27 February 2020

Top 5 things you never knew about a Leap Year

Top 5 things you never knew about a Leap Year

A Leap Year only happens once every four years and 2020 is a Leap Year! We will all enjoy an extra day this February, but why do we have them? It's fascinating stuff when you find out why Leap Years exists...

1, What is a Leap Year?

A Leap Year adds an extra day at the end of February and traditionally takes place every four years to fix a disparity between the Gregorian calendar and the Earth’s orbit.

The Earth takes 365.2422 days to orbit the sun, so Leap Days were put in place to keep our clocks and calendars in sync with the solar system, making up for the quarter-day lost each year.

If we didn’t have Leap Years, then over the course of 700 years, January would become a summer month for us here in the UK and a winter month in the southern hemisphere, the exact reverse of how it is at the moment.

2, When did they start?

When Julius Caesar became emperor of Rome he enlisted the aid of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, to update the Roman calendar. Sosigenes advised him to do away with the lunar cycle they were using and follow the solar year, like the Egyptians.

They calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days in 46 B.C., so Caesar added 67 days to help things catch up. This meant that the new year, 45 B.C., began on 1st January, rather than in March. He also said that one day will be added to February every four years, to keep things in line. However, the calculations were still slightly off - by 11 minutes! This meant that by the mid-15th century there were an extra 10 days in the year.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was implemented, omitting 10 days for that year and establishing an additional rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a Leap Year unless divisible by 400 (1700, 1800, and 1900 were not Leap Years, but 2000 was).

The Gregorian calendar is still slightly inaccurate but only by about one day every 3,030 years, so this is why we have Leap Seconds - yes that is a thing!

3, What happens if you’re born on a Leap Day?

People born on a Leap Day may refer to themselves as ‘Leaplings’ or ‘Leapers’, and often celebrate their birthday on 28th February or 1st March.

However, in some places it isn’t as straightforward as that, legal birthdays depend on local law’s approach to time intervals. If you were born on 29th February you really would be 1 in 1,000… 1 in 1,461 to be precise - and you’d share your birthday with Ja Rule!

4, What do people do with the extra day?

Since the 5th Century, ladies have been using the extra day to ask men to marry them. Legend has it, an Irish nun called St Bridget complained to St Patrick that women had to wait too long for their suitors to propose. St Patrick then supposedly gave women the chance to pop the question every four years.

A slight variation in England suggests that women proposed on 29th February as Leap Days weren’t recognised by English law. If a day had no legal status then it was acceptable to break with the convention and women could get down on one knee.

5, Some other interesting ‘facts’

In many European countries, such as Denmark, tradition says any man who refuses a woman’s marriage proposal on February 29 has to buy her 12 pairs of gloves. It is thought that the gloves can hide the woman’s embarrassment of not having an engagement ring.

In 1692, February 29 marked the first-day people were accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

The US city of Anthony (which sits between Texas and New Mexico) is the self-proclaimed Leap Year Capital of the World. Every four years a four-day Leap Year festival is held in the city, concluding an enormous birthday party for all 'Leaplings'.