We’ve never done a celebration of Leap Day on this blog, mainly because we’ve never thought about it much. For those who were born on a February 29th, they must like it when their birthday can be celebrated every four years on the actual date of their birth.
Out of curiosity, I DuckDucked (I don’t G-word search) February 29th birthdays and found out about a lot of famous people (most of whom I did not recognize as famous) who were born on 29 FEB. I did see names I knew, some were popular performers or actors, some were in religion or politics and there were a couple of serial killers as well. You can research those if you’re interested.
The Gregorian Calendar, which is currently in use, has some exceptions for the every four year rule. Years evenly divided by 100 are skipped as leap years unless the year is also divisible by 400. The year 2000, since it was evenly divided by 400 was a leap year. I guess that means that unless I live to see the year 2100, that I will in my lifetime have experienced no skipped leap years like the second generation before me did (1900 was NOT a leap year).
The calendar and our clocks, from time to time, have to be adjusted for very minor variations in the Earth’s rotation. This mechanism is called a Leap Second where a second is added to universal time to allow Earth to catch up with UTC. There is an ongoing argument in the scientific community as to whether leap seconds should be abolished. I have no comment about that.
In our household, we will celebrate 02/29/24 by going about our regular activities on Thursday, which consists of procuring the groceries and provisions for the coming weekend and week.
We wish you a very Happy Leap Day!
