{"id":10344,"date":"2024-02-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/?p=10344"},"modified":"2024-02-29T17:43:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T23:43:10","slug":"no-time-wasted-what-is-leap-day-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/no-time-wasted-what-is-leap-day-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"No time wasted: What is Leap Day, anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Every four years, the Gregorian calendar gives us an interesting phenomenon called a \u201cleap year.\u201d The result? Countries that follow the Gregorian calendar end up with an extra day on the calendar: Feb. 29.<\/p>\n

So why does this chronological quirk hit every four years? It actually takes Earth 365.242190 days to orbit the sun, leaving an \u201coverflow\u201d of five hours and 49 minutes. As Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told NPR<\/a>, \u201c\u2026that .242190 days to go around the sun is the entire reason why we have a leap year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gregorian calendar we use today began by papal decree in 1582, and the first Leap Day took place in 1584. In London in 1751, Aaron Hawkins wrote a pamphlet<\/a> explaining the mathematical basis for the leap year and the need to make up for the five hours and 49 minutes that go uncounted in an ordinary year. <\/p>\n

Both the 16th-century pope and his 18th-century champion were unknowingly preventing a headache for future computer scientists, who now benefit from their precision when programming systems.<\/p>\n

Now to shake things up a bit: leap years don\u2019t always<\/em> occur every four years. The rules are actually slightly more complicated<\/a>:<\/p>\n