Google News Can Show Buddhist Calendar Year For News Stories

Here is a screenshot of Google News on mobile showing a date that is not the Gregorian date but rather the Buddhist calendar date and year. I assume this is being pulled from some sort of setting override on the phone or in Google Search settings.

This was shared with me on Twitter, he is the screenshot:

I did Google this and it seems like some devices let you set your phone to show the Buddhist calendar. The Buddhist calendar is a set of lunisolar calendars primarily used in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand as well as in Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam by Chinese populations for religious or official occasions. While the calendars share a common lineage, they also have minor but important variations such as intercalation schedules, month names and numbering, use of cycles, etc. In Thailand, the name Buddhist Era is a year numbering system shared by the traditional Thai lunisolar calendar and by the Thai solar calendar.

While most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar which was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day ‘tropical’ or ‘solar’ year that is determined by the Earth’s revolution around the Sun.

So check your device settings if you see this.

Forum discussion at Twitter.