Home
Contents
Now available in hardcover:
Search This Site
Email
|
Looking Before Leaping
December 1, 1999
If it weren't my daughter's wedding anniversary, I wouldn't have
noticed how little attention we give to leap year. I needed to
know the day so I could pencil in my baby-sitting assignment for
when this couple celebrates their second anniversary -- although
they've been married eight years.
I
scanned the pages of my new Filofax calendar for February, 2000.
I see Lincoln's Birthday noted for the 12th, St. Valentine's Day
on the 14th, Washington's Birthday on the 21st, so placed to make
this USA National Holiday a long weekend as well as a day shoppers
hit the malls for Presidents' Day specials. However, the Father
of Our Country was really born on the 22nd.
February
29th is on the calendar as an ordinary day in that month. The
next day, March 1st, is St. David's Day. The significance of
that was totally lost on me until I looked him up. I found St.
David is, and I quote: "the patron of Wales. His legend ... is
much more elaborate, and entirely unreliable." The encyclopedic
source of this information is reliable, however, leading me to
wonder why this feast day is worthy of mention when February 29,
2000 marking an event happening on one day in four hundred years
is passed over as just another day.
We
go back to our childhood chant when we want to know if days have
30 or 31 days. We learned, "thirty days has September, April,
June and November; all the rest have thirty one; except for February
who stands alone, with twenty eight. But, Leap Year coming once
in four, February has one day more."
There
are variations on the theme, of course, but every four years like,
well, like clockwork, we have an additional day in February.
This
doesn't just happen, it occurs according to an age-old rule.
Basically, when the number of a year can be evenly divided by
four, it is a leap year. Unless, of course, it can also be divided
by 100. In which case, it's merely a standard 28-day-February
year. Unless, it can also be divided by 400, and then it is a
leap year. That's the formula and there's no variation on that
theme.
If
we go back a century, we will have had a leap year in 1892, and
again in 1896 but none in 1900 ... because 1900 can be divided
by 100 but not by 400. There were 28 days in February, 1900.
Jumping ahead, this last decade of the millennium had a leap year
in 1992 (my daughter's wedding day) and another in 1996. And,
unlike a century ago, we will have a leap year in 2000. Why? It's
divisible by 100 and also by 400.
Am
I the only one impressed enough by all this to be looking for
at least a footnote on the calendar? In the time a half-century
before Christ, in the days of Julius Caesar, the calculations
were made with quill pens by candlelight. Concerns easily as
deep as the Y2K worries today found the "programmers" perplexed
because it took 365.25 days to bring the year full circle. They
made adjustments by a designing a 366 day calendar every four
years.
According
to the continuing saga, the Venerable Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk,
decided this Julian calendar was off by 11 minutes. It was
unthinkable that a day would be lost every 128 years. (Would anyone
notice a sunset three minutes late or a moon a trifle higher in
the sky at midnight?) Bede pointed it out but nobody thought
it was worth their time or attention to do anything. Then seven
or eight hundred years later, 10 full days were gone. Wow! It
was a bigger deal all of a sudden. However, the powers that be
just made October 5th, October 15th. In 1582 they got the
10 days back with the stroke of a quill.
Everything was all right again and since then we've used the formula,
adding the double 00 factor which makes those years common years.
If
a Y2K problem exists at all, it's because it wasn't factored in
when the programs were written years ago. And if the programmers
didn't think ahead for 01/01/00, can we guess they might not have
realized 2000 is divisible by four hundred?
As
for me, thank you, Julius Caesar. Thank you, Venerable Bede.
Now where's my pen? I have to mark my calendar and fill in an
agenda. I've decided if centuries -- nay, millennia -- have gone
into making sure I don't lose a day of my life every 128 years,
I can at least plan on not wasting a minute of the one coming.
|