What is a Leap Year
The Gregorian
calendar is the standard calendar used throughout the world, which has common
years and leap years. A common year has 365 days and a leap year has 366
days. The extra day or intercalary day is the 29th February. A Leap
Year occurs every four years to help synchronize the calendar year with the
solar year, or the length it takes the earth to complete its orbit around the
sun, which is about 365 1/4 days.
The
length of the solar year, however, is slightly less than 365¼ days—by about 11
minutes. To compensate for this discrepancy, the leap year is omitted three
times every four hundred years.
What are your chances
of being born on leap day?
About 1 in 1,500.
When is the birthday
party?
If you are born on
a Leap Year, do you get your driver's license on February 28th or March 1st? It
is an ambiguous question that is decided by each state. Most states, however,
consider March 1st the official day. For instance, the Michigan Vehicle Code
states that people born on February 29th "are deemed to have been born on
March 1st."
The rules for
determining a leap year
Most years that can
be divided evenly by 4 are leap years.
Exception: Century years are NOT leap years UNLESS they can be
evenly divided by 400.
When did leap year
originate?
The Gregorian calendar is closely based on the Julian calendar, which
was introduced by Julius Caesar in
45 BC. The Julian calendar featured a 12-month, 365-day year, with an
intercalary day inserted every fourth year at the end of February to make an
average year of 365.25 days. But because the length of the solar year is
actually 365.242216 days, the Julian year was too long by .0078 days (11
minutes 14 seconds).
This may not seem like a lot, but over the course of centuries it added
up, until in the 16th century, the vernal equinox was falling around March 11
instead of March 21. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII adjusted
the calendar by moving the date ahead by 11 days and by instituting the
exception to the rule for leap years. This new rule, whereby a century year is
a leap year only if divisible by 400, is the sole feature that distinguishes
the Gregorian calendar from the Julian calendar.
Following the
Gregorian reform, the average length of the year was 365.2425 days, an even
closer approximation to the solar year. At this rate, it will take more than
3,000 years for the Gregorian calendar to gain one extra day in error.
Traditions
The tradition of women proposing on the 29th of February began in the
5th century when St. Brigid of Kildare complained to St. Patrick that women had
to wait too long for men to propose. St. Patrick decreed the women could
propose on this one day in February during the leap year
The tradition was then taken to Scotland by Irish monks.
Back in 1288, the
Scots passed a law that allowed a woman to propose marriage to the man of their
dreams in a Leap Year. If any man declined the proposal on this day he
would have to pay a fine.
The Law was passed by
an unmarried Queen Margaret (though records show she must of been only 5 years
old at the time) that woman proposing must wear a red petticoat while
proposing. St. Patrick was so busy but he gave her a kiss and a silk gown. This is also debatable because St. Brigid would of been nine or ten
years old when St. Patrick died in 461 AD. In some places, February 29
has been renamed Bachelors' Day because of the tradition
