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Why is 2024 a leap year? How did the practice of adding an extra day to February begin?
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  • Why is 2024 a leap year? How did the practice of adding an extra day to February begin?

Why is 2024 a leap year? How did the practice of adding an extra day to February begin?

FP Explainers • January 2, 2024, 13:20:03 IST
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2024 is a leap year; it will have 366 days. Most years have 365 days because it is approximately how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. However, the precise time is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. And that matters. Here’s why

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Why is 2024 a leap year? How did the practice of adding an extra day to February begin?

Happy New Year. It’s going to be a longer 2024 with not 365 but 366 days. Yes, it is the leap year. An extra day has been added to the calendar. February will have 29 days instead of the usual 28. Leap years occur almost every four years, so the next one will fall in 2028. But why do we have years with an extra day? How did it all start? We explain. Why is 2024 a leap year? With 366 days instead of the regular 365, 2024 is a leap year. The extra day is called a leap day and it is added to February, the shortest month. 29 February 2024 will be the leap day. Also read: From elections to war, here's what 2024 will look like Why do have leap years? Most years have 365 days because that is approximately how long it takes Earth to orbit the Sun. But the precise time it takes is 365.24219 days or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. To make up for the extra time, rounded up to six hours, one day, that is 24 hours, have been added to the calendar every four years, making it a leap year. Without leap years, the calendar would fall out of sync with seasons. Crop cycles along with seasons would start occurring at different times of the year slowly. And this would lead to great confusion. [caption id=“attachment_13566982” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A drone displays the number 2024 during the New Year celebration in Baghdad, Iraq, on 1 January. Reuters[/caption] How did the practice of leap years begin? The discrepancy in calculating the year was spotted during the time of Roman emperor Julius Caesar by scholars who worked for him. In 46 BC, he passed a decree which started the practice of adding an extra day every four years to make up for the quarter days which were left unaccounted for. It led to the creation of the Julian calendar with 365 days and the 366th day added once every four years. However, this method was not error-free. It would be accurate if the solar year was exactly 364 ¼ days. But the six hours are still more than the precise 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds that it takes for the Earth to circle the Sun, making the calendar year a little longer than the solar year. By the 16th Century, this slight flaw in the Julian calendar added up to 10 days. [caption id=“attachment_13567002” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A life-size bust of Julius Caesar is seen at buildings of the Department of the Underwater and Submarine Archaeological (DRASSM) in Marseille. The Roman emperor introduced the practice of adding an extra day to a year every four years. File photo/Reuters[/caption] In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a big change to make up for the extra days. He ordered 10 days to be dropped from the calendar. In that year, 4 October was followed not by 5 October but by 15 October. However, this was a one-time solution and the problem was likely to reoccur. Hence, he created the Georgian calendar and coined the term “leap year”. He established 29 February as the date to add to a leap year and introduced a rule to take into account the discrepancy in the Julian calendar, according to a report by CNN. Why was February picked to add the extra day? The choice of February was part of Ceaser’s calendar reforms introduced in ancient Rome. They were inspired by the Egyptian solar calendar. But after the Georgian calendar was introduced in 1582, the tradition of adding a leap day to February stayed. How is the leap year calculated? A leap year occurs in every year that is divisible by four. However, this does not apply to years that end with 00. If these years are divisible evenly by 400 then they are considered a leap year. Hence 800, 1200 and 2000 were leap years but 1700 and 1900 were not. While they are divisible by four they are not divisible by 400. Hence, 2100 will not be a leap year. [caption id=“attachment_13567042” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A leap year occurs in every year that is divisible by four, but only in century years that are divided evenly by 400. Image courtesy: Pixabay[/caption] Is the calculation now perfect? Well, not entirely. The solar year is 26 seconds shorter than the Georgian year currently. There have been proposals to make further corrections – to remove a leap year once every 4,000 years or once every 3,200 years. But in 2024 it is not a pressing problem. With inputs from agencies

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