Dear Brent, You correctly note...
> It looks like the date must have changed at noon. Indeed so. Interestingly, even with GMT (as used by astronomers and navigators) the date used to change at noon (which was referred to as 0h GMT). This was the case until 1 January 1925, so not very long ago! See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time Historians can be confused by this. They will read an entry in a ship's log recording landfall at a certain time on a certain date and fail to interpret the information correctly. While it is well established that the date changed at noon I haven't actually seen it written down that the day changed at noon too. Can anyone confirm this and give a reference? A good many people don't know the day's date without checking but most know the day of the week. It would be odd to have the date changing at one time and the day at another. I didn't know that French Revolutionary Time had the date changing at noon but that would fit with the way I think French Navigation Tables were published at the time. Can anyone confirm that? Napoleon had a go at almost anything that used base 12 or a multiple of 12 but, looking at the sundial at www.sundialatlas.eu/atlas.php?so=IT2810 it seems that Napoleon forgot to change the number of Signs of the Zodiac to 10. I wonder how he would have done that :-) You can't simply drop the two Signs you least like and spread the others out!! All the best Frank H. King Cambridge, UK --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
