As I-Connect007 observes the New Year’s Day holiday, we also wish you and yours a prosperous new year. We will be back covering the news of the industry tomorrow, January 2, 2025, according to the Gregorian calendar. Why do we follow the Gregorian format anyway?
Over the past two millennia, Western civilization has relied upon two similar but different calendars: the Gregorian and the Julian. Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The Julian calendar was ultimately replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII introduced it in an effort to keep the calendar more closely aligned with the seasons.
Both calendars feature 12 months and 365 days, but they differ in how they calculate leap years. For example, the Julian calendar adds a leap day every four years. The Gregorian calendar, in an effort to be more accurate, omits the leap day on century years which are not exactly divisible by four.
Complicated? A little. But the result is that the Gregorian calendar is a few minutes shorter than the Julian calendar. The average length of a Gregorian calendar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 20 seconds, which is only 34 seconds longer than the actual year. Interestingly, the U.S. military uses the Julian calendar to track inventory, and Julian dates are often used as time variables in astronomical software.
Our team hopes you all have a fantastic new year!