It’s February 29th 2008 and it’s Leap Year!! What does that mean? Here is the explanation from Wikipedia:

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month!!) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

Watch this video that gives some interesting facts about leap year:

Did you know that the town of Anthony, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, is the self proclaimed Leap Year Capital of the World? A resident of Anthony, Mary Ann Brown, whose birthday is Feb. 29, persuaded the governors of both states to declare it so in 1988.

Emperor Julius Caesar added a Leap Day occurring every four years to the calendar he created which until then calendars were a complete mess. There are 1,461 days in each four year period, so one has 1 in 1,461 chance to be born on February 29th. It’s been reported that there are people in labor who will do anything (barring anything dangerous) to have their baby be born on this day 🙂 Read more about that here. For those of you who have a birthday today…enjoy as the next official time is in four years!