ANNO DOMINI 1900

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9523, 3 September 1892, Page 3 (Supplement)

ANNO DOMINI 1900

A paragraph has beeu going the rouuds of the papers (says a contemporary) to the effect that there will be no leap year for 12 years from this present year of grace. Obviously this is incorrect. The history of the attempts to form a perfect calendar is most interesting. By that term is meant "tho division of time into years, months, weeks, and days; and also i a register of these divisions." The present ! calendar is known as the Gregorian from the fact that Pope Gregory XHf assembled a council of prelates and philosophers to consider the amendment of the Julian calendar which had been recognised from the time of Julius Ctesar. In the Julian calendar a day was lost in p.very 130 years, so that in the sixteenth century the vernal equinox had changed its place iv the calendar from the 2lst to the lOih March—that is, it really took place on tho 10th instead of the 21st, in which it was placed in tho calendar. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar took place in 1582. Tho amendment ordered was this :—Ten days were dropped after the Ith October 1582, and tho 15th was reckoned to commence immediately after the 4th. The true year being rather less than 365| days long, a calculation had to be madft which would provide the few minutes short aud not met by the adoption of leap year. Thus 1600 was made a leap year, but 1700 and 1800 were not, and 1900 will not be. Leap years coincide with tho years that are divisible by four, therefore 1896 will be a ladies' year, but of years concluding centuries only every fourth is a leap year, beginning with 2000, a date which will not interest the present generation. It is evident from the foregoing that for eight years from 189G there will be no leap year—not 12 years from now.

— With the disappearance of Mr Gladstone, the House of Commons will bo a very common house—if something iv the nature of a pun may be admitted. No figure since that of Charles James Fox has so attracted and impressed men. Beside Gladstone men like Peel, Palmerston, and Russell seem commonplace. The tone is superior, the personality greater.— Radical Keview.

— Along the "West African Coast there are now 200 l'rotustaut churches and 35,000 pupils. Thirty - five dialects or languages have been mastered into which portions of the Scripture and religious books and tracts have been translated and printed, and some knowledge of the Gospel lias reached about 8,000,000 of benighted Africans.