What's in a Leap Year?!

photo credit -teen.com

Hi all,

Due to technical difficulties I had to change the interface of my blog recently. Sunday night I had a little scare but I was able to fix it!! In the process I lost all my "retweets" and "likes" so folks please retweet and like my posts again! Really appreciate the support my blog has been getting....soon it will be 6000 hits already!!

Today is a very special day...it's a leap year...Do you know what that means? Well I'm sure everyone was doing their own research today so this may not be all that new.

A leap year is necessary so as to keep our calendar in sync with the earth's revolutions around the sun. Our earth takes approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds (a tropical year) – to circle around the Sun only once. 

We celebrate leap years once every four (4) years. It happens that the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so we would lose close to six (6) hours from our calendar every year if there was no leap year or leap day on February 29 every four years. Do you know what this would mean? Our calendar will be thrown out of wack by approximately 24 days after only 100 years! Wow!  That can really do a number on you if you're in temperate climates that experience changes of seasons. Every wondered what it'd be like to have a "Sunshiney summer wonderland" in December or cold winter days in August? -methinks not:)

Here's a little bit of history you can show off with your friends and family next leap year!

Julius Caesar attempted to solve the problem since he invented leap years in 45 BCE (Before Common Era) but it posed a problem since he deemed any year evenly divisible by 4 to be a leap year that way we wound up with too many leap years which had implications for when Easter was celebrated. It also meant that the tropical year moved backwards on the calendar every 128 days. So Pope Gregory XIII invented the Gregorian calender in February 1582 which is now known as the Western or Christian calendar. It was first adopted in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. However, I discovered that some countries still use the Julian calendar such as the Orthodox church in Russia and the Berber people of North Africa and on Mount Athos. Bet ya didn't know that one?!

This translates to good news and bad news for those born on a leap year. It either means less birthday celebrations or less aging!! I guess it depends on how you look at the situation. Happy Birthday to all the Leap Year babies!

Irish tradition also tells us that women propose to men on this day and the men must accept? Hmmm....I guess the bars will be busy today:)

It seems that Christopher Columbus was also on the isle of Jamaica during his final voyage to the West Indies during the February 29, 1504 lunar eclipse!! Wow...(this info credited to the BBC....lots more to this story check it out here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17203353)

Hope you had a good Leap Day....it's over in some countries. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing tonight...Remember to Make it Count!!

Peace.

Feel free to tell us how you spent your Leap Day.