By KRISTEN KIRTLEY
Assistant Editor
You have most likely heard of Leap Year and know that they occur every four years, but do you know why?
2024 is a Leap Year, so February will have 29 days rather than 28, and Leap Day is Feb. 29. A year is normally 365 days, but on Leap Years, a year is 366 days.
The reason a year is normally 365 days is because that is about how long it takes for the Earth to travel around the Sun.
One day, or 24 hours, is the time it takes the Earth to rotate one time.
The amount of time it takes the Earth to travel around the Sun and the amount of time it takes the Earth to rotate one time have nothing to do with each other, which is the reason a year is actually around 365.24 days long.
Although the extra quarter of day, which is six hours, may not seem like a lot, if we went by this and didn’t have a Leap Year, it would cause the seasons to move by one day each year.
Although that may not seem like a significant amount, if this was done, the days would be out of sync with the seasons in a few hundred years.
That would mean that Halloween would be in spring, and Christmas would be in the middle of summer.
Although people were aware that a Leap Year was needed as far back as the days of ancient Egypt, Leap Years did not begin until the reign of Julius Ceasar.
In 46 B.C., the Julian calendar was introduced. The calendar was made so that each year was 365 days and every 4th year was a Leap Year.
Eventually, though the calendar got out of whack because one trip around the sun isn’t really 365 1/4 days as the Julian calendar thought. It’s actually 11 minutes shorter than that. By 1582, it was 10 days out of sync with the seasons.
At that time, Pope Gregory the 13th introduced the Gregorian calendar that is still used to this day.
With the Gregorian calendar, every year that can be divided by four is a leap year, like 1904, 1952 and 1976.
If a year can be divided by 4 AND 100, like the years 1700, 1800 and 1900, that year is not a Leap Year. If the year can also be evenly diviided by 400, like 2000, then it is a Leap Year .
With the use of the Gregorian Calendar, the year will stay in sync with the seasons for 8,000 years. By then, humans may use an even more precise calendar.
An easy way to remember if it’s a Leap Year is if it’s an election year or if the Summer Olympic Games are taking place.
About 5 million people worldwide will be celebrating their actual Leap Year birthday this year. The other three years, someone born on a Leap Day celebrates on Feb. 28 or March 1 or both.
