Re: Question on the date after '31-DEC-9999' in Oracle

You missed one last gem (and then I'll for my part will put this to a rest):

<quote>

Sweden's relationship with the Gregorian Calendar had a difficult birth. Sweden started to make the change from the OS calendar and towards the NS calendar in 1700, but it was decided to make the now 11-day adjustment gradually, by excluding the leap days (29 February) from each of 11 successive leap years, 1700 to 1740. In the meantime, not only would the Swedish calendar be out of step with both the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar for 40 years, but also the difference would not be static but would change every 4 years. This strange system clearly had great potential for endless confusion when working out on what dates events in Sweden actually occurred in this period. To make matters worse, the system was poorly administered and the leap days that should have been excluded from 1704 and 1708 were still for some reason included. The Swedish calendar should by now have been 8 days behind the Gregorian, but it was still in fact 10 days behind. King Charles XII wisely recognised that the gradual change to the new system was not working and he abandoned it. However, rather than now proceeding directly to the Gregorian calendar (as in hindsight seems to have been the sensible and obvious thing to do), it was decided to revert to the Julian calendar. This was achieved by introducing the unique date February 30 in the year 1712, adjusting the discrepancy in the calendars from 10 back to 11 days. Sweden finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1753, when February 17 was followed by March 1.
</quote>

Cheers
Holger Received on Fri May 27 2005 - 01:42:03 CDT