This year, February had 28 days.
February this year had 28 days, rather than the usual 29. It’s a phenomenon that happens every five or six years, but what causes it?
What is Leap Year?
Leap years are a special kind of year that occurs every four years and adds an extra day to February. The extra day was added to make up for the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the sun is not perfectly 365 days long. A full orbit around the sun takes 365.25 days, which means we have to add an extra day every four years to make up for it.
Why does February have 28 days?
“The Gregorian calendar, in use since 1582, contains 12 months,” said Dr Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr Hanke has spent his career studying calendars and helped create new ones for Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. “It also has a leap month – February – once every four years.” He said adding an extra day into February every four years makes up for the fact that our calendar isn’t perfectly aligned with our planet’s orbit around the sun.
“If you don’t add a leap month at regular intervals, then eventually you’ll be out of sync with nature,” he said.
“When this happens – and it will happen eventually – you get seasons occurring at times when they shouldn’t.”
But some people think we should change our calendar so that there are only 12 months in a year instead of 13 (like many Islamic calendars). They say doing this would help keep our calendars more in line with nature.
Dr Hanke thinks that would be a bad idea because it would throw off all sorts of things like holidays and paychecks.
He also says changing our calendar would be hard because people wouldn’t want to give up their holidays or paychecks just because their calendars aren’t perfectly aligned with nature anymore.
