What are the important events that happened on February 29? Here are historical events, facts, and some myths about this day.
February 29: Facts & Myths About This Day
February 29 is the 60th day of the year 2024 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 306 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Thursday.
Under the Julian calendar, this day is February 16, 2024 – a Thursday. Both day of the week are the same but did you notice the difference with the Gregorian calendar?
When this day started, 474,768 hours has elapsed since midnight of January 1, 1970 – the Unix epoch.
Strange as it may, if we name this day after a polygon then it will be called ‘hexacontagon’ day.
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Pisces is the zodiac sign of a person born on this day. Amethyst is the modern birthstone for this month. Bloodstone is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 335 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
The ancient Maya civilization believes that the end of the world will happen on December 21, 2012. There are now 4,087 days since this fabled cataclysmic event.
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A person who is born on February 29 may be called a “leapling” or a “leap year baby”. In non-leap years, they typically celebrate their birthday on either February 28 or March 1.
February 29: This Day In History
February 29, known as a leap day in the Gregorian calendar, is a date that occurs in most years that are evenly divisible by 4, such as 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 do not contain a leap day, with the exception of years that are evenly divisible by 400, which do contain a leap day; thus 1900 did not contain a leap day while 2000 did. Years containing a leap day are called leap years. February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year, with 306 days remaining until the end of that year.
Leap years
Although most years of the modern calendar have 365 days, a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, during which an extra 24 hours have accumulated, one extra day is added to keep the count coordinated with the sun’s apparent position.
It is, however, slightly inaccurate to calculate an additional 6 hours each year. A better approximation, derived from the Alfonsine tables, is that the Earth takes a complete revolution around the sun in 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds. To compensate for the difference, an end-of-century year is not a leap year unless it is also exactly divisible by 400. This means that the years 1600 and 2000 were leap years, as will be 2400 and 2800, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not, nor will be 2100, 2200 and 2300.
The Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years, which is exactly 20,871 weeks including 97 leap days. Over this period, February 29 falls 13 times on a Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday; 14 times on a Friday or Saturday; and 15 times on a Monday or Wednesday.
The concepts of the leap year and leap day are distinct from the leap second, which results from changes in the Earth’s rotational speed.
The leap day was introduced as part of the Julian reform. The day following the Terminalia (February 23) was doubled, forming the “bis sextum”—literally ‘double sixth', since February 24 was 'the sixth day before the Kalends of March’using Roman inclusive counting (March 1 was the 'first day'). Although exceptions exist, the first day of the bis sextum (February 24) was usually regarded as the intercalated or “bissextile” day since the third century. February 29 came to be regarded as the leap day when the Roman system of numbering days was replaced by sequential numbering in the late Middle Ages.
An English law of 1256 decreed that in leap years, the leap day and the day before (February 25 & 24) are to be reckoned as one day for the purpose of calculating when a full year had passed. In England and Wales a person born on February 29 legally reaches the age of 18 or 21 on February 28 of the relevant year. In the European Union, February 29 officially became the leap day only in 2000.
In cases of New Zealand citizens, the NZ Parliament has decreed that if a date of birth was February 29, in non-leap years the legal birth date date shall be the preceding day, the 28th. This is affirmed in §2(2) of the Land Transport Act 1999.
In France, there is a humorous periodical called La Bougie du Sapeur (The Sapper’s Candle) published every February 29 since 1980. The name is a reference to the sapper Camember, a comic strip character born February 29, 1844 who was created by Georges Colomb in the 1890s.
February 29 Historical Events
- 1712 –February 29 is followed by February 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the Old style.
- 1720 –Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden abdicates in favour of her husband, who becomes King Frederick I.
- 1936 –Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuts on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
- 1940 –Finland initiates Winter War peace negotiations
- 1940 –In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, because of the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden’s Consul General in San Francisco.
- 1956 –U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces to the nation that he is running for a second term.
- 1960 –Family Circus makes its debut.
- 1964 –In Sydney, Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser sets a new world record in the 100-meter freestyle swimming competition (58.9 seconds).
- 1972 –Hank Aaron becomes the first player in the history of Major League Baseball to sign a $200,000 contract.
- 1988 –South African archbishop Desmond Tutu is arrested along with 100 clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town
Who were born on February 29?
- 1692 –John Byrom, English poet (d. 1763)
- 1852 –Frank Gavan Duffy, Australian judge (d. 1936)
- 1896 –Roy Parker, baseball player (d. 1954)
- 1960 –Khaled, Algerian raï musician
- 1968 –Naoko Iijima, Japanese actress
- 1968 –Wendi Peters, British actress
- 1972 –Mike Pollitt, English footballer
- 1980 –Ruben Plaza, Spanish cyclist
- 1988 –Bobby Sanguinetti, American ice hockey player
- 1988 –Scott Golbourne, English footballer
Who died on February 29?
- 1600 –Caspar Hennenberger, German Lutheran pastor, historian and cartographer (b. 1529)
- 1964 –Frank Albertson, American actor (b. 1909)
- 1968 –Lena Blackburne, American baseball player and manager (b. 1886)
- 1972 –Tom Davies, American footballer (b. 1896)
- 1984 –Ludwik Starski, Polish lyricist (b. 1903)
- 1988 –Sidney Harmon, American film producer (b. 1907)
- 1992 –Earl Scheib, American car repainter (b. 1908)
- 1996 –Ralph Rowe, American baseball player and manager (b. 1924)
- 1996 –Shams Pahlavi, Persian princess (b. 1917)
- 2008 –Erik Ortvad, Danish artist (b. 1917)
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