Happy Leap Day!

Well... here we are. Another Leap Day.

Yesterday, I was watching the CBS morning news, and they had a couple on air who were full-term with their first baby. The wife was born on Leap Day, and she was going in on Leap Day to have the baby induced.

Interesting. I always thought it would be cool to be born on Leap Day. Now I'm not so sure. When I was a kid, I already complained about sharing my birthday with my sister... I can't imagine how much I would have complained about sharing it every four years! (ha!)

I read that the Greeks consider getting married in a Leap Year to be bad luck. Go figure. (http://news.wedding.auz.com/rumors/greek-leap-year/) I wonder if that's true? Anyone know? Anyone care?

Did you know (random Leap Year factoid) that Leap Years are not held exactly every four years? A year is NOT really 365.25 days long. It's actually about 11 minutes and 14 seconds short of being "exactly" 365.25 days long. So... to make up for it, they skip it three times every 400 years. I just KNOW you're dying to know HOW they do this. Well, a century year can only be a Leap Year IF it's evenly divisible by 400. So... 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not Leap Years, but 1600, 2000, and 2400 are (or was/will be) Leap Years.

The easy way to remember it is:
if a "regular" year is evenly divisible by 4 (evenly), it's a Leap Year.
if a "century" year is evenly divisible by 400, it is a Leap Year.

So... at this rate, the calendar year and the solar year are only "off" by 30 seconds. At this rate, it will take about 3,300 years until the calendar year and the solar year are "off" by a day.

Fascinating stuff, right?