3 Weird Things you should know about Leap Year
The extra day on the calendar every four years is a subtle acceptance of the fact that something as simple as the calendar can be more complicated than we can imagine.
Nearly every four years, we add an extra day to the calendar in the form of 29th February. In simple words, this extra day is built into the calendar to consider the additional 24 hours taken for the earth to complete one revolution around the sun.
While the modern calendar contains 365 days, the earth takes around 365,2421 days to complete one revolution. Although the difference seems insignificant, over the decades and centuries the missing quarter of a day can add up to make a huge difference.
To ensure the consistency of the astronomical year, it is necessary to periodically add the extra hours to the calendar to sync our calendars with the cosmos.
Here are some of the interesting facts you might not have known about the leap day:
Ancient Calendars and Leap Month
Many Chinese, Hebrew, and Buddhist calendars are lunisolar. It means that the dates are based on the position of the moon and the position of the earth relative to the sun.
Since there is an 11-day gap between the lunar cycle and the earth cycle, several calendars had to periodically add extra months to keep track of the dates on the calendar.
Although a phenomenon, intercalary months were not regular. Historians are still unsure how early Romans could keep track of the year as most Romans were not sure what they were doing at the time.
Early Roman calendars consisted of ten months and a roughly defined period for winter. The varying length made the calendar become unpegged from the solar year. Eventually, the uncertain period was replaced by January and February but the situation remained complicated as they did not have sufficient days.
This is one of the main reasons why the month of February is directly related to the days of a lunar cycle.
Julius Caesar introduced Leap Day
The Mercedonius whatever-we-want-to-do system irritated Julius Caesar who almost immediately altered the course of European history.
In addition to transforming Rome from a republic into an empire, Caesar also re-ordered the Roman calendar to give us the blueprint that the world of today works on.
During this time, Caesar was convinced that the Egyptian solar calendar was superior and featured 365 days and on occasional months were intercalary.
Caesar and his philosopher made one major modification and simply added the extra day to the month of February, extending the length of February every four years.
Leap Day is associated with Marriages and Proposals
Curiously, many leap day customs revolve around romance and marriages.
Tradition holds that several people have proposed marriages or got married on the leap day of the year.
In some places, Leap Day is known as Bachelor’s Day for this very reason.
Fun fact, people born on Leap Day are called Leapling and the chance to be born on a leap year is about 1 in 1461. Some people born on Leap Day are Tony Robbins and Ja Rule.
