I was marking a geography round at the kitchen table, stuck on whether a border counted in 1582, and lost the whole evening to this instead.
Question for the table: what happened in Madrid on the ninth of October, 1582? Nothing. There wasn't a ninth. Thursday the fourth went straight to Friday the fifteenth in Spain, Portugal, Poland\u2013Lithuania and the Papal States (the ten days weren't lost, they were struck out, to haul the equinox back where it was supposed to sit). England kept counting the old way for another 170 years, so the ninth happened perfectly normally in Kent.
Teresa of \u00c1vila died at Alba de Tormes during the night of the fourth. She was buried the following morning, the fifteenth.
A ten-day delay and not a word of it at the platform, Pip. No apology for the inconvenience, no revised arrival. They just took the board down and put a new one up, and everyone went to work on Friday.
And then there's the third timetable: the Orthodox churches kept the older reckoning, which is why those calendars still run thirteen days behind now. Britain held out until 1752 — the sources suggest rather less rioting over it than the stories claim.