How did the international world go about establishing a common format of date and time? I know other cultures still have their original calendars that run concurrent to the Gregorian, but for all intents and purposes, every country recognizes that right now it is Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024 (9:32 am my local time). When and how did this come about?
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The calendar was regulated by the the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages which made it the standard in Western Christendom. Then countries in Western Europe colonized the rest of the world and through force and influence, the rest of the world adopted their calendar. It’s been pretty recent in some cases. For example, the October Revolution in Russia happened in November on the Gregorian calendar because Russia was still using the Julian calendar until the Revolution
In 1884 representatives from 26 nations gathered in the US capital to come to an agreement on time, since then most other nations have come on board
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference
It’s based on earth as a planet in space and its orbit around the sun. And it’s imperfect because a year is 365.25 days which is why we have a leap year. Maybe someone smarter than me can provide a more detailed explanation.
Having the same calendar is very useful for countries that interact with each other, today that is everyone in the world. Originally in Europe that was the Julian calendar from the Roman empire – a leap year every 4th year with no exception. When Pope Gregor improved the leap year rule many European countries switched quickly. European colonies used the calendar of the country running the colony – that covered large parts of the world population. As countries started trading more and more with other countries the rest of the world adopted the calendar, too – often as *the* calendar, sometimes in parallel to others.
Russia and a couple of Eastern European countries were pretty late with the adoption and kept using the Julian calendar, which means they were ~10 days off for 300 years. It frequently caused confusion, with people missing each other because they used the wrong calendar.
Imperialism. Europeans used the Gregorian calendar, and they conquered most of the world.
Even if your country didn’t get conquered, you would probably still want to use the Gregorian calendar in order to effectively trade and communicate with those who do.
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