Those Dreaded Timelines

So, the year 1700 is the last year of the 17th century and 1701 is the first year of the 18th century.
1800 is the last year of the 18th century and 1801 is the first year of the 19th century.
We now live in the twenty-first century, as the year 2000 was the last year of the 20th century and 2001, the first year of the 21st century.

It is confusing I know but the way I remembered it as a child was to always minus a year from the century. So if we talked about the 18th century, I would subtract one and knew we were talking about the 17(00's) or 1701+ to be exact.

It is possible during your learning of history that you might meet the Julian Calendar or the Gregorian Calender. Don't panic, these were just named after people:

The Julian Calendar came first and is now seen as 'old style.' The Gregorian Calendar became accepted by Britain and the American Colonies in 1752. This is the calendar we use today and is seen as the 'new style.'

The Julian Calendar
In 46 BC the calendar in use was a mess and so Julius Caeser asked Sosigenes to make it clearer. Sosigenes did away with the Lunar System that was causing all of the problems. The Lunar System followed moon cycles and a lunar year worked out to be 354.367 days. It was replaced by the Julian Calendar and was based on a Solar year which was 365.25 days.

The Gregorian Calendar
The Julian Calendar was used until 1582 AD, when Pope Gregory III wanted it changed. The Julian Calendar wasn't accurate and the Solar year system turned out to be too long of a year. The calendar by this point simply did not match the seasons. By Spring of 1545, Easter had moved 10 whole days from when it should have been and Pope Gregory had to add the 10 days to correct it.

The Gregorian Calendar is seen as the Solar Calendar with a year being 365.24219 days. Even after the change, it was still not accurate enough and to make it more correct leap years were introduced. Along with leap days and leap seconds being added, we now have

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