The Gregorian calendar was first introduced in 1582, but it took more than 300 years for all the different countries to
change from the Julian Calendar.
The Gregorian Calendar, also known as the Western or Christian Calendar, is the most
widely used calendar in the world today. Its predecessor, the Julian Calendar, was
replaced because it did not properly reflect the actual time it takes the Earth to circle
once around the Sun, known as a tropical year.
The delay in switching meant that different countries not only followed different calendars for a number of years but also had different rules to
calculate whether a year was a leap year.
This explains why the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were leap years in countries still using the Julian calendar (e.g. Greece), while in countries that
had adopted the Gregorian calendar (e.g. Germany), these years were common years.