When Was George Washington Really Born? A Mystery for Presidents Day.

George Washington was not exactly born on February 22 as we have all been led to believe. That's because George Washington was born during the time that Great Britain and her colonies used the Julian Calendar, something we no longer use today.

The Julian Calendar was established by Julius Caesar, 46 years BCE, and for more than fifteen centuries it was the standard calendar of the Western world--and of some of the Eastern as well. Caesar established a year that was 364.25 days long, designed to synchronize with a complete cycle of the earth's seasons. But his year was eleven minutes, fourteen seconds too slow.

This didn't mean much for a while. But, by the sixteenth century, the date that marked the New Year (which was then on the first day of spring) was ten days behind the vernal equinox.

So, in 1582, Pope Gregory XII consulted with his scientists and devised a new calendar so accurate that it is still in use today and is called the Gregorian calendar in his honor. To make it work, he created leap years, unless the scheduled leap year was divisible by four. He then decreed that the New Year would henceforth begin January 1 instead of March 25. And to get the calendar caught up with the seasons, he told everybody they were going to have to lose 10 days. Imagine. You and I have lost days we can't remember, but this was endorsed by the Holy Father himself.

October 4, 1582, would have to be followed by October 15, 1582. Since he was the Pope he could order this sort of thing and have it happen, just like that.

Well, almost. By the sixteenth century, the Western world was no longer entirely papist. The Reformation had swept Europe, the Orthodox churches in the East were now following their own calendar, and it took several centuries for the Gregorian calendar to be widely adopted, especially in Protestant countries.

So back to George Washington, you say. Well, his birth date in the eighteenth century was caught up in all this. Britain and her colonies finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, when GW was (more or less) 20 years old (more about that in a minute) and by that time they had to add eleven days to make the calendar come out right. September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752. Are you confused yet?

So George Washington got a new birth date. The original date of his birth, February 11, 1731 (now called Old Style, or O.S.) was changed to February 22, 1732 (now called New Style, or N.S.) The change in the year of his birth came because Washington was born between January (when the New Year now began) and March (when the New Year had begun). I hope you are still following me.

If you think this is a brain teaser, imagine how it was for people who lived through it. A full five years before the switch, a teenage George Washington made a diary entry dated "Fryday, March 11th, 1747/8." It suggests that the upcoming change in the calendar was on his mind, and that he was noting it in advance, perhaps for the sake of accuracy, or as a reminder if he should look back at his writings one day.

He lived through so many remarkable changes in his lifetime, perhaps this change in the calendar is one of the least noted. And yet it remains intriguing.

What happened, do you supposed, to the eleven days everyone in America lost in 1752?

And when Washington died in 1799, was he 68 years old, or really 67?