Where would you restart the calendar?

[Clueless Morgan]

It's little things like the fact that a year is really 365.2425 (and really slightly shorter than that---the Gregorian calendar will be one day ahead every 3300 years) days long that really cement that the universe wasn't created for us.

That's what instigated the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar - by the 16th century the calendar had drifted something like 10 days "off" of the tropical or solar year and things needed to realigned.

The day Newton was born is contentious because of this, and the fact that different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at different times - Newton was born December 25th, 1642 according to the Julian calendar, which is the calendar in use in Britain when he was born, but according to the Gregorian calendar, which we use now, and which the continent was using, he was born January 4th, 1643.

The US, UK and Canada didn't adopt the Gregorian Calendar until 1750-something, while almost all of Europe had already adopted it in the 17th century. So if you traveled from the UK to France in the year 1700, you'd not only cross the English Channel, you'd travel about 10 days into the future; or if you traveled from France to England in 1700, you'd travel about 85 miles (on average), AND about 10 days back in time.

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What about the formation of the Royal Society as a date to restart the calendar? It's the formation of the first organized group whose purpose was to gather together and discuss scientific topics and promote scientific knowledge.

That would make this year 355 RS.