The month of February was named after the festival of purification called februa - Februerie in ancient Rome.
During Leap Years, we add a Leap Day, an extra – or intercalary – day on February 29. Nearly every 4 years is a Leap Year in our modern Gregorian Calendar.
Why do we need Leap Years?
Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds (a tropical year) – to circle once around the Sun.
However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn't add a day on February 29 nearly every 4 years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days!
Which Years are Leap Years?
In the Gregorian calendar 3 criteria must be taken into account to identify leap years:
- The year is evenly divisible by 4;
- If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless;
- The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.
This means that 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years.
The year 2000 was somewhat special as it was the first instance when the third criterion was used in most parts of the world since the transition from the Julian to theGregorian Calendar.
Who invented Leap Years?
Julius Caesar introduced Leap Years in the Roman empire over 2000 years ago, but the Julian calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by 4 would be a leap year. This lead to way too many leap years, but didn't get corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar more than 1500 years later.
Though February is the shortest month of the year, it often feels like the longest in cold, snowy climates. Why does the month have only 28 days? (Well, 29 this year.)
First here’s a little history of our calendar. The original Roman calendar only had ten months, because the winter was not demarcated. In the 700s BC, the second king of Rome Numa Pompilius added January and February to the end of the calendar in order to conform to how long it actually takes the Earth to go around the Sun.The two new months were both originally 28 days long. It is lost to history why January acquired more days, though there are various unverifiable hypotheses. At that time, March 1 became New Years’ Day. Later, in 153 BC, the beginning of the year was moved to January 1.
The word February comes from the Roman festival of purification called Februa where people were ritually washed. There is a Roman god called Februus, but he is named after the festival, not the other way around. Other months, like January, are named after Roman gods. Curious about the duplicity of January? Learn more here.
The interesting linguistic story, though, lies in England. Before we adopted the Latin name for the second month, Old English used much more vibrant names to describe it. The most common Old English name was Solmonath, which literally means “mud month.” It is pretty clear what they were describing. A lesser-used term was Kale-monath, which meant “cabbage month.” We can imagine that the English were eating a lot of cabbage in February in the 1100s.
Ever wondered
Read More: TimeandDate
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