During the 1908 Olympics in London, the Russians showed up 12 days late due to the fact that they were using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar.

During the 1908 Olympics in London, the Russians showed up 12 day

If you were to turn your calendar to January 7th, you'd likely see the words "Christmas (Eastern Orthodox)" or something similar on that date. To those of you who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! Everyone else, you're probably wondering why there's an entire religion that observes Christmas weeks after you do.

The reason for the discrepancy? Partially, it's Julius Caesar's fault. Over 2,000 years ago, he promulgated the Julian calendar, a base-365 day calendar that erred in its accounting for leap years. As time progressed the calendar fell out of sync with the seasonal equinoxes; before long, Easter, in particular, wasn't where it should have been. Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII had enough of this and mandated that Catholic nations switch to a new calendar, the Gregorian one (like Caeser's, it's named after him), which solved that problem.

Russia was one of the final nations to adopt the new calendar, doing so in 1918 after the Bolsheviks took over. Ten years prior, however, they were on the Julian calendar and the UK was on the Gregorian one. That's of specific importance because that year, 1908, London hosted the Summer Olympics, and Russia was participating

On July 11, 1908, the U.S. edged out Great Britain to take gold in the event. The Russians don’t appear on the standings and were non-competitive. Not because they weren’t any good, but rather because they weren’t present. While they arrived to town a few days before July 11, they did so according to the wrong calendar. Unlike the other teams, the Russian shooters arrived on the Julian date,