Today is Leap Year!

Or, should I say that this year is a leap year, and today is the Leap day?
ANYhow, I found good information about leaping on this video from Epiphio on Youtube:

I also found it on WWW.Timeanddate.com, which you can find HERE.

"A leap year consists of 366 days, as opposed to a common year, which has 365 days.

During Leap Years, we add a Leap Day, an extra – or intercalary – day on February 29. Nearly every 4 years is a Leap Year in our modern Gregorian Calendar.
 

Note:  The illustration is not to scale.

Why do we need Leap Years?

Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun.
It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days (a tropical year) to circle once around the Sun.
However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn't add a day on February 29 nearly every 4 years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days!"

There are a few interesting notes about Leap Year.  For one thing, people born on February 29 age slower, because they only have one birthday every four years.  Of course, I assume that most of them just get to choose another day to celebrate their birthday - probably March 1st, right?

And an old tradition, which I think seems to have started in Ireland, says that Leap Day is the one day of the year when a woman can propose marriage to a man.  This does NOT mean that the man must accept, though.  He can say no - although it seems that if he says no, supposedly he owes the girl a kiss and a new silk dress... lol! 

Because of the idea of men and women swapping roles on Leap day, some places hold a "Sadie Hawkins Dance."  Sadie Hawkins was apparently a girl in an old comic strip called "Li'l Abner", who would run after the men proposing to them.  I remember the Li'l Abner comic strip, but not well - but you can find more information HERE.  Sadie Hawkins Day is really in November, because that is when the cartoon's artist made it, but it works to celebrate it on Leap Year, too!


So you might want to think of today as a backwards, bonus Valentine's day...