Year 2008 is a leap year.
45 BC: Emperor Julius Caesar declares the last day of February as Leap Year Day, thus out of four, jumps it to three. Until that February 30th was the last day of the last month of the year, that’s why he picked this date.
4 AD: Emperor Caesar Augustus also edits the fault in Leap Years. The month of August is named after him. Also steals the last day of February so that August has full 31 days. Now February has 29 days in Leap Years.
1582: Pope Gregory XIII, moves the end of the year to December 31st, and makes century years leap years if they are divisible by 400. (So 2000 is a leap year, but 1900 was not.) He moved the end of the year back two months so that Easter would occur in the spring.
Some leap year birthdays.
- 1468 Paul III, last Renaissance pope, 1534-49
- 1468 Pope Paul III, Italian Clergyman
- 1896 Morarji Ranchhodji Desai – 6th Prime Minister of India from March 24, 1977 to July 15 1979. At 83, he was the oldest Prime Minister of India. (died in 1995)
- 1904 Rukmini Devi Arundale, Indian dancer and founder of Kalakshetra (d. 1986)
- 1984 Adam Sinclair, Indian Hockey player
Leap year myths
Getting married in a leap year brings bad luck to the couple, was believed in Greece. That was the reason, during the middle of the past century, couples avoided situation of a marriage date in a leap year.
Norway’s Henriksen siblings, were born on three consecutive Leap Days in the 1960s, as recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records.
It is assumed that the belief of women proposing to men
on February 29 started in 5th-century Ireland when St Bridget complained to St Patrick about women having to wait lengthy for a man to put forward.
According to legend, St Patrick said longing females could propose on this one day in February during the leap year. According to a 1288 law issued by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then aged five and living in Norway), a man was made to pay a fine if he refused to accept a proposal. Damages ranged from a kiss to presenting a silk gown. Men felt that the law put them next to too vast a risk and so the custom was tightened to limit female proposals to the contemporary leap day, 29 February, or to the medieval leap day, February 24.
wow…
