As I prepared to flip my calendar from February to March at the end of the day Wednesday, I realized that March’s arrival has been delayed. No, March isn’t flying Southwest (otherwise, March might not arrive at all, if December’s blizzard of cancellations is any indication of their current performance).
This year, February will be hanging around for an extra 24 hours. It’s a leap year, and — you guessed it — Thursday is Leap Day!
Seeing that big “29” on my desktop calendar made me think (that’s a dangerous thing, sometimes). Other than completely mucking up the calendar every four years and wreaking havoc for anyone fated to be born on Feb. 29, what purpose does leap year serve?
A quick Google search took me to the Smithsonian Institution website, where I found an explanation that makes sense … sort of.
Here’s the scoop, according to an article by Bob Craddock, a geologist for the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies.
As most of us were taught as kids, a calendar year is usually 365 days long. At some point in history, people who are a lot better at math than me determined that it takes about 365 days for the Earth to travel once around the sun. Notice the “about” in that sentence. Evidently, one rotation around the sun actually takes 365.242190 days (that’s 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds).
Craddock refers to this rather complicated number as a “sidereal” year. I had to look it up. First of all, it’s NOT pronounced “side reel,” as I initially thought — it’s more like “sigh-DER-ee-al.” Basically, it’s a year as determined by the position of the stars or constellations.
Anyway, if that extra five hours and change isn’t accounted for somehow, our seasons (winter, spring, summer and fall) would begin to drift — and after a few centuries, those of us in the northern hemisphere would be experiencing summer weather in December and dodging snowstorms in June or July!
So, waaaaaaaaaay back in 46 BC, according to LeapFrog, the first leap year was established by Julius Caesar — you know, the emperor of Rome who was assassinated by a group of Roman senators just two years later, in 44 BC (and we wonder why some people don’t trust the government).
This helped, but evidently, old Julius and his advisors had their math wrong. Adding a “leap” day to the calendar every four years increases each leap year by 24 hours … but it actually should be 23.262222 hours (I hate math!). So, 24 hours is actually a little over 44 minutes TOO much, and — you guessed it! — that extra 44+ minutes would eventually muck up the seasons, too.
Because of this, scientists and mathematicians decided to skip leap year every now and then. There’s another complicated (at least to me) equation used to determine which leap years should be skipped. Basically, if a year that would normally be a leap year is divisible by 100, but NOT divisible by 400, February remains at 28 days.
Now that I’ve educated myself (and probably thoroughly confused you), here’s wishing everyone a very happy Leap Day! And thanks to any readers who stuck with this completely NOT trucking-related story to the end. Hopefully I’ve provided at least a little entertainment for your day.
Linda Garner-Bunch has been in publishing for more than 30 years. You name it, Linda has written about it. She has served as an editor for a group of national do-it-yourself publications and has coordinated the real estate section of Arkansas’ only statewide newspaper, in addition to working on a variety of niche publications ranging from bridal magazines to high-school sports previews and everything in between. She is also an experienced photographer and copy editor who enjoys telling the stories of the “Knights of the Highway,” as she calls our nation’s truck drivers.
