How Do Leap Years Work?
To keep our calendar year aligned with the astronomical solar year (which is approximately 365.2422 days), an extra day (February 29) is added to the calendar every four years. The rules for leap years under the Gregorian calendar are:
- The year must be evenly divisible by 4.
- If the year is evenly divisible by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless...
- The year is also evenly divisible by 400. E.g., 2000 was a leap year, but 1900 and 2100 are not.
Calendar Trivia:
- • Doomsday Algorithm: A method designed by mathematician John Conway to calculate the weekday of any date in your head.
- • Missing Days: To correct the solar offset, October 5-14, 1582 never existed in Catholic European countries.
- • ISO Week Numbers: ISO 8601 specifies that the first week of a year is the week containing the first Thursday.