To circle around the Sun, the Earth takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds (and this is called tropical year). So we lose about 6 hours each year. To scoop up the extra hours 1 leap day is inserted every four years.
Julius Caesar introduced the leap year around 46 B.C. His rule was : Every fourth year is a leap year or Any year divisible by 4 is leap year. But this is not the end of the story.
To fine tune, 1500 years later, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar with the rule: a year that is divisible by 4, except for years that are both divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400. Accordingly the year 2000 was a leap year, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.
How other calendars are adjusting this? In Chinese calendar a whole leap month is added every there years. In Ethiopian calendar an extra day is added to the last month of the year every four years.(that sounds rather logical to me). The Iranian calendar is a solar calendar with eight leap days inserted into a 33-year cycle. The Indian and The Bangla calendars adjust 1 leap day in such a way so that it remains close to 29 February.
The leap day is a special day in many countries. One thing come to my mind that it should be a global holiday as this is an extra day which every one of us should be able to use by self choice and not by the whim of the employer.
Leap Year is a romantic movie in which a woman travels to Ireland to ask her boyfriend to accept her wedding proposal on leap day, when tradition says that men cannot refuse a woman's marriage proposal.
Birthday. The chance of having a birthday on a leap day is 1 in 1461.The Honor Society of Leap Year Babies is a club for people born on Feb. 29 having 10,000 members worldwide.
Anthony, Texas, and Anthony, New Mexico. These 2 cities hold a four-day leap year festival including a huge birthday party for all leap year babies. These 2 cities are self claimed Leap Year Capital of the World.
February 29 only comes once every four years, so you better make the most of It!
