George Washington was actually born on February 11, 1731 of the Julian calendar, in use before England's calendar reformation in September 1752. His birthday is equivalent to February 22, 1732 in the Gregorian calendar used since 1752. Later in life, Washington himself considered the 22d to be his birthday.You'd be like, It's not really my birthday if you're going by the Julian calendar in use by the calendar reformation England had in September 1752. No, what I'm going by it the Gregorian calendar used since 1752, so my birthday is Feb. 22, 1732.
You do too much of that and I start losing interest. How terrible they had to do all that and mess up the guy's life. He's born in 1731 and it ends up 1732. Weird. But the good news is it didn't happen till he was already more or less in his 20s. By then he's grown up and not a confused little kid wondering why his birthday was screwed up.
For some reason they never mentioned any of this when I was in school. We memorized that his birthday was February 22, 1732. How fortunate we didn't have to get that other date in there too. That would have made it unnecessarily complicated.
So ... this leaves us today to maybe wish George Washington a happy birthday, or maybe not. Depending on how you swing with all these calendars.
