By: Breiana Brown [Social Media Editor]
Today is the day! It’s February 29th and what does that mean? That’s right, it is finally Leap Day again. This day rolls around every four years and always falls on the year of an election and the summer Olympics.
Not everyone understands why this extra day exists. Leap day is in place to, in easy terms, catch up on lost time. The earth takes 365 ¼ days to make a full rotation, in turn giving us a year. The thing is that, those 6 extra hours it takes can’t just go unaccounted for. This is because if it did, the daylight hours and many other things pertaining to time would all get off track, thus causing havoc. To avoid this the people of planet Earth devised a plan, this plan is called Leap Day. It occurs every four years, making the year 366 days long. That way the time is easily made up.
Leap Day seems to be an exciting day for some, especially the people who were born on this day. Ja Rule, a rapper, was born on February 29th, 1976. Their birthday only comes every four years, so naturally it is an exciting thing for them. By the time someone who was born on Leap Day is 40 their birthday has only come around 10 times! It is said that there are only around four million people in the entire world who have a birthday on February 29th. Compared to the world’s population that is a pretty small number.
Leap day is an extra day to enjoy. So, go on, have fun and take a leap of faith today. Don’t be shy, leap into Leap Day, and celebrate another day of life.
Sam Williams • Mar 6, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Thanks for the comment, Me! I assume that you’re referring to how centurial years are only leap years if they’re divisible by 400 — and if my assumption is correct, I think your criticizing Breiana’s fact-checking skills is a little unnecessary. Such a minuscule clause to the standard rule of being divisible by four is negligible when the goal of the article is simply to celebrate and recognize the 2012 leap year. 🙂
Me. • Mar 6, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Check your facts: The solar year is 365 days 5 hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds. To account for THIS, we don’t have leap year on centuries not divisible by 400. 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be.