I no longer live in the area, and I am looking for a local geocacher to adopt this cache. Please message me if you are interested.
It's that day. That day that only happens once every four years (more or less). Leap Year Day!
This cache has room for only a few small trade items. I have added some decorations to keep with the theme of Leap Year Day. This cache is just a traditional, and should be pretty easy to find.
The rest of this cache description does not have anything to do with the cache itself, but is an interesting read about leap years.
Yes, 2020 was an intercalcary year, a bissextile year, or just a leap year, if you prefer. But the story of why we have them is quite interesting...
Like many of our modern customs, it started with the Romans. The original Roman calendar was based on the position of the sun, and seems to have consisted of ten months plus a winter "period" of an ill-defined length. To help reconcile their calendar dates with the solar dates, they used a 23-day long month known as Mercedonius. Imagine how complicated our calendar would be with a leap MONTH!
However, the decision of how often to observe Mercedonius fell to the whims of the consuls. By the time Julius Caesar came to power, the solar year and the Roman year were completely out of whack. While we think of our calendar as inspired by Caesar, he actually got the idea of having 365 days in a year from the Egyptians. There was just one small problem; it takes the Earth 365.2421 days to complete it's orbit. To account for this discrepancy, Caesar (acting on an idea from a philosopher named Sosigenes) decided to add one extra day every fourth year. And on January 1st, 45 BC, the Julian Calendar was put into effect.
There was just one small problem; the calendar still wasn't quite right, overestimating the solar year by 11 minutes. This might not sound like a big deal, but by the time Pope Gregory XIII was in charge, Easter was about ten days off from where it should be. But an Italian scientist named Aloysus Lilius had the idea of correcting this error by modifying the pattern of leap years to not include a leap year on centurial years not evenly divisible by 400 (i.e. 1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was). This calendar is what we call the Gregorian calendar, and it is still in use today.
Even now, our calendar still isn't perfect (off by approximately 26 seconds per year). By 4909, our calendar will be off by one full day. But we've got plenty of time to figure out a solution for that.
Leap Year Day is observed for more than just keeping our calendar synchronized. It has often been associated with romance and marriage proposals, and in some places it is traditional for a woman to propose marriage to a man on a leap day. In Greece, though, the date is considered very unlucky, and many couples will avoid marrying in a leap year.
Also, if you were born on a leap year day, congratulations! You are part of an exclusive club of individuals known as leaplings, leapers, or 29'ers. You also qualify for membership into the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies (HSLYDB).