Leap years onlycome around once every four years, so it’s not often we get to talk about them. Since today is February 29, 2016, we thought we would comb through the internet to see what kind of fun facts about leap years we could come up with. It seems everyone knows the story of women proposing to men on this day, a custom attributed to Ireland and St. Bridget, who allegedly complained to St. Patrick about the unfairness of women having to wait for men to propose. St. Patrick is said to have agreed to allow it once every 7 years, but St. Bridget bargained with him and got it down to every four years. Of course, that’s just legend and only St. Patrick and St. Bridget really know what happened. Do you know these leap year facts?
10 Facts About Leap Years
- People born on February 29 are called leaplings.
- The first arrest warrants for what became the Salem Witch Trials were issued on February 29, 1692.
- Julius Caesar tried to introduce leap year, but he got the math all wrong, making leap years any year divisible by four.
- Without the extra day of a leap year, we would lose almost 6 hours every year. After 100 years, the calendar would be off by about 24 days.
- The Chinese add a whole month to their calendar every three years – 2015 was a leap year in the Chinese calendar.
- According to the New York Daily News, only two women have ever been recorded as having 3 leap day babies, each one on a different year.
- The chances of being born on a leap day is about 1 in 1,461.
- The city of Anthony, Texas is known as the Leap Year Capital of the World. It shares this claim with Anthony, New Mexico.
- If you were born on February 29, you can join the Honor Society of Leap Year Babies.
- Two notable leap years in history – 1912, the year the Titanic sank, and 1752, the year Ben Franklin “discovered” electricity.
What will you do to celebrate today? May we suggest a game of leap frog?
image courtesy of BaileyRaeWeaver
