Understanding the Leap Year
For some, it’s just another day added to the year. For the “leaplings,” it’s their birthday year. And for science, it’s an important phenomenon. The leap year certainly is an intriguing occurrence! It serves the important purpose of aligning the human-made calendar with the solar year.
The solar year is 365.2422 days long. The extra .2422 day might not sound like much, but if ignored it can create chaos! Without the leap years, the seasonal patterns would shift, sending us into a frenzy and causing havoc to agricultural practices.
So, how and when did the leap year come to be? Here’s a brief history tracing the birth of the leap year as we know it today.
- The Romans had created a 355-day calendar. To compensate for the extra day and have festivals at the same time of the year, a new month was created every 2 years.
- The first leap year was introduced around 46 B.C. by Julius Caesar who decided to simplify the Roman calendar. On the basis of his astronomer, Sosigenes’s calculations he created a 365-day year. A new day was to be added to the calendar every 4 years, thus officially introducing the concept of leap year. Caesar ordained every year divisible by 4 to be a leap year. Of course, that led to plenty of leap years!
- Caesar’s calendar, although advanced, was incorrect. It led to confusion as holidays drifted apart by 10 days. That’s when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The 10 extra days were dropped and the new year was to have 365.2422 days.
- It was also decided that one day would be added every four years, and three leap days would be dropped every 400 years to keep the calendars right.
- If you thought that the Gregorian Calendar has solved our woes, you’re wrong! There’s a 30-second drift that happens every year. But we have nothing to worry about because the calendar will stay true for the next 3,300 years!