Leap Year an oddity with reason
Saturday is Leap Day, a day that comes every four years and is an oddity on the calendar.
Its traditions are equally unusual.
Ostensibly, an extra day is stuck at the end of February to compensate for the fact that Earth orbits the sun just over 365 days a trip. That slight overrun adds up to one day every four years, hence the need for a Leap Day.
But it’s certainly an imperfect science.
Many sources credit Julius Caesar as the founder of leap year, based on the fact that the ancient Roman calendar was based on 355 days a year – 10 and a fourth fewer than a solar year. Instead of an extra day, Roman authorities were to add an extra month every few years, which created a mess.
By 46 B.C., the situation was so out of hand that three extra months had to be added to the calendar to make up for the lost days. The following year, Caesar’s leap year edict became practice, which solved the problem – or so everyone thought.
Though we commonly believe the Earth orbit is 365 and a fourth days, it is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds – still 11 minutes short.
Astronomers realized this discrepancy in the second century, but no adjustments were made, and by the 16th century the calendar was almost 10 days off. Finally, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made the needed changes and created the calendar system we know today.
Through the centuries, leap year draws chuckles and smirks and has given rise to quirky traditions. In British lore, leap year is the only day on the calendar that a woman may propose to a man, which gave rise to the American version of Sadie Hawkins Day.
That’s not necessarily a good thing in Greece, where superstition says that marriage in a leap year is bad luck. Estimates show that up to one in five Greek couples choose not to marry in a leap year.
Leap year is not a particularly historic day on the calendar, as few historic events of note have happened on Feb. 29. But there have been a few moments, including in 1692, when the first arrest warrants for the Salem witch trials were authorized on Leap Day.
Social history was made on Feb. 29, 1940, when Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She was named best supporting actress for her portrayal of Mammy in “Gone with the Wind,” one of eight Oscars for the movie that night.
Twenty-eight years later, the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” won a Grammy for best album on Feb. 29, 1968. That same evening, Glen Campbell and John Hartford collected four Grammys for the crossover hit “Gentle on My Mind.”
For lovers of neutrality and good cheese, Switzerland declared itself a federal republic on Leap Day in 1848. Transportation buffs may also celebrate Feb. 29 as the anniversary of the Panama Canal commission, formed by President Theodore Roosevelt on Leap Day 1904.
Like any other day, disasters can happen on Feb. 29. On that date in 2012, a series of tornadoes ripped across five Midwest and Southern states, wreaking devastation in a number of communities, particularly in Harrisburg, Illinois.
For others, Leap Day is a happier occasion. Hockey legend Gordie Howe became the first National Hockey League player to score 800 career goals on Feb. 29, 1980 — in his final season and a month shy of his 52nd birthday. On Leap Day eight years earlier, home run king Hank Aaron became the first Major League Baseball player to sign a contract for $200,000 a year.
Most people like to hide their ages, but it’s easier for those born on a leap year, since their actual birthdate comes around only once every four years. On the other three years, “leaplings” or “leapers” celebrate their day either on Feb. 28 or March 1.
Notable leaplings include big band leader Jimmy Dorsey, born on Leap Day in 1904, and singer Dinah Shore, born on Feb. 29, 1916. Actors Dennis Farina (1944) and Antonio Sabato (1972) were also born on Feb. 29, as was rapper Ja Rule (1976).
But those leaplings have nothing on the Henriksen family of Norway who, incredibly, produced children that were born on three straight Leap Days – Heidi in 1960, Olav in 1964, and Leif-Martin in 1968.
In that household, as elsewhere, Feb. 29 is indeed a day like no other.