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1582: Robbed of Ten Days: When Pope Gregory XIII Erased a Fortnight From the Calendar

Thursday, October 4, 1582, went to bed as normal. The next morning, by papal decree, it was Friday, October 15. Pope Gregory XIII had just deleted ten days from the lives of everyone in the lands that adopted his new calendar, not through war or plague but with a stroke of the pen.

The old Julian calendar, running since Julius Caesar set it up in 45 BCE, drifted by about a day every century, slowly dragging the spring equinox out of place. Gregory’s fix was elegant on paper and bewildering in practice: landlords demanded a full month’s rent for a fortnight no one had lived through, wages fell short, and in some towns crowds accused the Church of stealing their days outright. The new rule that century years are only leap years if divisible by 400 quietly corrected the error for good, and the dates we live by today are still Gregory’s.

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Calendar Reform Europe History Religious Decree

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1993: A Firewood Hunt Led to Two More Bodies in Belanglo Forest

In October 1993, a local man out gathering firewood stumbled on human remains in a remote corner of Belanglo State Forest. The bones belonged to Deborah Everist and James Gibson, a Melbourne couple missing since 1989.

What unsettled investigators was that Gibson’s camera and backpack had already turned up years earlier, dumped by the roadside at Galston Gorge, more than 120 kilometres from where his body finally lay. Within weeks, a wider search of the forest uncovered four more young backpackers buried nearby, confirming Belanglo as the burial ground of a serial killer.

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Australia Belanglo State Forest Cold Case Melbourne Missing Persons Murder NSW Serial Killer Victoria

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1860: A Mercy Petition Backed by the Bishop of Adelaide Could Not Save a Man From the Gallows

John Jones, a hutkeeper on a station near Mount Joy in South Australia’s remote Eyre Peninsula, was found dead in his hut in May 1860, his skull broken and the hut stripped of flour, tea and clothing. The accused was convicted at the Supreme Court in Adelaide largely on the testimony of a young companion who admitted taking part in the killing himself.

Before the execution, around 400 citizens, headed by the Lord Bishop of Adelaide, signed a memorial asking the government to remit the death sentence. He had been tried and condemned under British law newly imposed on his people, with little understanding of its workings; the petition failed regardless. He was taken back across the Eyre Peninsula and hanged at Streaky Bay on 5 October 1860, near the district where the killing had occurred

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Adelaide Australia Colonial History Execution Murder Petition for Clemency SA Streaky Bay Trial

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1882: The Last Outlaw Surrenders: Frank James Hands Over a Gun Untouched Since 1861

Five months after his brother Jesse James was gunned down in 1882, Frank James boarded a train to the Missouri state capital and laid his revolver in the hands of Governor Crittenden. “I have been hunted for twenty-one years,” he said, “have literally lived in the saddle… It was one long, anxious, inexorable, eternal vigil.” He added that he had never let another man touch his gun since 1861.

Tried for only two of the gang’s robberies and killings, in Missouri and Alabama, James was acquitted both times, helped by testimony from a former Confederate general. He was never extradited over the infamous Northfield raid and never spent a day in prison. He spent his remaining three decades as a shoe salesman, a racetrack official and a tour guide on the old family farm, where he died in 1915 at the age of 72.

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Alabama Gang Missouri Murder Outlaw Robbery Trial USA

1582: Robbed of Ten Days: When Pope Gregory XIII Erased a Fortnight From the Calendar

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1993: A Firewood Hunt Led to Two More Bodies in Belanglo Forest

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1860: A Mercy Petition Backed by the Bishop of Adelaide Could Not Save a Man From the Gallows

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1882: The Last Outlaw Surrenders: Frank James Hands Over a Gun Untouched Since 1861

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