Sweden's Calendar Chaos: February 30th Exists
Sweden tried to phase out the Julian calendar gradually — dropping leap days over 40 years instead of jumping forward 11 days at once like everyone else. They skipped 1700's leap day. Then forgot to skip 1704 and 1708. By 1712 they were stuck between calendars, matching nobody. So they added February 30 to catch back up to Julian. Two days that year: February 29 and 30. Both real. The plan failed. They switched properly in 1753.
February 29, 1712
314 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on February 29
Odo wasn't supposed to be king. He was a count, not a Carolingian. But when Vikings besieged Paris in 885, he held the city for eleven months while Emperor Char…
Christopher Columbus was stranded on Jamaica's north coast in February 1504, his ships worm-eaten and unseaworthy, his crew starving and on the verge of mutiny.…
Abel Tasman left Batavia on January 29, 1644, commanding three ships with orders to find out if New Guinea connected to the mysterious southern land he'd glimps…
Abel Tasman left Batavia in 1644 to find whether New Guinea connected to the mysterious southern land he'd glimpsed two years earlier. He sailed the entire nort…
The raid on Deerfield happened at 4 a.m. in a February snowstorm. The attackers walked over snowdrifts piled against the town stockade — winter had built them a…
Queen Ulrika Eleonora surrendered the Swedish throne to her husband, Frederick of Hesse-Kassel, ending the absolute monarchy that had defined the previous centu…
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