It’s not a joke, the only country in the world that is not yet in 2025: its inhabitants live in 2017
Almost everyone in the world follows the same calendar, although there is one area on Earth where its inhabitants see it very differently.
That we are almost a month away from 2025 is something we can all agree on, right? Well, not everyone, not everyone, because there is one country in East Africa that has not yet reached the year 2025. This is Ethiopia, a nation that reached the year 2017 last September when its people celebrated New Year’s Eve on the 12th. Do you know why?
What makes the Ethiopian calendar unique?
Practically the entire planet is governed by the Gregorian calendar, promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, which states that we are currently in the year 2025, as well as that a week consists of seven days and a day, 24 hours. In the Ethiopian calendar, a year does not have 12 months, but 13, and the main difference is that the extra month is shorter than the others, since each month has 30 days and the extra, called Pagumē, houses the single days that would be left over in the Gregorian calendar, for example in December.
The reason why it is 2017 in Ethiopia is very simple, as the Ethiopian calendar places the birth of Jesus eight years later than what is believed almost everywhere else in the world. This makes for some very strange situations for visitors, as it must be a bit strange to buy something in a store and have the bill read something like January 25, 2017. However, government organizations do not want this to be a problem, so they also use the Gregorian calendar to synchronize with the rest of the planet in various areas such as international markets and foreign relations.
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