“Do you know when this will happen? On February 30th! ”. The vast majority of people have joked about this date, as it does not exist. Officially, February has 28 days, “earning” 1 extra day every four years to adjust the calendar with Earth's translation.

However, yes, there was already February 30th. In 1700, Sweden, which at that time also encompassed where today is Finland, decided to change the Julian calendar for the Gregorian. This year had been a leap year for the Julian calendar, and it was not in Sweden, which was "one day off."

This eventually created confusion in the country, which resolved to abolish the Gregorian calendar and return to the Julian in 1712. To correct the mess on dates, this leap year ended up with 2 extra days in February: in addition to the traditional 29, it also featured And the mess did not stop there, since by officially adopting the Gregorian count in 1753, Sweden had to jump from February 17 straight to March 1! The Swedes “lost” 11 days of their history and were not happy at all.

Swedish calendar of the month of February 1712

The case of the Soviet Union

In 1929, the Soviet Union decided that it would create a new calendar, in which weeks would have 5 days and months having 30 days. In this count, there would be 5 or 6 days left, which were counted "without month". The idea of ​​this proposal was to modify labor laws and abolish the weekends!

Because of this, the years 1930 and 1931 ended with the unusual February 30th. Of course, this clutter with counting the rest of the world didn't work very well and ended up being canceled in 1940.

But after all, why is February shorter?

It all started with the ancient Romans, who did not count the months of January and February. As much as they existed in the seasons, on the official calendar they were left out because it was right in the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere, a bad time for farmers, who preferred to ignore their existence. The count went from March to December - month 10 - and ended in 304 days.

To align the calendar with the seasons of the year, King Numa Pompeil, who ruled Rome from 715 to 673 BC, proposed the creation of the months of January and February, which were initially the last of the year. January came in as a normal month, at the time of 29 days - even numbers were unlucky, so the months were 29 or 31 days - but February was shorter because it had the days left. The calendar looked like this:

• Martius: 31 days
• Aprilius: 29 days
• May: 31 days
• Iunius: 29 days
• Quintilis: 31 days
• Sextilis: 29 days
• September: 29 days
• October: 31 days
• November: 29 days
• December: 29 days
• Ianuarius: 29 days
• Februarius: 28 days

King Numa Pompeil created the months of January and February.

If you add up, you'll see that the year ended with 355 days. Over time, this has created a new lack of synchronization between the seasons and the calendar, causing a new month to be added at random. His name was mercedonius and he was 27 days old, having “stolen” 3 days of February, now only 24.

A new standardization took place almost 700 years after the creation of January and February, when Emperor Julius Caesar decided that the year would start from January 1st and not March 1st. The last two months of the year were pulled to the beginning of the calendar, which abolished the mercedonius month.

Julius Caesar put a little more order in the mess

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