eli5 how did the whole world come to use one calendar

Question

Did everyone attend a meeting and just agree “today is (certain date), and we’ll go forward from there”?

In: 1

Answer 1

Religion, colonialism and globalization.

Different European countries used the Julian calendar thanks to the major influence of the Roman empire. Then, a few centuries ago, they slowly began to adopt the Gregorian calendar, introduced by the pope Gregory XIII.

Then colonialism came and Europe controlled significant parts of the world, so the colonies used the Gregorian calendar as well.

Now, thanks to globalization, countries are practically forced to use the Gregorian calendar in order to deal with the majority of the countries in the industrial world.