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Throughout much of human history , we have made sense of the passage of clock time by dividing it into units . dissimilar culture have done this otherwise , but in modern time , the most vulgar way is to snap off clip into seconds , moment , hours , days , weeks and geezerhood .

But how many week are there in a year ?

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There are 52.143 weeks in a regular year and 52.286 in a leap year.

broadly , there are 52 weeks and one additional daylight in a regular yr . In a leap year , which come about almost every four years , there are 52 weeks and two additional days .

When did we decide there are 52 weeks in a year?

The storey of how we come at thesetimekeepingrules is rather complex . other methods of timekeeping date to as former as 11,000 years ago . AnAustralian Aboriginal Lucy Stone placement suggeststhe people who construct it used the patterns of the sunlight to traverse the passage oftime .

" The biggest number one wood [ for keeping time ] was probably religion,“Demetrios Matsakis , former chief scientist at the Department of Time Services of the United States Naval Observatory and now primary scientist at Masterclock , Inc. told Live Science . " The Egyptians , Sumerians and others needed to recite certain supplication at certain time of the day and night . "

Since then , cultures have employed both the place of thesunand the moon to chronicle the passing of time . Some calendar have been based solely on the sun or the moonshine and others have essay to combine the two .

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" The sunshine is much salutary [ as a substance of calculating time ] because the lunar month ’s orbit is very temporary due to the interplay between the gravitational bailiwick of the Earth and the sun , " Matsakis said .

The Gregorian calendar , the most commonly used calendar worldwide , is a solar calendar base solely on the motion ofEartharound the sun . It is derive from a calendarJulius Caesarinstituted in 46 B.C. The Julian calendar figure the duration of the year at 365.25 days , so it added an extra day every four yr . However , a year is actually 365.2422 days . The Julian calendar failed to account for about 11 minutes , which compound over metre .

By the prison term the divergence was noticed in the 1600s , around 10 additional dayshad fall in the calendar . This became a concern for the Catholic Church , which desired to keep a precise calendar to wield an precise observance of holidays .

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" Over the centuries that difference impart up , and Pope Gregory XIII was disturbed that Easter was being celebrate at the unseasonable clock time , " Matsakis said . The celebration of other holidays was calculated by their distance from Easter , create additional tortuousness for the Christian church .

The Holy Father determined that the problem should be corrected by skippingleap yearsin any centurial yr not divisible by 400 . Gregory decreed thatOct . 4 , 1582 would skip directly to Oct. 15 , thus even up for the extra days that result from the slight inaccuracy in the Julian calendar .

While some rural area quickly adopted the new calendar , others did not . Some , such as England , refused due to religious reasons — the nation ’s Protestant faith conflict with edicts issued by the Catholic Church . The United Kingdom did not adopt the new systemuntil 1752 . Others had long observed alternate calendric system . China , for example , had long used alunar calendarand did not take over the Gregorian calendar until 1912 . The land did not in reality put it into wide purpose until 1929 .

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As a answer , many documents in the years pursue Pope Gregory ’s decree heel both Old Style dates , which reflected the Julian calendar , and New Style dates , which reflected the Gregorian calendar , so as to avert confusion .

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after , the calendar was further refined to be even more precise than the Gregorian . " In 1923,on the adviceof the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milanković , the leap year system was changed again , " Matsakis said .

This fourth dimension , any year not divisible by 100 was not a bound year , with the exclusion of those that left remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900 . The Milanković calendar will adjust with the Gregorian calendaruntil 2800 . Despite the increased accuracy , it has only been adopted by sure limb of the Eastern Orthodox Church .

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