Long ago, before 45 BC, the Roman calendar was a bit of a mess. The year started in March and only had 10 months, which made it only 304 days long. Then, a Roman king Numa Pompilius added two more months, February and January, which made the year longer, about 354 or 355 days.
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| Pic: Amazing Planet |
But there was still a problem. In 450 BC, they moved February to where it is now, between January and March. They also had to add an extra month sometimes to make up for the missing days. This extra month was called Intercalaris or Mercedonius, and it had either 22 or 23 days.
Later on, they realized that the years were too long. So, every eight years, they dropped seven days from the calendar to make it better. This made each year about 365.375 days long.
To fix all these issues, a calendar reform was needed. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, which is the basis for the calendar we use today. But before they could start using it, they had to fix the old calendar. That's why in 46 BC, they had a year with 15 months and 445 days. It was called "the last year of confusion."
After that, they started using the new Julian calendar, which is much simpler and closer to the one we use today.
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