In honor of Leap Day, this read is for the history nerds. Ever wonder how America caught our calendar up with the rest of the world? In September 1752, we skipped over 11 days.

The confusion grew: "February 30, 1712, came into existence in Sweden when the Julian calendar was restored and two leap days were added that year." Sweden’s final conversion to the Gregorian ...

The Julian calendar officially began on Jan. 1 in 45 BCE. This method would continue over several centuries, but not without issue. Caesar's math of 365.25 days was close, but it wasn't the exact ...

The Julian calendar worked so well at first that many countries adopted it. Unfortunately, it was flawed, being 0.0078 of a day (about 11 minutes and 14 seconds) longer than the tropical year.

When the Julian calendar was later refined into the Gregorian calendar in 1582, the tradition of adding a leap day to February persisted. Contributing: Saman Shafiq, USA TODAY.

While under the Julian calendar, a day shift accumulated every 129 years, that only happens every 3,333 years under the modern calendar. But that’s a problem for another millennium.

Slowly, very slowly, the world adopted the new calendar. Much of Europe had accepted it by 1584, but there were some stragglers. Being a Protestant nation, England – including the colonies that ...

What it boiled down to was that Sweden resynchronized itself with the old Julian calendar by adding an extra leap day, Feb. 30, to 1712. Easter Sunday was restored to its proper day.

In the Julian calendar, the new year began on March 25. So March 24, 1701 would be followed directly by March 25, 1702. The Gregorian calendar, as we know today, begins on January 1. ...