Common year starting on Wednesday

A common year starting on Wednesday is any non-leap year (i.e. a year with 365 days) that begins on Wednesday, 1 January, and ends on Wednesday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is E. The most recent year of such kind was 2014, and the next one will be 2025 in the Gregorian calendar^[1] or, likewise, 2015 and 2026 in the obsolete Julian calendar. The exceptional year, 1800, was also a common year starting on Wednesday in the Gregorian calendar, see below for more. Like a leap year starting on Tuesday, this common year has a Friday the 13th in June.

Calendars

Applicable years

Gregorian Calendar

In the (currently used) Gregorian calendar, the fourteen types of year (seven common, seven leap) repeat in a 400-year cycle (20871 weeks). Forty-three common years per cycle or exactly 10.75% start on a Wednesday. The 28-year sub-cycle does only span across century years divisible by 400, e.g. 1600, 2000, and 2400.

Julian Calendar

In the now-obsolete Julian calendar, the fourteen types of year (seven common, seven leap) repeat in a 28-year cycle (1461 weeks). A leap year has two adjoining dominical letters (one for January and February and the other for March to December, as 29 February has no letter). This sequence occurs exactly once within a cycle, and every common letter thrice.

As the Julian calendar repeats after 28 years that means it will also repeat after 700 years, i.e. 25 cycles. The year's position in the cycle is given by the formula ((year + 8) mod 28) + 1). Years 2, 8 and 19 of the cycle are common years beginning on Wednesday. 2017 is year 10 of the cycle. Approximately 10.71% of all years are common years beginning on Wednesday.

References