Happy Birthday Leaplings

Happy Leap Day 2016! For those who are born on February 29, you only get to celebrate your birthday on the actual day every four years! Leap day babies, or leaplings, still get to celebrate their birthdays in common years. Some celebrate on February 28, some prefer March 1. It can also depend on which country you live in – in New Zealand, leaplings celebrate on February 28, in the United States, they wait until March 1.

Leap day is also St Oswald’s Day, named after the archbishop of York who died on February 29, 992. His memorial is celebrated on February 29 during leap years and on February 28 during common years.

Leap years are needed to keep our modern day Gregorian calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242189 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds – to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year, and is measured from the March equinox.

However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn’t add a leap day on February 29 nearly every four years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by around 24 days!

In the Gregorian calendar three criteria must be taken into account to identify leap years:

• The year can be evenly divided 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 in the Gregorian calendar, the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years.

Roman general Julius Caesar introduced the first leap years over 2000 years ago. But the Julian calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year. This formula produced way too many leap years, but was not corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar more than 1500 years later.

There are a number of traditions associated with Leap Years, the most commonly known of which is when women are able to propose to men, as opposed to the other way around.

According to an old Irish legend (or possibly history), St Brigid struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men – and not just the other way around – every four years. It is believed to have been introduced to balance the traditional roles of men and women in a similar way to how leap day balances the calendar.

In some places, leap day has been known as “Bachelors’ Day” for the same reason. A man was expected to pay a penalty, such as a gown or money, if he refused a marriage proposal from a woman on Leap Day.

In many European countries, especially in the upper classes of society, tradition dictates that any man who refuses a woman’s proposal on February 29 has to buy her 12 pairs of gloves. The intention is that the woman can wear the gloves to hide the embarrassment of not having an engagement ring.

For those born on February 29, they are invited to join The Honour society of Leap Year Day Babies. Speaking of leap day babies, the Guinness Book of Records has Leap Day World Record Holders both of a family producing three consecutive generations born on February 29 and of the number of children born on February 29 in the same family.

The only verified example of a family producing three consecutive generations born on February 29 is that of the Keogh family. Peter Anthony was born in Ireland on a Leap Day in 1940, while his son, Peter Eric, was born in the UK on February 29, 1964. Peter Eric’s daughter, Bethany Wealth, was also a Leap Day baby, born in the UK on February 29, 1996.

The Henriksen family from Andenes, Norway currently holds the official record for the most number of children born in one family on leap day. Karin Henriksen gave birth to three children on February 29; her daughter Heidi in 1960 and her sons Olav and Leif-Martin in 1964 and 1968.

Unlucky in Love
In Scotland, it used to be considered unlucky for someone to be born on leap day, just as Friday 13th is considered an unlucky day by many. Greeks consider it unlucky for couples to marry during a leap year, and especially on Leap Day.

Celebrity Leap Day Birthdays
1468 – Pope Paul III (d. 1549)
1792 – Gioacchino Rossini, Italian composer (William Tell, The Barber of Seville) (d. 1868)
1896 – Morarji Desai, former Indian prime minister (d. 1995)
1968 – Wendi Louise Peters, English television and theatre character actress
1916 – Dinah Shore, American singer (d. 1994)
1924 – Al Rosen, American baseball player
1924 – Carlos Humberto Romero, former president of El Salvador
1960 – Anthony (Tony) Robbins, American motivational speaker
1964 – Lyndon Byers, Canadian hockey player
1972 – Saul Stacey Williams, American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor
1972 – Antonio Sabàto Jr, Italian-born actor
1976 – Ja Rule (real name Jeffrey Atkins), American rapper and actor
1980 – Chris Conley, American musician and songwriter/composer