Thursday, February 26, 2009

Why does February have 29 days in a leap year?


About 2000 years ago Julius Caesar reorganized the calendar by adding an extra day every fourth year, following the advice of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes. This was necessary because the Earth takes 365, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to travel around the sun. The Romans had found that, with a year being only 365 days, festivals did not keep in line with the seasons.

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII made the system more accurate by ruling that the century years (e.g. 1700, 1800,1900 ) should not be treated as leap years unless they were divisible by 400. So there was not a 29th February in 1900 but there was one in the 2000.

9 comments:

  1. I really enjoy the interesting things you post here!!!

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  2. Very good start with your blog!

    Keep it up!!

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  3. thanks to you warpony and alexander for the appreciation..

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  4. Like the others your blog is creative, and a lot of info normally not found. Good job!

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  5. i've been thinking about the leap year and i dont know the reasons about and all of a sudden i saw ur blog which has a post about it!thank you!haha

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  6. Very interesting stuff. I am now a follower.

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  8. Just was wondering about the leap year the other day, thanks for the info.
    Interesting blog, will be following.

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