February every four years. Hence the Julian year is on average 365.25 days long.

The Julian calendar remained in use into the 20th century in some countries as a national calendar, but it has generally been replaced by the modern Gregorian calendar. It is still used by the Berber people of North Africa, on Mount Athos, and by many national Orthodox churches. Orthodox Churches no longer using the Julian calendar typically use the Revised Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar.

The notation "Old Style" (OS) is sometimes used to indicate a date in the Julian calendar, as opposed to "New Style" (NS), which either represents the Julian date with the start of the year as 1 January or a full mapping onto the Gregorian calendar. This notation is used in reference to dates from czarist Russia (the country did not switch to the Gregorian calendar until 1918).

[From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia as made available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.]

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