Leap Day!

As many of you know I have an interesting birthday...

LEAP DAY

So through out my life I have had several people ask me questions about leap day and leap years, and I myself have had questions about the day before. I , for the most part, have always known why it is there, but that was the extent of my knowledge. A few years ago (probably my last "real" birthday) I did a little research about the day. I found out some real cool stuff, like how it works, when we have it, who introduced it, etc. Let me share it with you!

Basic:

*A Leap year consists of 366 days opposed to the common year, which has 365 days. (everyone knows that right?)

* Nearly every 4 years has a Leap Day (in our modern Gregorian Calendar) *Note: Notice how I said nearly. They do not happen every 4 years, but we will get to that later.

Why do we need Leap Years?

*Leap years keep the calendar in alignment with the Earths revolutions, because one day is not exactly 24 hours.

Its more like 23 hours, 56 minutes and some seconds. Which in turn means that it takes approximately 365.242199 days or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds for the Earth to circle once around the sun. However in our Gregorian calendar there are only 365 days. So about every 4 years they add an extra day to compensate for that. ( if we didn't add the extra day we would lose almost (keep in mind the almost) 6 hours every year. After only 100 years our we would be off by 100 days. And soon spring would actually be happening in October! EEK!)

so now time to explain the "almost" every 4 years...

How to calculate a Leap Year:

There are 3 criteria for doing this...

* The year must be evenly divisible by 4.... 2012..... 2016..... 2020

* If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year.... UNLESS...

* The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it IS a leap year.

You didn't know there was so much work into figuring this all out, did you?!

So using the 3 "rules" this means that the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years.

Cool side note: The year 2000 (I turned 12 or 4 however you want to look at it) was somewhat a special year because that is the first instance when the 3rd rule was used!!! (since the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar)

Who introduced leap years you may ask? It was Julius Caesar in the Roman empire. But the "Julian Calendar" only applied the 1st Rule to calculations, which soon lead to way too many leap years. It was not corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) 1500 years later.

Well what did you think? Kinda cool huh?! Don't you feel so much smarter now!? Me Too :)

Also I wanted to point out....

* You hear people use the saying "Your 1 in a million!" Well..... There are only about 5 million people with that birthday in all the world (says my research) So next time you see me you can say "Your 1 in 5 million April!"

*There is actually an Honorary Society for Leap Day Babies (that I am not a part of......yet)

*If I am ever rich enough, I want to set up a scholarship for Leap Day Birthdays!

*One last cool thing.... my sister-in-law Kindra is scheduled to be induced TOMORROW at 7:30am :) 2 Leap Day babies! Now what are the odds of that.......