If a date isn't on the calendar, does it exist? I'm Colton from Ripley's.com and this is your Weird Minute. Believe it or not, the British Parliament passed a law that skipped time. Known as the Calendar New Style Act of 1750, the law changed the date of the new year for Britain and switched them over to the Gregorian calendar, a calendar the rest of Europe had been using as far back as 1582.
At that time, 170 years prior, everybody in the West used the Julian calendar, a calendar that approximated a year to be 365 days and six hours long. Pope Gregory XIII didn't like this and came up with his own calendar that measured a year at a more precise 5 hours and 49 minutes. As Pope, he was able to get the Catholic states to switch to his calendar, but London held out.
11 minutes might not seem like a big difference, but over the course of nearly two centuries, Britain was operating 11 days behind its trading partners. Once the act went into effect, they had to skip September 3rd to the 13th. For more strange stories, visit Ripley's.com. Rate the Weird Minute if you haven't already and tune in tomorrow for another Minute of Odd.