"Thirty Days Hath September" may be a useful mnemonic device, but there are times when that poem might have led you astray. In 1752, September was only 19 days long in the U.K., due to the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750. That parliamentary move transferred the country from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar — the former having overestimated each year's length by about 11 minutes.
Back in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII had declared that all countries under the dominion of the Catholic Church needed to adopt the Gregorian calendar, but many Protestant nations — such as England — resisted the pope's demands. During the 18th century, as international trade and diplomacy increased, Britain and its colonies began to view the adherence to a now-antiquated Julian calendar — first implemented in Rome by Julius Caesar in the first century BCE — as more spiteful than practical. When the U.K. finally converted to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, they jumped straight from September 2 to September 14, skipping the 11 days in between to make up for the errors of the Julian calendar. Though protests against the law arose among some anti-reformers — who purportedly rallied behind the slogan "Give us back our 11 days!" — the calendar was adopted without any further delay.
Eastern Orthodox nations, such as Russia and Greece, also initially resisted the papal decree, waiting to transition to the Gregorian calendar until 1918 and 1923, respectively. By then, so much time had passed that those two countries skipped 13 days to bring their calendars up to speed. Russia's stubbornness also affected Alaska — upon being sold to the U.S. in 1867, the former Russian territory leapt straight from October 6 to October 18.
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