Seems, everyone is waiting for that extra day in February, as this February would have 29 days instead of 28 days. The year 2024 is a leap-year. No matter what practical significance it has, it certainly has an excitement syndrome.
The Earth’s Orbit and Additional Days
These additional days don’t come without a reason either. All credit to the Earth’s orbit. The amount of days it takes for the Earth to complete a full revolution around the Sun is not a whole number. The 365 days experience is precisely 365.2422 days. Thus an extra day is added every four years to make a year of 366 days.
Leap Years and February
The last leap year was 2020 and the current one being 2024, adding an extra day in February. The question obviously came – why the extra day in February only. Well, nothing specific, only because it has the minimum number of days, so was most preferred for adding February.
Going by history, in 45 B.C. a decree by Julius Caesar began the practice of adding an extra-day every four years, with the creation of the Julian calendar – making up for those quarter days. That would be perfect if a solar year were exactly 365 ¼ days – but 365.242 is a teeny bit less than that, and over time that teeny bit adds up. Finally, Julius Caesar became the brains behind the origin of leap year in 46 BCE.
Evolution of the Calendar
Interestingly, the early Romans had a 355-day calendar and to keep festivals occurring around the same season each year, a 22 or 23-day month was created every second year. Julius Caesar decided to simplify things and added days to different months of the year to create the 365-day calendar; the actual calculations were made by Caesar’s astronomer, Sosigenes. Every fourth year, following the 28th day of Februarius (February 29), one day was to be added, making every fourth year a leap year.
Calendar Calculation Errors
However, around 10 BC, it was found that the priests in charge of computing the calendar had been adding leap years every three years instead of the four decreed by Caesar (Vardi 1991, p. 239). As a result of this error, no more leap years were added until 8 AD.
Leap years were therefore 45 BC, 42 BC, 39 BC, 36 BC, 33 BC, 30 BC, 27 BC, 24 BC, 21 BC, 18 BC, 15 BC, 12 BC, 9 BC, 8 AD, 12 AD, and every fourth year, thereafter, until the Gregorian calendar was introduced – resulting in skipping three out of every four century).
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII further refined the calendar with the rule that leap day would occur in any year divisible by four, known as the Gregorian calendar – which is in use today.
Exception to the Leap Year Rule
However, there is one exception to the leap year rule involving century years again – like the year 1900. Since a year is actually slightly less than 365.25 days, adding an extra day every four years results in about three extra days being added throughout 400 years. For this reason, only one out of every four century years is considered a leap year.
Century years are only considered leap years if they are evenly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 were not leap years. But 1600 and 2000 were leap years.
The history has its own relevance, but what it means to a common man is only that one extra day – that is just another 24 hours – in February and in a year. Optimistically, one can add another productive day in a year, nothing more and nothing less.
About the Author
(Pavan Kaushik is a well-known Storyteller and Author)
