A look at Leap Day: History, odds and some unusual birthday boys
Calendar makers have been inserting intercalary (leap) days since at least the 21st century BCE to get things back into alignment. But how often and where these days were added was a confusing, sometimes politically motivated, mess.
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As the saying goes: 30 days has September, April, June and November; February has 28 alone. All the rest have 31; Except in Leap Year, that's the time when February's days are 29. But what is that extra day for?
Calendar makers have been inserting intercalary (leap) days since at least the 21st century BCE to get things back into alignment. But how often and where these days were added was a confusing, sometimes politically motivated, mess.
Julian Calendar
The Julian calendar remained in place until the 16th century, when the Roman Catholic Church noted that the date of Easter, which is calculated through lunar and solar observations, had shifted by more than 12 days. The next five popes and their advisors discussed the problem for the next 50 years.
Gregorian Calendar
This time it was Pope Gregory XIII who had enough when he wrote that this calendrical misalignment was of "the gravest concern."
In 2016, the Saudi Arabian government switched from the lunar-based Islamic Hijri calendar to the Gregorian calendar in a move that was part alignment with the rest of the world, part austerity measure. Critics pointed to 11 days of pay lost by salaried public employees under the new calendar.
Leap Day Birthdays
If you were born on Feb. 29, not only do you share your birthday with actor/rapper Ja Rule, actress/singer Dinah Shore, actor Antonio Sabàto Jr., motivational speaker Tony Robbins, astronaut Jack Lousma and former Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward to name a few, you beat the odds. Other birthdates had a 1 in 365 chance of being born on their birthday, you had a 1 in 1,461 chance (365 * 4 + 1 = 1461).
Parents and children born on leap day are even rarer. Jeremy Ogburn of Raleigh turns 40 (or is it 10?) on Saturday while his son Andrew turns 4 (or is it 1?). The odds of a parent and child sharing a Leap Day birthday jumps to 1 in 2.1 million. According to a 2016 report in The News & Observer, dad Jeremy usually celebrated on Feb. 28 in common years but planned to move his birthday celebration to March 1 to give Andrew his own day. Maybe they’ll share the celebration in this Leap Year.
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