Happy Leap Day!

Leap Day, first introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., exists for one reason and one reason alone: to keep our calendars in line with the rotation of the sun around the Earth. Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, explained that it actually takes the sun 365.242190 days to make a complete rotation around the Earth “And that .242190 days to go around the sun is the entire reason why we have a leap year,” Faherty said.

Without a leap year, our calendars would be off by 1 day every 4 years, 2.5 days every 10 years, 24 days every hundred years, and a whopping 240 every thousand years. Given enough time, they would eventually be an entire year behind.

A few fun and interesting facts about Leap Day/Leap Year: each calendar year divisible by 4 is a leap year; according to legend, St. Patrick designated February 29th as the one day when women could propose to men; in many European countries, if a man rejects a woman’s proposal, he is required to buy her several pairs of gloves; in some cultures, it’s considered bad luck to get married during a leap year; in a few places, “Leap Day” is known as Bachelor’s Day; only 4 million people in the world are leap day babies; leap day babies are called leaplings; there is an international club for leaplings called “The Honor Society of Leap Day Babies;” many famous people were born on leap day including, but not limited to, Tony Robbins, Ja Rule, Tyrese Haliburton, Dinah Shore, and Antonio Sabato Jr.

Happy Leap Day from your Virginian Review family!