In a perfect world, perhaps, everything would come out even. The Earth would move around the sun in exactly 360 days. The calendar would be divided into 12 months of 30 days each, months that would exactly coincide with the time it takes for the moon to rotate around the Earth.
But that's not the way it is.
In our world, the Earth takes 365 1/4 days to complete a rotation around the sun. The lunar cycle is 29 1/2 days long. Those extra days and fractions may not seem like much, but they have the power to wreak havoc with calendars and have led to what author J.B. Priestly calls "a long struggle to make a tidy job out of rather untidy natural units of time."
Times and seasons have always been important. People needed to know when to plant crops, watch for floods and honor their various gods. But coming up with a workable system was not always easy.
For example, the ancient Egyptians were among the first to use a solar calendar, which they adopted around 4000 B.C. The year had 365 days and used 12 30-day months, with five-day weeks, and five days of festivals. That came close to the solar year but was off just enough over time to make a difference.
The Babylonian calendar was composed of alternating 29-day and 30-day months, which added up to a 354-day year. When the calendar began to drift too far from seasonal events, another month was added. To further adjust things, three months were added every eight years.
The earliest Roman calendar, developed about 700 B.C., had 304 days with 10 months. Every second year, a short month of 22 or 23 days was added to square things with the solar year. Eventually two more months were added at the end of the year, to increase it to 354 days.
This process of adding more time was called "intercalating," something frowned on by some people who didn't like the constant tinkering with time. Plus by the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was about three months ahead of the seasonal year.
By Caesar's time, people had finally realized that the solar year was actually 365 1/4 days long — which, when you think about it, is quite a remarkable achievement. In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar came up with a calendar that would address the problem of the extra fourth of a day. Every four years an extra day would be added. Leap year was born.
In the Julian calendar, the first of the year was also moved from March to January, so the year as we know it came into being. The year had 12 months of 30 or 31 days, except for February, which had 28 days. February was originally the last month of the year, which was why it was shorter and why it got the extra day. The first year under the Julian calendar was stretched to 445 days to get things back on cycle. After that, it seems to work well, at least for a few centuries.
But the Julian calendar had a small problem; it was 11 minutes too long. That may not seem like much, but by the 16th century, seasonal days were a week off.
This posed a problem for the Catholic Church, which set the date of Easter depending on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If things kept going the way they were, Easter could end up far from spring.
So, Pope Gregory XIII came up with a reform that would provide a solution: Every year divisible by 4 would be a leap year. However, the calendar would not have a leap year in the century years that were divisible by 100, unless that year was also divisible by 400, then it would be a leap year.
Just how they came up with this formula is uncertain, but it works pretty well.
It means that 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are not leap years, but 2000 and 2400 are. The year 2000 was the first time in many countries that the third part of the rule came into play. Over the years, it has taken care of the pesky extra minutes quite nicely, except for a few seconds that have to be adjusted now and then.
The Gregorian calendar was adopted by Catholic countries in 1582. It took the Protestants awhile to decide it had scientific and practical, rather than just religious, value. In England and America, 11 days were added to adjust things in 1752, and the Gregorian calendar became the standard. But some countries did not adopt it until after World War I.
Today, Friday, Feb. 29, 2008, is leap day. The last time leap day was on a Friday was 1980; the next time will be 2036. It takes 28 years for the same day to come up again.
In the 2,054 years since Julius Caesar first proposed the idea, leap year and leap day have become an integral part of the calendar. Yet, it's fun, every now and then, to stop and think where we'd be without them. It would be a very untidy world, indeed.
Year of the Frog
• Kickoff day for the Year of the Frog. Sponsored by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the campaign is designed to educate people about amphibian conservation. According to the association, one-third of all amphibians on the planet are threatened with extinction, due to loss of habitat, as well as infectious diseases.
Many zoos and aquariums will host special activities today and throughout the year. To learn more, go to www.aza.org/YearoftheFrog/.
You can also celebrate the day by learning some fun frog facts. For example:
—The world's biggest frog is the Goliath frog found in Cameroon, West Africa. It can reach nearly a foot long.
— One of the world's smallest frogs is the Gold Frog, found in Brazil. It grows to about 3/8th of an inch long.
— In Japan, frogs are the symbols of good luck. In India, frogs were believed to personify thunder in the sky. In Australia, frogs were considered bringers of rain. In China, they look for the "toad in the moon" rather than the "man in the moon."
— A group of fish is called a school. A group of geese is called a gaggle, but what about a group of frogs? They are called an army. As for toads, the grouping is a knot of toads.
— The cricket frog can leap 40 times its length in one jump.
— Male frogs are the ones that sing, which they do to attract females for mating.
Year of the Rat
2008 is the Year of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac. Some of the traits of individuals born during this year are being disciplined, meticulous, hardworking, charming, eloquent and shrewd. They also can be manipulative, selfish, overambitious and scheming.
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The First European Rare Disease Day. Feb. 29 has been set aside by the European Union as a day to focus attention on rare diseases and their impact on patients, families and communities.
Sources: "Man & Time," J. B. Priestley (Crescent Books); "The Handy Answer Science Book," compiled by the Science and Technology Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Visible Ink Press); "On This Day" (Crescent Books); "On This Day in the Church: An Illustrated Almanac of the Latter-day Saints," by Richard N. Holzapfel, Alexander L. Baugh, Robert C. Freeman, Andrew H. Hedges (Eagle Gate); www.timeanddate.com; www.leapyearday.com; www.kiddyhouse.com/Themes/frogs/