Leap Year: An extra day on the calendar
The science behind leap year
Thanks to leap year, our seasons will always occur when we expect them to occur, and our calendar year will match the Earth’s sidereal year.
Without leap day, 29 February, our calendar would be off by about 24 days every 100 years. Earth takes 365.242190 days to orbit the sun – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds. We usually round the days in a calendar year to 365, but to make up for the missing partial day, an extra day is added every four years to the shortest month of the year (February). During leap year, there are 366 days on the calendar instead of 365. If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. Over a period of about 700 years, our summers, which we’ve come to expect in December, would begin to occur in June! However, a leap year is not strictly every four years. By adding a leap day every four years, we would make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. For this reason, not every four years is a leap year. Royal Museums Greenwich explains on its website that to be a leap year, the year number must be divisible by four – except for end-of-century years, which must be divisible by 400. This means that the year 2000 was a leap year, although 1900 was not. 2024, 2028, 2032 and 2036 are all leap years
The science behind leap year
Leaplings often suffer from empty box syndrome.
On non-leap years, 29 February is not included on the calendar,
which means that leaplings’ birthdays often go unnoticed.
A simple act of writing one’s birthday on the
annual calendar is impossible, as there is only
an empty box available next to 28 February.
There is also a common misconception on the
playground that leaplings ‘don’t get a birthday’ or
that they are only, for instance, ‘two years old’, which
leads to bullying and ostracism.
History
The first leap year was introduced in 46 BCE by Julius Caesar of Rome. His Julian calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year. That created too many leap years, but the math wasn’t tweaked until Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar more than 1,500 years later.
Leaplings
People born on a leap day are called leaplings. They only celebrate their actual birthday every four years – but they still age every year. On non-leap 
years, some leaplings choose to celebrate their birthdays a day early on February 28, while others choose to celebrate a day later on March 1. An estimated 5-million people around the world are leaplings. There is an international club for leaplings, named the Honor Society of Leap Year Babies. Visit leapyearday.com for more information.
Did you know?
There are 525,600 minutes in a typical calendar year. On leap years, there are 527,040 minutes. What will you do with the extra 1,440 minutes this leap year?
– During leap years, January, April, and July all start on the same day. In 2024 they’ll all start on a Monday.
Leap year traditions and superstitions
According to tradition, it’s OK for a woman to propose to a man on 29 February. The custom has been attributed to various historical figures including St. Bridget, who is said to have complained to St. Patrick that women had to wait too long for their suitor to pop the question. St Patrick decreed that on the extra day of a leap year, women could propose to men. The Scottish believed that those born on leap day would endure a life of everlasting suffering. In Greece, couples often choose not to marry during a leap year because of the superstition that the wedding will end in divorce. Others believe that those born on 29 February have unusual talents like magic powers.
Famous superhuman leapling
Beloved DC comic character Superman was ‘born’ on Leap Day in 1938. 29 February was concretely ordained as Clark Kent’s birthday in a 1976 edition of DC Comics’ ‘Super Calendar’. The date was popularised in the story “For the Man Who has Everything” that appeared in the 1985 Superman Annual no. 11.
Famous superhuman leapling
Hobbits are the only fictional race that observes 30 February every year. According to the book Lord of the Rings, Hobbits observe 12 months consisting of 30 days each, including Solmath (translated in the text to February).
