February 29 is a leap day - an extra 24 hours added to the shortest month in a leap year.
If we stuck with the notion a tropical year was only 365 days long, after 100 years our calendars would have shifted forward by 25 days.
Therefore, in order to ensure the calendar remain synchronised with the solar seasons, an additional day is marked on the calendar every four years.
It's basically a corrective measure because the earth doesn't orbit the sun in exactly 365 days - it's a little more than that - so February 29 can help the planet and our calendars keep in sync.
Leap years are named as such because the extra day causes each date on the calendar to jump ahead by two days compared to the last year, rather than one.
Is 2020 a leap year? As part of our solemn duty to make you smarter than your coworkers, we're going to quickly walk you through why Leap Day exists in the first place. Leap years are usually years that are divisible by four - 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024 and so on.
According to Daniel Brown, associate professor in the School of Science and Technology at Nottingham Trent University, if we didn't observe Leap Years, then in around 750 years' time, the coldest time of the year would fall in June.
In the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, Adar Aleph, a 13th lunar month, is added seven times every 19 years to the twelve lunar months in its common years to keep its calendar year from drifting through the seasons and the Bahá'í Calendar adds a leap day "as needed" to ensure that the following year begins on the vernal equinox.
It took centuries, but the Gregorian calendar was eventually adopted worldwide, and is the one we still use today. Iran, for example, doesn't.
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One of the earliest calendars to deal with the differences between time and the seasons was developed under the rule of Julius Caesar in 68 BC. Then we will once again have a leap year in 2400.
"The revised Julian calendar says when years are divisible by 100 they're not leap years unless years have remainders of 200 or 600 when you divide by 900".
It was introduced way back in 1582, nearly 440 years ago.
It's a leap, but trust us on this one! As noted above, the Gregorian solar year of 365.2425 is close but still not flawless.
And people born on a leap year are called leaplings.
It's a birthday four years in the making.
Happy birthday to everyone born on February 29.
Leap years will not happen on 2200 or 2300 either.
"To enter my date of birth I have to select February 28, and my birth year, 1992".
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