Venue:
BUZZ FACTORY, SUNRIDGE VILLAGE
29th February 2016
Start time :18 : 00
End time : 20 : 00
Children welcome
All costs for your own account.
A Leap Year is a year that has 366 days, instead of the normal 365 days. Leap years usually happen every four years. The first leap year was established in 46 BC by Julius Ceasar, the dictator of Rome.
A Leap Day, February 29, is added to the calendar in Leap Years. This extra (intercalary) day makes the year 366 days long – and not 365 days, like a common (normal) year. Leap Years occur nearly every 4 years in our modern Gregorian Calendar.
Why do we need these extra days?
The reason is that Earth takes approximately 365.25 days to orbit around the sun every year. It’s that .25 that creates the need for a leap year every four years.
During non-leap years akacommon years – like 2014 – the calendar doesn’t take into account that extra quarter of a day actually required by Earth to complete a single orbit around the sun. In essence, the calendar year, which is a human artifact, is faster than the actual solar year, or year as defined by our planet’s motion through space.
Over time and without correction, the calendar year would drift away from the solar year and the drift would add up quickly. For example, without correction the calendar year would be off by about 1 day after 4 years. It’d be off by about 25 days after 100 years. You can see that, if even more time were to pass without the leap year as a calendar correction, eventually July would be a winter month in the Northern Hemisphere.
During leap years, a leap day is added to the calendar to slow down and synchronize the calendar year with the seasons. Leap days were first added to the Julian Calendar in 46 B.C.by Julius Cesar at the advice of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer.
Reference:
http://earthsky.org/human-world/why-do-we-need-leap-years