With loud music and celebrations all around, people across the world rang in the New Year with great joy and hope. Just like every year, 2024 was all about making new resolutions, charting a brand new beginning and another year of ups and downs, but there is something more special about this year that has us excited. 2024 is a leap year which implies that it has 366 days instead of the regular 365 days.
The extra one day is added for scientific reasons, something which we will discuss in this article. The concept of having a leap year has its roots in the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. However, the calendar’s simple rule of adding an extra day every four years led to a slight overcorrection. To fix that, the Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 which refined the leap year rule, including the exception for years divisible by 100 but not by 400. By all the calculations and reasonings, 2024 hence becomes a leap year and here are some interesting facts that you should know about this special year.
A leap year is a year that contains an extra day, 29 February (that is a Thursday this year), making it 366 days long instead of the usual 365 days. This additional day is added to the calendar to keep it synchronised with the astronomical year, which is approximately 365.2422 days long. By adding an extra day every four years, we can compensate for the extra fractional day and keep the calendar year aligned.
If a year is evenly divisible by 4, it is a leap year. However, if that year is also divisible by 100, it is not a leap year unless the year is also divisible by 400, in which case it is a leap year. To simply explain, the year 2000 was a leap year because it is divisible by 4, 100, and 400. The year 1900 was not a leap year because it is divisible by 4 and 100 but not by 400. The year 2020 was a leap year because it is divisible by 4. This system helps ensure that our calendars stay in relatively close alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun.
After 2024, the leap years on the list are 2028, 2032 and 2036. Leap days will fall on Tuesday 2028, Sunday 2032 and Friday 2036 on 29 February each year.
The mathematics of leap years is based on divisibility by certain numbers. If a year is evenly divisible by 4, it is a leap year. This accounts for the roughly 0.2422 days beyond the 365-day calendar year. For example, 2020 is divisible by 4, so it’s a leap year. However, a year that is evenly divisible by 100 is not a leap year. If a year is divisible by 400, it is a leap year. This exception corrects for the overcorrection introduced by the second rule. Years like 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years because they are divisible by 100 but not by 400. However, the year 2000 is a leap year because it is divisible by 400. In the 21st century, the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years because they are divisible by 400. However, the years 2100, 2200, and 2300 are not leap years despite being divisible by 4 because they are not divisible by 100 (the exception to the rule).
People born on 29 February, also known as a “leap day,” celebrate their birthdays only once every four years. In non-leap years, they often choose to celebrate on 28 February or 1 March. Some famous Leap Babies include names like Composer Gioachino Rossini, Film director William Wellman, Band leader Jimmy Dorsey, Singer Dinah Shore, Ballet dancer James Mitchell, Godfather actor Alex Rocco, Motivational speaker Tony Robbins and Rapper Ja Rule.
Just like in 2024, which is a leap year, the Leap Day is considered to be a day when conventional gender roles are reversed in some traditions. This custom is not universally observed but has been popularised in various cultures. In the past, some cultures experimented with alternative calendar systems as well. The French Republican Calendar, used during the French Revolution, had 12 months of 30 days each, with five or six additional days at the end of the year. This resulted in a leap day called “Complementary Day” or “Sansculottides” at the end of each year, including 30 February. While leap years like 2024 address discrepancies in the length of a year, leap seconds are occasionally added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to account for irregularities in Earth’s rotation. These adjustments are made to keep atomic time (based on highly precise atomic clocks) and astronomical time (based on the Earth’s rotation) in sync.
Hero and featured image credit: Nikolaeva Elena/Getty Images)
The story first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Hong Kong
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