NormalDate 1.2 released

John Machin sjmachin at lexicon.net
Mon Mar 11 22:07:24 EST 2002


Jeff Bauer <jbauer at rubic.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1015887440.17682.python-list at python.org>...
> NormalDate 1.2 is available from:
> 
> http://starship.python.net/crew/jbauer/normaldate/
> 

I was curious to find the magic number 1582 in the source code, in a
method where it is testing for a valid date:

if year == 1582 and month == 10 and day > 4 and day < 15:
    return 0  # special case of 10 days dropped: Oct 5-14, 1582
 
To make some sense of reported historical dates, one needs to guess
based on the location, origin and mind-set of the reporter. The
introduction of the Gregorian calendar was spread over 1582-1587 in
Roman-Catholic-influenced regions, 1700-1701 in some
Protestant-influenced regions and 1752-1753 in others (including
England and its then colonies) -- and that's just some of Europe.
Greece didn't change until 1924. Germany, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland split along religious lines into the 1582+ group and the
1700+ group. Alaska changed in 1867 upon purchase from Russia -- the
then USSR changed in 1918; make your own deductions about other states
like Louisiana and Texas. There's even a story that the date of
introduction in Sweden varied by parish!

Not all the countries that changed in 1582 omitted the same range of
dates.

The warp in the calendar that is used by the above code is only
correct (under some limited definition of "correct") for the areas
then defined as part of Rome, Italy, Portugal, Spain & Poland.



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