Talk:The Maternal Congruence/@comment-26917037-20151206171037/@comment-3125805-20151206183822

This is confused by history. In 1752, Great Britain switched to the Julian calendar. (the former Gregorian calendar was beginning to get out of step with the seasons and needed revision to something less wildly inaccurate. Raj would know the details of how the calendar down here needs to be synched with what's going on in the stars, and the sort of accurate calculation of length of a year, month, week, day, hour, second, et c - get this wrong, and the whole basis of astrology and cosmology gets samewhat out of kilter). In practical terms, if the world had not done something about it, sooner or later spring would start happening in December, and so forth. Astronomical measurements based on the exact duration of a second will go wrong if the basis on which the length of a second is determined is wrong.

Nearly two weeks got lopped off the calendar in 1752. So any recorded events prior to the Change are open to plus-or-minus amendment - Newton's birthdate of 4th January (Gregorian calendar) is also 25th December (Julian calendar). It most probably makes for a better story that way! As Stephen Fry said, Newton's legendary bad temper, misanthropy and curmudegeonly streak can then be blamed on cheapskate relatives giving him only one present as a kid to save money - "''This is for thy birthday and thy Christ-Mass, young Isaac!" ''