By “sequence” for the purposes of this thread I mean a system whereby days are assigned a name or number according to a periodically repeating rule. A calendar that assigns days a name like “January 1” or “October 22” is a seuqence in that sense, since the rule that determines which day gets which name/number repeats periodically (even if the period, in the case of the Gregorian calendar, lasts 400 years).
This calendar sequence goes back 1582 (for the Catholic countries; the date for the Protestant countries varies) when the Gregorian calendar was introduced. October 4, 1582, was followed immediately by Octover 15, 1582, and the ten dates in between were skipped in order to match up with the natural rotation of the Earth around the Sun. In that sense, the sequence was interrupted in 1582.
But what about the week? It’s another sequence that assigns days a name, based on a cycle of seven days. To my knowledge, the 1582 reform left this unaffected: October 4, 1582 was a Thursday, and the following day (October 15) was a Friday. In that sense, the days-of-the-week cycle survived a watershed that fundamentally reformed the calendar cycle.
But was there ever a comparable interruption for the days of the week? To my knowledge, the seven-day week was customary even in antiquity. So is the sequence of Sunday through Monday a cycle that has been repeated tens of thousands of times since the Roman days according to this simple pattern, or has there ever been a time in history when the sequence was interrupted and reset?
So, the sequence of weekdays has mostly been preserved, but there are some exceptions in some places. (This is the version of the Wikipedia article I originally linked to back in 2012; it has since been edited; the bit about Alaska is still there, but with much less detail. The claim is also made on this page, which page also seems to indicate something similar happened in Samoa in 1892.)
Speaking of the sequence of weekdays and Samoa in particular, as referenced in the earlier thread, in 2011 Samoa changed on which side of the dateline it stood, resulting in a 3-day weekend.
Two major shifts were by the Philippines and most recently Samoa. Though there have been numerous Pacific Island shifts.
Philippines switched from “American” time to “Asian” time in 1844 when Monday December 30 1844 was followed by Wednesday January 1 1845.
In 1892 the Samoan Islands shifted to “American” time by repeating Monday July 4. In 2011, Samoa (now split from American Samoa) shifted back to “Asian” time skipping Friday December 30. Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand made the same shift. There is still a dispute among Seventh Day Adventists on the island as to when to worship.
While these edge cases revolving around the international dateline are interesting, I don’t think they are particularly germane to the OP’s question.
I’m in Jerusalem on the Sabbath with a time machine that will move me back in time in 7-day increments. How many years do I have to go back before I will land on a day that isn’t the Sabbath?
The Julian calender was based on the Hebrew calendar. So as long as you limited your travels to areas under Jewish control, you could probably go back to at least 600 BC. The Jews seemed to have picked up the seven-day week from the Babylonians during the Babylonian Captivity, but at first the seven-day weeks weren’t continuous. They were calculated from the new moon so sometimes extra days were thrown in. However you probably still have at least 2600 years of continuous days.
Are there any astronomical records that we can compare? For example, has anyone found a clay tablet somewhere in the Middle East that said that there was an eclipse on a summer Friday in the third year of King Kooldood, and we have research indicating that King Kooldood came to power sometime around 2100 BC or so, and we then look at astronomical data and see that calculations indicate that the only summertime eclipse in that part of the world between 2105 BC and 2090 BC was the July 20, 2098 BC eclipse, which was a Friday per our current week cycle?
This is my understanding as well. Or at least my understanding is that there is some controversy that extra Sabbaths were inserted into some weeks to keep the seven day week aligned with the 29 1/2 day lunar cycle. I can’t really follow the arguments nor am I sure if some of the sites are just plain religious nonsense, but google “Double Sabbath” and read for yourself if your interested.
While Babylonians and Zoroastrians used a seven-day week, to keep lunation synchronized some weeks were “leap weeks” of 8 or 9 days, so I think the Jewish calendar was first to adopt an unvarying 7-day cycle.
