Interesting Links for 16-03-2026

[andrewducker]

1. Royal Mail The Lord of the Rings Stamps

(tags:lotr movies royalmail )

2. UK government to launch £1bn plan to tackle youth unemployment

(tags:unemployment apprentices uk )

3. Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year (I've been using it for over 35 years and had no idea)

(tags:excel date history computers )

4. Scientists create first-of-its-kind 'hexagonal diamond' harder than real thing

(tags:diamonds materials )

Comments

Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year

[jack]

I vaguely remembered this but hadn't realised it was still true.

What I hadn't realised is that Excel can't represent dates before Jan 1900 at all. It represents dates as number of days since 1900, and apparently it still does. So it's not much different saying it can't represent dates before Mar 1900.

That's why changing the leap year in 1900 would screw up later dates. I'm not sure it's *impossible* to change that. Eg the sheet could have metadata saying which date system it uses, and it could be old-style 1900 (with fake leap year), old-style 1904, or new-style 1900 (with correctly no leap year, and knowing about negative numbers).

Re: Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year

[andrewducker]

I didn't realise it didn't support dates before 1900!

[juan_gandhi]

It's not Excel, it's the cultural level of many American C programmers.