Everything you wanted to know about Leap Days but were afraid to ask…
February 29th can be a strange day, a day that almost doesn’t exist, except when it does. If you were born on a leap day — or even if you weren’t — here’s a compilation of some fun facts and figures about an event that sees us bizarrely add an extra day to our lives every four years.
According to the Gregorian Calendar, 2020 is designated as being a leap year, a year featuring one extra day. However, if you happen to have been born on February 29th — a leap year day — you already know this, and you have my sympathies. Your birthdays (and the presents that go with them) are a bit like a city bus, you wait for ages and then four come along at the same time. Not exactly perfect.
But here’s a question, why do our leap days happen to fall on February 29th and not on February 31st, or any other day for that matter?
Why do we need a leap year in the first place
Our solar system is a cool place, but it turns out that it’s also a bit complicated.
Up until the Polish cleric astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, made a model of the planets revolving around the Sun (Heliocentrism — your word of the day) most people believed that the solar system revolved around the earth (Geocentrism).
Thankfully, over the centuries, some pretty smart people figured out that it takes the earth approximately 365.25 days for the earth to complete one full orbit of the Sun. They called this period of time a year.
In order to tidy up those nasty fractions at the end of the 365 days, someone in their acute wisdom decided that an extra day should be added to one calendar month every four years to balance things up nicely. And that, my friends, is why a leap year has 366 days.
But why February and not September, or even May?
The Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus was a bit of an egotistic chap and was a little miffed that his predecessor, Julius Caesar had a month named after him which had 31 days. Whereas August, the month named after poor Augustus, had only 29 days.
Augustus threw all his toys from the pram and stole a couple of days from frosty little February leaving it with only 28.
When it was decided that an extra day should be added to the calendar every four years, to stop the solar system from misbehaving itself, it was little February who was rewarded with the gift of an extra day.
So does that mean that every fourth year is a leap year?
Hmmmmmm… That’s where things can get a little complicated.
Every fourth Gregorian calendar* year is a leap year unless it happens to be a year that is divisible by 100 but is not divisible by 400. Got that?
The year 2000 was a leap year, so was the year 1600, but not the years 1700, 1800, or 1900.
That’s crazy, I hear you say. But wait, you see there was a method in the madness of Pope Gregory XIII (Yes, he of the calendar).
Remember that quarter day at the end of every year, well, it turns out that it’s not exactly a real quarter day. So, in 1582 good old Popey decided that according to his new calendar — the Gregorian Calendar — they would simply lose three leap days every 400 years and that was that. A system that still exists in most parts of the western world until this very day. Nice work Greg.
*As a side note, there are also leap days, and leap MONTHS, in the Hijri Calendar, the Iranian Muslim Calendar, the Jewish Calendar, the Buddhist Calendar, the Hindu Calendars, the Japanese Calendar, and the Chinese Calendar.
What if your birthday falls on a leap day?
The first thing you need to know is that you are not an ordinary human being. You are a God amongst Gods, you are a Superhero among Superheroes, you are a Legend among Legends, for you are a Leapling. Seriously, that’s what you’re called, a Leapling.
What’s more, Leaplings get to celebrate their birthdays like Olympians, or Presidents, with banners being unfurled and ticker-tape parades that happen only once every four years. Leaplings get to party harder than other mere mortals — and rightly so.
But what do Leaplings do the other 3 years that don’t have a February 29th? Some celebrate on February 28th while others prefer to call March 1st their temporary birthday lodgings.
However, when the real day comes along many Leaplings choose this special day to have an experience they would never have thought of enjoying at any other time. Something spectacular, something gargantuan, something to remember for a lifetime.
Once every four years — on a day that doesn’t usually exist — the sky is the limit for all the earth’s Leaplings.
In fact, this might be one of the real perks of having a Leap Year birthday — the gifts.
A leap year birthday is a really special occasion and a chance to partake in an experience straight from your life’s bucket list. There are even companies that specialize in incredible experience gift packs for every taste making a birthday which falls on a leap day the chance to give your favorite Leapling the perfect life-enhancing gift.
In addition to experience gifts, many companies and retail outlets offer an array of specials for people born on the 29th (don’t worry, they know they won’t have to give away too many). However, that also means no free Starbuck’s birthday coffees on every other year — unless of course, you happen to tell a little white lie.
What else is weird about leap days through the centuries?
According to an old Irish myth the fabled St. Brigid is said to have petitioned St. Patrick saying women have to wait too long for men to propose marriage. In reply, it’s said that St. Patrick gave women the right to propose marriage to their man on the last day of the year’s shortest month in a leap year.
As the tradition of leap day proposals spread it became the custom that a man who refused the offer of marriage on a leap day had to buy the proposer 12 pairs of gloves. Some have suggested the gift of gloves was in order for the embarrassed woman to hide the fact that she was not wearing an engagement ring. (Oh the shame of it all)
And there’s more:
- On leap day February 29, 1504, the explorer Christopher Columbus is said to have used a Lunar eclipse to scare the native population of Jamaica into meeting his demands.
- The notorious Marquis de Sade was transferred from the Château de Vincennes fortress to be confined in the Bastille on this leap day in 1784.
- February 29th, 1880 saw the completion of the Gotthard railway tunnel between Switzerland and Italy.
- If you’re ever lucky enough to pass through the Panama Canal you might be reminded that on February 29th, 1904 Theodore Roosevelt appointed a 7-person commission to proceed with completing a titanic engineering feat that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
- And finally, if you happen to have been born on February 29th you had a 1 in 1,461chance of being born on that particular day.
Even if you weren’t lucky enough to have been born a leapling, the day still brings the opportunity to do something special that you can look back on and remember for the rest of your life.
So, why not use this unique and special occasion to celebrate your existence with an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience. As the saying goes, what’s rare is wonderful.
Happy Leap day to all Leaplings and non-Leaplings!
