“Thirty days hath September,April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Save February, and she alone
Hath eight days and a score
Til leap year gives her one day more.
Did you miss going to Disneyland yesterday, when it was open 24 hours for a Leap Day celebration? I’m afraid I knew about these extra bonus hours and completely forgot to mention this fact to family members residing in Anaheim’s vicinity. Sorry about that!
When Julius Caesar proposed adding an extra day to the Gregorian calendar back in 45 B.C., the rationale was basically due to the fact that it takes slightly longer than 365 days for the earth to go around the sun. Hence, adding an extra day every four years, evens things out.
Now, since we probably won’t think about leap year again until 2016, I’ll wrap up this trivia with the odds of having a birthday fall on February 29th. That likelihood is one in 1,461 and about 4 million people worldwide share a Leap Day birthday. Of this 4 million, I know of exactly one (a classmate in one of my psychology classes).
