Arizona weekly citizen., 1892-08-27
OCT. 21, NOT OCT. 12.

At the instance of the executive com mittee of the national public school eel ebration of Columbus Day, a bill was recently introduced in congress instruct ing President Harrison to issue a prOcla- nation making Columbus Day gen eral holiday. In the interest of scholar ly accuracy this bill wisely authorized the change in date from Oct. 12 to Oct. 21. It has passed both houses of con- gress and received the presidents sigma ture.
 Above all other dates nearly every pupil in our public schools remembers that Columbus discovered America Oct. 12, 1492. They will all want to know why the Tooth anniversary falls on Oct. 21, 1892.
 For many centuries the calendar in stituted by Julius Caesar, known as the Julian calendar, was commonly accept ed. This calendar assumed that there were 365l4 days in year. But as this made the year II minutes and 14 seconds too long, it could not without correction very long answer the purpose for which it was devised. Consequently, in 15S2, it was found necessary to reform the calendar, and the Gregorian calendar was adopted. In order to correct the errors that the old calendar had made 10 days were dropped out, and Oct. of 15S2 became Oct. 15. As the error was found to be exactly 3 days in 400 years, the Gregorian calendar omitted the leap year from every cen turial year, excepting those which were divisible by 400. Thus the years 1500. 17OO and 1900 were not leap years.
 As above stated, this reformation took place in 15S2, and 10 days were omitted from the calendar. But as Columbus discovered America previous to the year 1900. which reckoned by the Gregorian calendar would not be leap year, there would be but 9 days to omit.
 On Oct. 21, 1892, the sun will occupy the same relative position to the earth as on the memorable Oct. 12, 1892
 The GregOrian calendar was not i,i- troduced into Great Britain until 11ji, popular ignorance and prejudice up to that time successfully opposing it. By the masses of the people 1t was believed that the obliteration of 10 days would shorten their lives. 1t Is remarkable that Russia still adheres to the Julian reckoning.
 We have already announced the change as in the interest of scholarly accuracy. The public school stands for enlightenment and progress, and it would not be in keeping with this spirit to compute the four centuries that will intervene between the date of the dis covery and the date we are to celebrate by an erroneous calendar which had its day and was discarded more than 300 years ago.
 All the precedents for celebrating American anniversaries are in favor of correcting the old calendar to the new. For instance. "FOrefathers' Day" in New England is celebrated Dec. 21, al- though according to the Julian calendar the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Dec. II. Washington was born on the 11th day of February, "Old style" but We celebrate the anniversary of his birth on the 22d of February, new style"
 The original proposal for the public school celebration set apart Oct. 12, but the friends of free education who are pushing the enterprise believed a bad precedent would be established, as' 1t named false date for the observance of an historical event. This is the first eff fort that has ever been made fittingly to observe, by national commemorative ex- ercises, the achievement of Columbus, and the right day should be celebrated. For this reason we are glad that Oct. 21 is to be the day. We want the children of the land to observe an anniversary with all that name implies, and not nec- essarily the recurrence of a fixed date, which, owing to the arbitrary changes in the methods of computing time, has lost its significance and i'll our day does not accurately mark off the century point. Hurrah for the national Columbian public school celebration of Oct. 21.