2016 is a leap year. It's a year that has 366 days, which means it's the only year that also has February 29. Do you know why the second month of the year has 29 days every four years, one more than usual? You know what we call those who only celebrate their birthday every four years? Find out all this and more below.
It's 2016 leap year, which means it counts 366 days. He receives an additional day every four years February, which usually has 28 days, but this year has 29. But how do we know when it's a leap year? A leap year is any year that is divisible by 4, except if it is divisible by 100, but not if it is also divisible by 400.
READ MORE: Leap second
Leap years were introduced to match the calendar year with the seasons. The roots of the leap year go back 2000 years, in the time of Julius Caesar, who, together with his assistants, designed the Julian calendar. Even then they knew that the Earth for path around the Sun needs 365 days, and the months were assigned the following number of days: 31 in January, 29 in February, 31 in March, 30 in April, 31 in May, 30 in June, 31 in July, 31 in August, and after that until the end of the year. But later astronomers found that the Earth's journey around the Sun takes a little longer, 6 hours, to be precise. This adds up to 24 hours over four years, so February gained an extra day in that interval. A new complication arose with the arrival of the jealous Emperor Gaius Augustus Octavian, who wanted his month to have 31 days just like July. He pulled February short, stuck with only 28 days.
It remained that way until the 16th century, when astronomers installed measuring devices to the last detail and corrected the time of the Earth's rotation around the Sun to 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. The Pope took matters into his own hands Gregory XIII., who missed too many leap years, so he decided that the month of February would have one extra day every four years, with the exception of every 100 years. This time also gave us the Gregorian calendar, which we still use today. By adding a day to February according to this calendar, the year has an average of 365.2425 days, which means that it is half a day late in 4 thousand years. Now we owe you the answer to the second question from the title. To those born on February 29, we say little ones. There are around 1,300 of them in Slovenia, and as many in the world as the population of two Slovenias.
