Making the Hurdle

My pop was born on February 29 making him a leap year baby.  As a consequence he only had a birthday every four years.  The inside family joke was that he didn’t technically attain adulthood until 80 years of age.  In any event – what’s the story behind this calendar oddity?  Why an extra day every four years – and why February? 

We happen to owe this to the Egyptian civilization that was among the first to conclude that the calendar year and solar years did not completely mesh.   That is because it takes the earth slightly more than 365 days to circumnavigate the sun.  365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, to be exact.  If you neglected this circumstance for 100 years our calendar would be off by roughly 24 days.  The answer to this was to periodically add an extra day to solve this conundrum. 

It was the Romans that first designated February 29 as leap day – but the 16^th century Gregorian calendar came up with a more precise solution.  This identified February 29^th at leap day only in those years divisible by four – 2020, 2024, etc. 

The solution persists to modern time.