Hello and happy leap day! Depending on how you look at it, this is just another day in the year, but as you can see, we like to find a reason to celebrate pretty much anything around here (keeps life fun), so Iris is going nuts in ballet today with her leaps. She's probably going to be tired tomorrow and have to take the day off and say that she already worked an extra day, haha....
The technical reason we have a leap year is not that interesting (to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the Sun), but here are some fun facts about leap year that will help you see as more than "just another day"....the source for all this is the bunnies' excellent internet research skills:
1. There actually exists an Honor Society of Leap Year Babies, a club for people born on Feb. 29, and this society has over 10,000 members. I wonder what the perks of being in this society are...and if they have annual meetings....or only meeting on leap year???
2. One of the traditions of leap day is that it is the one day that women can propose marriage. The source of this tradition is that St. Patrick supposedly granted women this one day because of complaints from women about having to wait to be proposed to...I guess the relevancy of that depends on your cultural background, but if your a guy and not looking to get married any time soon and your girlfriend has been asking....watch out for this day. Could avoid some awkwardness. And in Ireland, Queen Margaret of Scotland began the tradition in 1288 that a man refused the proposal, he would be fined a kiss, a silk dress or 12 pairs of gloves.
3. Without a leap day added to our calendar every four years, we would lose almost six hours every year and by 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days.
4. There are two women in the world (unrelated) who have given birth to 3 leap year babies! I wonder what the odds of that are??? Okay, I did some math, and it's at least one in 50 million...while the chances of having a birthday on a leap year are about one in 1,461
5. There was once a February 30!!! This date occurred in Sweden and Finland in 1712, when they added an extra Leap Day to February to help catch up their outdated Julian calendar with the new Gregorian calendar. Seems kind of out there, but if you are every on Jeopardy, this fact could come in handy.
6. There is an official "Leap Day Cocktail" invented by Harry Craddock at London’s Savoy Hotel in 1928
7. Generally, leap years are considered bad luck, especially in Taiwan, Greece, and Russia so if you're superstitious, this is not a good year...in efforts to help counter all that, I'm ending this list on #7 for better luck (if you believe in that sort of thing).
Have a great leap day!