Today is the birthday of George Washington, 1732. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

It would be for most critters, but Mr. Washington was a victim of bad timing. For mathematical reasons, he was caught in the mangle when everyone went from the old calendar (the Julian Calendar) to the new system (the Gregorian Calendar). There was some 11 day mixup, when transferring dates, BUT also, February was tossed in the basket and ultimately, George Washington picked his own birthday, many years after the fact. For a while there was no February at all.

You may be relieved to know that many countries had elaborate versions of this chaos.

So this should go to show that counting is a tricksy business, and We Rhinos are right not to do much of it. It is not February’s only eccentricity, but We will deal with that later.