On Calendars

To what extent Julius Caesar did this after becoming Pontifex Maximus in 63 BC isn’t clear, but 17 years later, in 46 BC, Caesar reformed the calendar, taking the power to define the year away from the position. The Julian reform declared that the Roman Republic would use a 365 day calendar with an extra day every 4 years. (Sound familiar?) In other words, the year was approximated at 365 1/4 days. To align the new calendar with the equinox, though, he had to add another two months to the already extended year, making 46 BC 445 days long. Cicero called this “the last year of confusion”.

via panic.com

Interesting facts about the origin and adjustments of calendars. Not surprisingly, ambitious emperors in India would routinely start their own calendars as Shakakarta marking the beginning of their Epoch.

Many programmers would probably remember that the programming epoch begins with time 0 for Unix as 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970.