Jan = Jan in a leap year, Feb = Feb in a leap year
Jan = Jan in a non-leap year, Feb = Feb in a non-leap year
M O N T H
Jan Apr Sep Jun Feb Aug May /
Oct July Dec Mar Feb /
DAY OF MONTH Jan Nov / DAY OF WEEK
1 8 15 22 29 A B C D E F G Monday
2 9 16 23 30 G A B C D E F Tuesday
3 10 17 24 31 F G A B C D E Wednesday
4 11 18 25 E F G A B C D Thursday
5 12 19 26 D E F G A B C Friday
6 13 20 27 C D E F G A B Saturday
7 14 21 28 B C D E F G A Sunday
/ 68 69 70 71 72
/ 73 74 75 76 77 78
/ 79 80 81 82 83 1900s
84 85 86 87 88 89
90 91 92 93 94 95
96 97 98 99 00 ......
01 02 03 04 05 06
07 08 09 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 2000s
24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39
40 41 42 43 44 45
46 47 48 49 50 51
Y E A R o f C E N T U R Y
Summary of how to use Herschel's Perpetual Calendar
Use the Day Number and Month together
and also the Day of Week and Year of Century
together. The two are linked by the SAME LETTER in the body of the table.
Leap years are indicated in bold
eg 92, 96, 00, 04 etc meaning 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004.
Here are some examples:
On what day of the week is July 4 1998?
Use the Day Number (4) and Month
(July) to find a letter from the table (it is
F).
Use the Year of the Century (98) and the letter
F to find a row for the Day of Week.
The row for F in the column above 98 is labelled
Saturday.
So July 4 1998 is a Saturday.
Which months this year (2004) have Friday 13th?
Use the Day of Week (Friday) and
Year of Century (04) to find a letter from the
table (A).
Use the Day Number (13) to find the letter (
A) in its row. The appropriate
column is headed Aug, Feb.
Since 2004 is a leap year (it is shown as 04 and not as 04)
then Feb is valid as
February of a leap year.
The 13th will fall on a Friday in February, August only in 2004.
On which years will my birthday (4 May) fall on a Saturday?
We know the Day Number (4) and the
Month (May) so use these to look up
a letter in the table (D).
Use the row labelled Saturday and locate the letter (D)
in it.
The years under the appropriate column are:
..., 68, 74, 85, 91, 96, 02, 13, 19, ...
My birthday (4 May) will fall on a Saturday in 2002, 2013, 2019 ...
But I thought 2000 was NOT a leapyear?
There seems to be an erroneous rule about leapyears that is found on some pages on the Web and
in some software. The correct rule is
that a leapyear is a year which is an exact multiple of 4
but a new century year (..., 1900, 2000, 2100, ...) must also be a multiple of 400 too.
Eric's Treasure Trove
of Science has an entry under
The Gregorian Calendar which has some more historical information on calendars.
The Julian Calendar
The old Julian Calendar had been commissioned by Julius Caesar and dated from BC446
based on research undertaken by the Egyptian Sosigenes.
The calendar until then had 10 months of 30 days each. We still see the remnants of
this in the names of the months:
September (7), October (8), November (9) and December (10)
Julius Caesar introduced a year of 365 days with
two extra months named after himself (July) and the first Roman emperor Augustus Caesar
(August). Augustus insisted that his month had the same number of days as Julius's
(31 days each) and so February was shorted to accommodate this to make 365 days in total.
It also introduced the rule
that every fourth year was to be a leapyear with the simple rule that
every year which is a multiple of 4 has an extra day (a leapyear).
The reason for this is that
there are not exactly 365 days in a year
- the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun in its orbit - but there are
roughly 365.25 days so we need to catch up on the extra 0.25 (=1/4) of a day by adding in a
whole day every 4 years.
The Gregorian Calendar
In fact, even this figure of 365.25 is not accurate enough - it
is too big by about 0.0078 days (that's about 5 mins 37 secs).
This difference was noticed by astronomers and by 1582
when the date on the calendar was out of line with the date "in the stars"
by about 10 days,
Pope Gregory decided to correct it. He ordained that October 5th 1582 should be called
October 15th
to remove the extra 10 days. Also, since 0.0078 is quite close 0.0075 which is
is equal to the handy fraction 3/400, then 3 days in every 400 should not be leapyears.
Gregory's system incorporated this in
the simple rule that loses 3 years in every 400:
the new century years must be multiples of 400 to be leapyears.
Thus 1800 and 1900, although divisible by 4 are not
leapyears, and neither are 2100, 2200 and 2300. On the other hand, the year 2000,
being a multiple of 400 is a leapyear.
This system is called the Gregorian Calendar in honour of Pope Gregory and is
now used worldwide.
Italy, France, Spain and Portugal adopted Gregory's new calendar in 1582 and other
Catholic countries followed later. In Great Britain, it was adopted in 1752
and by then 12 days had to be removed from the calendar, not 10, in September,
causing riots in the streets of London because people thought they had lost
12 days of their lives!
Mark Bader has
the details from the original 1751 Act of Parliament under King George II bringing in the
Gregorian calendar from September 1752
in the UK and "his Majesty's Dominions...".
This century has seen its adoption in China, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania and the former
USSR and Yugoslavia. The latest country to adopt it was Greece in 1923.
We still see remnants of the old calendar in that Christmas Day has
retained its former "orthodox" date and is 12 days out - being celebrated on January 6th
instead of December 25th in some parts of Europe (the twelfth day of Christmas).
More Links
There are more details and many more links on
The Home Page for Calendar Reform.
Dr Ron Knott
May 1998 (updated December 2008)