Why Are There Leap Years?

Why Are There Leap Years?

We have a pope to thank for straightening out the glitch Our calendar year has 365 days, but the earth actually takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to travel around the sun. With an extra quarter-day each year, in 120 years the calendar would be ahead by a month. New Year’s Eve would arrive somewhere around Thanksgiving.

A lady awaiting for the leap year to come

Luckily, we have a built-in safeguard: the occasional February 29, which arrives every 4 years. To avoid the chaos that would ensue should our seasons fall out of sync, every fourth year an extra day is added to keep the calendar consistent with the sun. Julius Caesar introduced the leap year in 46 B.C., but despite his admirable mathematic and administrative efforts, the calendar was 10 days ahead by 1582. Enter Pope Gregory XIII, creator of the calendar we use today. He got the months back in track by dropping 10 days from October 1582.

Barbies awaiting for the leap year. Photo: Elena

He also rescheduled leap year to fall every fourth year except in the case of century years not evenly divisible by 400. So 2000, the next century year, will be a leap year, but 1700, 1800 and, 1900 were not.

Most of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar right away, but England and its American colonies held out until 1752. At that point, they had accumulated 11 extra days. To make up for gained time, September 2, 1752, was followed immediately by September 14.

Japanese garden of stones