Random blurbs and rantings from a tired woman.

Again, welcome to our new site! Yeai! It's our first day blogging and as it so happens today is also the 29th of February, which means we're in a leap year. I thought I'd share some fun facts with you guys as to way the leap year is so special. Bear with me.

The practice of having leap days began over 2,000 years ago when Julius Caesar decreed that any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year. His calendar provided 12 months totaling 365 and one-quarter days. This troublesome one-quarter day was "saved" and every four years added in February.

While this was a good plan, it wasn't perfect. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII remedied this problem by adopting new rules for calculating  leap years, wich we use to this day: 

- To be a leap year, the year must be evenly divisible by four.

- Any year that is evenly divisible by 100 is not a leap year - unless it's also evenly divisible by 400.

One of the oldest leap year traditions is for a woman to propose to a man on the 29th day. Believed to go back to an old irish legend, it's said that a man who refuses the proposal of a woman on a leap day must buy her a gift as an apology. Some versions of the tradition say the gift should be 12 pairs of gloves, so the woman can hide the embarrassment of not having an engagement ring. I mean c'mon guys?! Really?? Beyonce said "put a ring on it"..

"In Leap Year they have power to chuse - The men no charter to refuse."
Vincent Lean, 1905.

So okay, hopefully you learned something about this calendar bullcrap.. Don't say I didn't teach you anything.

Source: cbc, shorelinetimes, urbanlegends.