A leap year, like 2024, is a year with an extra day in the shortest month, February. In a leap year, February has 29 days. This extra day should keep us in sync with the seasons. Here is a list of frequently asked questions to better assist you during the extra day:
Why is there an extra day?
The leap year was introduced by the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century to address the break in the solar year. The calendar was created taking into account the fact that the Earth takes approximately 365.2422 days to revolve around the Sun each year; the additional fragment (about six hours per year) adds up over time.
Who invented the leap year?
The concept of a leap year has evolved over time.
Ancient civilizations used the cosmos to plan their lives, and calendars date back to the Bronze Age. They were based on the phases of the moon or sun, as are various calendars today. Usually they were 'lunisolar' and used both.
Then came the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar. He introduced his Julian calendar in 46 BCE. It was purely solar and made a year of 365.25 days, so an extra day was added every four years. Previously, the Romans counted a year as 355 days, at least for a certain time.
The Julian calendar was the model used by the Western world for hundreds of years. Then Pope Gregory XIII comes in, who has further calibrated. His Gregorian calendar came into effect in the late 16th century. It is still used and is clearly not perfect, otherwise there would be no need for a leap year. But it was a big improvement, cutting the drift to just a few seconds.
Why did Pope Gregory XIII intervene?
Well, in one word: Easter. It came later in the year, and he was concerned that events associated with Easter, such as Pentecost, might clash with pagan celebrations. The Pope wanted Easter to remain in the spring.
He deleted some extra days that had accumulated on the Julian calendar and adjusted the rules for leap day. It is Pope Gregory and his advisors who came up with the complicated calculation about when there should or should not be a leap year.
What would happen without a leap day?
The seasons will change. Ultimately, everything will change, including when major events occur, when farmers plant, and how the seasons align with the sun and moon.
“Without leap years, we will have summer in November after a few hundred years,” says Younas Khan, a physics instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Christmas will be in the summer. There will be no snow. no Christmas feeling.”
When do leap year babies celebrate their birthday?
Since a leap year occurs only once every four years, different countries have come up with different official birthdays for such babies. For example, in New Zealand, the official birthday of 'leap year babies' falls on February 28 in regular years. In other countries, such as Britain, the birthdays of people born on a rare date have to wait until March 1.
The chance of babies being born on a leap day is one in about 1,500. There are an estimated five million leaplings (people born on February 29) in the world today.
What superstitions are associated with a leap year?
In accordance with Greek customs, getting married during a leap year, especially on a leap day, is considered bad luck as reports claim that the marriage could lead to divorce. The Quint has reported.
In Scotland there is a belief that people born on a leap day will experience a life of hardship. Not only this, but overall, some consider the leap year to be a bad year for farmers. Some reports of superstitions associated with the year are that the number of deaths also increases suddenly and many people die in that particular year.
What is the connection between leap year and technology?
According to a AFP According to the report, the existence of an extra day, about twice every decade, has also caused a great deal of online chaos, never more so than in 2000.
The doomsayers' prediction that there would be a total shutdown of information on January 1 never materialized, but on February 29 an alarming sequence of system failures occurred around the world.
This included the Japan Meteorological Agency sending out erroneous weather reports and Montreal's tax office being shut down.
(With input from AP)
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Published: Feb 29, 2024 09:15 IST