It is called an intercalary day or a leap day.
We are called Leaplings or leapers….I prefer Leapling! Hmm… a Leaper …… I don’t think so!
Leap years are added to the calendar to keep it working properly. The 365 days of the annual calendar are meant to match up with the solar year. A solar year is the time it takes the Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun — about one year. But the actual time it takes for the Earth to travel around the Sun is, in fact, a little longer than that—about 365 ¼ days (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, to be precise). So the calendar and the solar year don’t completely match—the calendar year is a touch shorter than the solar year.
It may not seem like much of a difference, but after a few years, those extra quarter days in the solar year begin to add up. After four years, for example, the four extra quarter days would make the calendar fall behind the solar year by about a day. Over the course of a century, the difference between the solar year and the calendar year would become 25 days!
The Egyptians were the first to come up with the idea of adding a leap day once every four years to keep the calendar in sync with the solar year. Later, the Romans adopted this solution for their calendar, and they became the first to designate February 29 as the leap day.
Some non-scientific facts about people born on 29th February:
- We usually look younger than we are, are forever young and blessed with good health. Thank goodness!
- Our apprehension of the world often seems at odds with the consensus!
- Between us, we cannot decide whether to celebrate non-leap years on the 28th or 1st March. I am in the February group. As a neurodivergent Pisces I am already confused, so don’t ask me to have to deal with a birthday in 2 different months!
- My birthday on a non-leap year lasts about 11 minutes 14 seconds at midnight on 28th and then it is all over! I usually miss it!
- The statistical chances of a child being born on a leap day are about 1 in 1500, as opposed to 1 in 365 for all other days of the year. And just for interest less people are born in February than any other month!
- There are about 4 million Leaplings in the world.
- Most people know leap year is any year divided by 4, that’s correct.
- Unless it is a turn of the century. There is an extra twist to the leap year rules as if the whole thing wasn’t already complicated enough: Centuries need to be divisible by 400. Thus, 1900 was NOT a leap year, nor were 1800 or 1700. I can barely imagine how people felt when, after 29th February 1896, they found out that their next birthday would not be until 8 years later!
There is a lovely Latin term to describe things related to the leap year: Bissextile
So we can impress/disturb our friends, horrify our offspring and parents and colleagues, eventually after 1460 days, shout out loudly in the streets:
“I AM BISSEXTILE!”
Have an extra special day on this special day X
Chapter Six 