What’s the earliest historical date whose weekday is independently confirmed?
The crucifixion of Jesus circa 33 AD on the Friday before Passover might be a candidate, except for five problems:
[ul][li] Some Gosepls imply Jesus met with Pilate on 14 Nisan; others 15 Nisan.[/li][li] The year is unknown.[/li][li] AFAIK, Jewish month lengths are variable and were still defined by priestly fiat in 33 AD, with no record being kept.[/li][li] Some vocal skeptics think the story of the crucifixion and even the crucifixee were mythical.[/li][/ul]
To be extremely nit picky one problem. Before the Julian reform of 45 bc the Roman Empire used 8 day market weeks. Jerusalem was conquered in 63 bc so would have used the roman market week between 63 bc and 45 bc.
I’m writing this without Googling. I seem to remember that at sme point the UK pushed forward it’s calandar by 5 days in April… something abut a shift to the Gregorian calandar.
Because the King didn’t want to miss out on tax revenues, the end of the tax year was moved to April 6th, where it remains today.
Wrong memory, urban legend or another obsure fact rememebred by upend?
Nothing to do with the King, and it was eleven days, not five. But basically, yes, they didn’t want a short year for revenue purposes, so they moved the end of the tax year from 25 March to 5 April, making 6 April the start of the following tax year, and every tax year since, down to the present.
Except that the Jews were known to be pretty bolshy about their religious customs - and the cycle that told them when the next sabbath was would certainly have fallen into that category. So I’m not sure the inhabitants of Israel would ever have really used the Roman calendar, regardless of what their overlords were doing - I can’t imagine that they didn’t at least keep track during that period.
The issue is, did this introduce a discontinuity in (named) days of the week, or just in (numbered) days of the month. My guess is that it was just the latter, and the week was not affected, but I do not know.
The tax year began on 25th March (“Lady Day”) as that was the first day of the calendar year up until the same Act of Parliament that made the change to Gregorian. So the day after 31st December 1751 was 1st January 1752. The preceding year, the transition had been from 24th March 1750 to 25th March 1751, making 1751 a “short” year.
The beginning of the tax year advanced a further day to April 6th in 1800, because the Treasury figured that they would lose a days revenue - it would have been a leap year under the Julian calendar, but wasn’t under the Gregorian. They didn’t repeat this tomfoolery in 1900.
Thanks everybody for your input. Actually, I was a bit surprised that the question triggered such a response, sinc eI wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it, but it seems the idea has come across.
This thing about Alaska is interesting, but I don’t quite get it. It seems that when the UK (and, consequently, America, which wasn’t independent at the time) switched from Julian to Gregorian, the sequence of the week days was preserved. That means there was synchronicity as far as the week days were concerned between Russia (Julian) and the U.S. (Gregorian) in 1867: The same day would have a different date (in the sense of month and day of the month) in the two systems, but the same day of the week. But if October 6, 1867 in Russia was October 18, 1867 in the U.S.A - but the same day of the week in both countries -, how can the day change as a result of switching from Julian to Gregorian? It would have set Alaska off-sync, as far as the weeks were concerned, with the rest of the U.S., no?
I suspect Alsaska was on the date counted from Moscow going across Siberia, then adopted the west coast’s time? So effectively it was dragged over the international date line.
While dates changed, I never heard anything about days of the week changing - after all, Gregory reformed the calendar but did not change the days of the week - so when everyone else changed too, they did the same thing - move the 11 days of the calendar, but nowhere was the days of the week change. (It was just an effort to make Dec. 21, mar 21, etc. the solstice and equinoxes, the weekday wasn’t relevant).
I do recall that I saw tombstone flagstones in England along the lines of “XXXX, born 12 July 1665 died 23 Jan, 1665”. The guide gave some song-and-dance explanation that made no sense, but as I understood it was really because the year-end was not Jan 1 in those days. (Many firms’ accounting still consider Mar. 31st the end of the fiscal year).
