Imagine going to bed October 4, 1582, only to wake up the next morning and find out it was October 15. No, this was not a time-travel experiment gone wrong; it was a real historical event. Ten entire days were erased from existence, leaving people confused, outraged, and convinced that something supernatural was at play. Let’s decode how this happened.
Problem with Julian calendar
The root of this bizarre event lay in a flaw within the Julian calendar, which had been in place since 45 BCE, introduced by Julius Caesar. According to NASA’s History Division, the Julian calendar miscalculated the length of a year by approximately 11 minutes. While this may seem insignificant, those extra minutes accumulated over centuries, causing major astronomical events such as the spring equinox, which determines the date of Easter — to drift further from their intended time. By the late 1500s, the calendar was off by 10 whole days.
To fix this growing issue, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new system, known as the Gregorian calendar, which remains in use today. However, correcting the mistake meant something drastic: 10 days had to be deleted from history.
Waking up in future
Under the Pope’s decree, Catholic nations including Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy were required to skip directly from October 4 to October 15, 1582. When people went to bed, they expected to wake up to October 5, but instead, they found themselves 10 days into the future.
The sudden disappearance of time caused mass confusion. Clerks had to adjust legal documents, landlords and tenants argued over missed rent payments, and those born on the now-nonexistent days of October 5 to 14 were left wondering when to celebrate their birthdays. Many commoners, unfamiliar with the complexities of timekeeping, believed the government had somehow “stolen” part of their lives. Some even feared it was an act of God or a sinister papal plot.
Protests, conspiracies, and 11-day riots
Despite the papal order, many Protestant and Orthodox countries refused to comply. England and its American colonies, for instance, stubbornly held onto the Julian calendar for another 170 years, only adopting the Gregorian system in 1752. However, by then, the calendar had drifted by 11 days instead of 10, meaning Britain had to erase an extra day from history.
This led to widespread outrage, with angry mobs rioting in the streets, demanding that the government “Give us back our 11 days!”. The change also caused bizarre bureaucratic complications: for a time, diplomats, merchants, and travellers had to adjust their dates depending on where they were. Crossing from France to England, for example, meant “travelling back in time” by 10 days.
Although the Gregorian calendar eventually became the global standard, some nations resisted for centuries. Russia, for example, did not adopt it until 1918, meaning that during the October Revolution of 1917, the country was still using the outdated Julian system. Even today, some Eastern Orthodox Churches continue to follow the Julian calendar for religious holidays.
PNN
