What is a Leap Year? when did it begin? how often is a Leap Year?
As you know, tomorrow is 29th February, so we have an extra day in our calendars. But, do you know why? You'll find answers to that questions, together with the ones above, in this post. I hope you find it useful ;)
A leap year is a year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.
The name "leap year" comes from the fact that while a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next, the day of the week in a leap year will advance two days (from March onwards) due to the extra day added at the end of February (thus "leaping over" one of the days in the week). For example, Christmas fell on Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, and Thursday in 2003 but then "leapt" over Friday to fall on a Saturday in 2004.
The practice of adding extra days to the year is at least as old as these 360-day systems.“When the Egyptians adopted this calendar they were aware that there was a problem, but they didn't add any more days to the calendar; they just added an extra five days of festivals, of partying, at the end of the year.” In 46 BCE, Roman emperor Julius Caesar sought to fix this problem. He introduced the Julian calendar—an amended version of the existing Roman calendar. A year, he said, would now include 365 days, with an extra leap day—or intercalary day—every fourth year.
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