Due to 2024’s leap year, Thursday, February 29 will only happen once every four years.
The next leap year is scheduled for 2028, as leap years normally occur every four years (with few exceptions). The last two leap days were in 2020 and 2016.
Due to the rarity of this day, individuals are commemorating it in various ways. Some are finally celebrating their birthday on February 29th, while companies are giving special bargains in remembrance.
This is all the information you need to know about leap day, including its definition, the reason it occurs every four years, and its creation date.
Leap Day: What is it?
An additional day is added to the calendar on leap day. Every four years, there is a leap year, during which leap day happens on February 29. This adds one day to the shortest month of the year.
Leap Day occurs every four years; why?
It is because of the Earth’s orbit that leap days and years exist.
It takes the Earth a non-integer number of days to complete one full rotation around the Sun. It is really 365.242190 days, not 365, as stated by the National Air and Space Museum.
Eliminating those 0.242190 days accumulates.
The seasons can align perfectly every year thanks to that fraction. The months that we typically experience each season would progressively change if leap day was removed from the calendar. This would have an effect on other facets of life, such agricultural growth and harvesting.
Since four 0.242190 days generally equal one full day when added, most divisible by four years (including 2024) have added February 29 to their calendars.
Leap Day was invented by whom?
According to Britannica, the idea of adding leap days is not new and has existed for millennia. Leap months, often referred to as “intercalary or interstitial months,” are included in certain calendars, including the Hebrew, Chinese, and Buddhist calendars, according to the History Channel.
Although leap days are frequently attributed to Julius Caesar, the Egyptians originally thought up the concept. According to National Geographic, the Egyptians used a solar calendar of 365 days and a leap year every four years by the third century BCE.
Rome had a varying calendar in antiquity, which featured a 23-day intercalary month known as “Mercedonius.” It was not, however, a stand-alone month. The History Channel states that Mercedonius was inserted to February in order to accommodate for the discrepancy between the solar and Roman years.
Caesar opted to give February an extra day every four years while creating the Julian calendar, drawing influence from the Egyptians. January 1st, 45 BCE marked the formal start of the Julian calendar.
Over several centuries, this approach would be used, but not without problems. Caesar’s calculation of 365.25 days was not precisely the same as the solar year’s 365.242190 days. Caesar “overestimated the solar year by 11 minutes,” according to the History Channel. According to National Geographic, this meant that the Julian calendar would be off by one day every 128 years.
Time had changed once more by the 16th century, and not for the better. Easter was one of the major dates that had altered. The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox is when the holiday is expected to fall. Easter had been moved, at that point, by approximately ten days.
In order to address this, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar, which, according to the History Channel, maintained a leap day every four years but did away with it in centurial years that were not divisible by 400. For this reason, 2000 was a leap year whereas 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not.
The Gregorian calendar is not perfect, even if it is accurate. The History Channel states that the Gregorian calendar is inaccurate once every 3,030 years, as opposed to the Julian calendar’s one day inaccuracy every 128 years.