Did you know that 2024 is a leap year? This year we’ve got February 29th on the calendar…but how much do you know about this unique day? Let’s hop into some fun facts about Leap Day!
There is a one in 1461 chance of being born on leap day. So there currently about 4-5 million people with a leap day birthday! They’re often called “leaplings” or “leapers.” We’re not sure how many wild bunnies were born on leap day, but if there are about 14 million pet rabbits on earth…there are probably around 10,000 pet bunny “leaplings”!
It takes Earth 365.2425 days to orbit the earth…so a leap year is added every four years to make up for the extra hours. But even with a day added every four years…the calendar is still off by a few minutes. To make up for those minutes, only centuries divisible by 400 are leap years. So 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was. The next century leap year won’t be until 2400!
If we hop back through history, we can see that the leap year concept was first introduced by the ancient Egyptians into their lunar calendar. However, instead of adding a day every four years, King Ptolemy III started adding a leap month every three years, beginning around 283 B.C. Around 45 B.C., Julius Caesar added days to different months to create a yearly calendar lasting 365 days, and began adding one day every three years to create the Julian calendar.
The Olympic Summer Games are held on leap years. This year, they’ll be held in Paris. We’re looking forward to checking out the long jump, the triple jump, and the high jump! (😝)
What will you do with your “extra” day?