Leap year influence!

People born on 29th February are celebrating today their birthday after 4 long years. They have to wait four times more than other people to blow their birthday candles. As 29 February comes every fourth year and the year is said to be a leap year. But unlike other common people they could be 60 while celebrating their 15th real birthday only. Isn’t it sounds cool!

Generally every year that is divisible by four is a leap year but if those years can be divided by 100, it will NOT be a leap year, unless the year is divisible by 400.

The year 2008 is a leap year. The month began with Friday and ending today again on Friday. With this effect February has five Fridays in this year. The most recent year in which February comprised five Fridays was in 1980, and the next occurrence will be in 2036.

There are many old-age traditions and superstitions associated with this date.

It is supposed that Leap Year has been the traditional time that women can propose marriage.

According to English law, February 29th had no legal status. Folks assumed that traditions would also have no status on that day. It was also reasoned that since the leap year day existed to fix a problem in the calendar, it could also be used to fix an old and unjust custom that only let men propose marriage.

In Greece, it is believed that getting married in a leap year brings bad luck for the couple. Thus, mainly in the middle of the past century, couples avoided setting a marriage date in a leap year.

Earth takes a mean length of approximately 365.25 days to complete its revolution around sun and this completes a year on earth. Hence on fourth revolution it gives a length of 366 days in a year and the year is known as leap year. Leap years consist of 366 days as compared to 365 days in other common years. A leap year contains one or more extra day in month of February in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Instead of the usual 28 days, February would have 29 days in a leap year.

Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

There are some well-known people who born on this special day coming once in four years. They include the dawg himself Randy Jackson (of American Idol fame), former Indian prime minister Morarji Desai, rapper Ja Rule, American singer Dinah Shore, and American serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron played her in Monster).