Yes. I assumed that you were using the Gregorian calander.
(regardless of what year your country switched to it.)

Protestant England switched to the Gregorian in 1752, but the Catholic nations switched in 1582. Other groups did not switch until as late as the 20th century. Calanders are funny things in that they represent a societal contract to delude ourselves as a group that we know what time it is.

Reality check: We do not know what time it is because time is relative. There are two important facts:

1. Time moves forward only. When did time begin? We don't know, so we make up a start point. (This is, admitadly, a secular argument^*, but as my second point reveals, even the non-secular "dawn of time" does not work either.)
2. How do you measure time? The US Navy does it with 54 atomic clocks in dispersed vaults, including 10 hydrogen masers and 44 cesium beam devices. In other words, they picked something that does something at a reasonably steady rate, and the measured it. But even that is not trully precise. As Einstein proved, time progresses at different rates dependant on the velocity of the observer. Add that into gravitational forces altering our orbit around the sun, and suddenly every year is a different length.

Time is the great cosmic joke. It is much easier to buy into the group delusion that we know what time it is. It makes it possible to schedule things like trains, tele-conferences, lunch. What I'm saying, Tilly, is that calculating anything having to do with time requires some basic assumptions from the parties involved. The most prevelant calander on the planet is the Gregorian, so we use Gregory's rule and if enough different governing bodies ever agree to muck with that and 'fix' the inherint errors, then this will change.

But what really needs fixing? Does it matter (really) if the month of December happens to fall in the summer in the year 5300 something??^** People have been tinkering with calanders since we first started making them. (Julieus Ceaser had July, the month with the most daylight, named after him. Augustus Ceaser followed him both as Emporer and Month maker and took the month with next greatest amount of sun light... he even took a day from February to bring August up to 31, matching July. )

But I digress, we are here to talk Perl, not to waste time talking about time. You included some good links, I suggest that people interested in this stuff read them. Another good one is the Claus Tondering Calander FAQ.

^*An interesting point that I read somewhere was that the Muslim calander actually shifts the months around through the year, so that Ramadan will occur during all the seasons in a person life.

^**As chromatic mentioned to me in a chatterbox msg, December fell in the summer this year too... south of the Equator. More evidence that calanders are contrived.

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