Happy Leap Day

Today is a strange day, as February 29th is a Leap Day--a day which only happens once every four years. Following is information we found about this day that occurs only every four years.

During a Leap Year a Leap Day is added, to keep our calendars in order. But where did Leap Year come from?

Over 2,000 years ago, Julius Caesar introduced Leap Years to the Romans, but they utilized the Julian calendar, which was flawed. With the Julian calendar any year evenly divisible by 4 was a Leap Year. This led to far too many, but this problem wasn’t corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar some 1,500 years later.

Gregorian Calendar

Our modern day Gregorian calendar has only 365 days, but it takes approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds-- to circle once around the Sun. So in order to keep our calendars in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun, Leap Years are needed.

For instance, if we didn’t add a day every four years, you would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. Time and Date states that after only 100 years, our calendar would be off by nearly 24 days.

The Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21st, this is so the date of Easter remains correct.

What if someone is born on a Leap Day?

Individuals born on February 29th are known as “Leapers”. They’ll celebrate their birthday on either February 28th or March 1st, with most celebrating on the 1st.