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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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.
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