I was going to post this on Wednesday, but how often can you blog on February 29? Every 1,461 days, that's how often! Which may be a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things, but in everyday life, four years is an eternity. I couldn't resist.
Leap years have long fascinated me, but you really need to read the fine print. The official rules state that years that are divisible by 100 are exempt from leaping, unless they are also divisible by 400. Which explains why there was no Feb. 29 in 1700, 1800, and 1900 — and there won't be one in 2100, 2200, or 2300 — but 2000 had one. And also why I suddenly need a Tylenol. Ouch, my head.
This is all Julius Caesar's fault. He may have been a pro at conquering Europe, northern Africa, and Asia Minor, but his math skills sucked. Caesar created Leap Year in 46 B.C. to account for the discrepancy between the lunar and solar calendars, but he erroneously believed a year lasted 365.25 days, when in fact, it's actually 365.2421 days. His imprecise math means, without a Leap Day, our calendar would be off by 24 days every 100 years and our seasons would be completely out of sync. Dude may not have been a math wiz but he did invent a great salad, so I'll give him a pass.
Luckily, Pope Gregory XIII came along in the 16th century. Distressed that Easter, which is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox (Jeez Louise; what is it with these wacky rules?!), was now bumping up against pagan festivals, he was like, "Aww, hell no!" and invented a whole new calendar. In addition to making those divisibility tweaks to Leap Day, he chopped off 10 whole days from the Julian calendar. I was hoping this meant there was once an April 33rd or July 36th, but no such luck: because there were no Christian festivals in October after the Feast of St. Francis on Oct. 4, 1582, he just dropped the next week and a half from the calendar. One day it was Oct. 4, the next, Oct. 15.
The repercussions boggle the mind. How many people missed out on celebrating birthdays that year? What about anniversaries? Did marriages fall apart because spouses "forgot" the big day? Did people lose their jobs because they turned in assignments that were due Oct. 7 on Oct. 15? Did folks have to pay late fees for past-due credit card bills? Were they evicted because they didn't pay the rent on time? Did they die thanks to missed doctor's appointments?!
Man, that pontiff had balls.
But at least our calendar today is properly in sync with the seasons! If the Gregorian calendar had never been adopted, Wisconsin might hit 71 degrees in February! Can you even imagine?!
Oh, wait...
Yeah. That happened on Tuesday. I was driving with the A/C on. People were walking around in shorts. One old guy who should never have been shirtless unfortunately was. It felt like summer out there. And then, Wednesday morning:
It was 13ยบ. There was snow on the ground. I had my heated seats on. This was nothing short of a historic temperature drop.
This weekend, it'll be back in the 60s. It's like riding a rollercoaster these days; we're going from one extreme to the next. Just once, I'd love it if our weather were normal. What a concept, huh?
One more fun fact about this whole Feb. 29 dealio. There are 525,600 minutes in a normal calendar year. During leap years like 2024, there are 527,040 minutes. That means every one of us has been given the precious gift of time. Pretty cool, huh?
What are you going to do with your extra 1,440 minutes this year?
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