Why Leap Year Matters!

2020 is a leap year which means that we get one extra day. But why does that extra day exist and does an extra day really make that much of a difference? Join Amber and Kendra this week as they explore these questions and more. 

Transcript

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this is Episode 29. Why leap your matters? Welcome to why Blank Matters. We explore how small topics have big impacts. I'm your host, Kendra Clark, and I'm your host, Amber Williams. Hey, Amber. Yes, Kendra. What's a frog's favorite time A year? Um, leap day for another one? Sure, What do athletes where on Leap Day and I don't know jumpsuits. So today we are talking about jumping in the leap day, jump in and delete day family. We're a month early, where exactly? A month early January 29. So a month now you will have an extra day for your year. And four days ago was the Chinese New Year. So that's gonna come up later. And so we have leap year. And no wonder why Why do we added extra extra day to the year every four years? Roughly right? Um, and part of that is because the way time and calendars have traditionally been made is by the Earth's movement around the sun, and they had to add an extra day to make sure that the calendar stayed in line with that movement because it takes Earth 365.242 days toe orbit the sun. So you have this 0.242 which is almost 1/4 of a day, but not quite. Yes. So you have this extra time that slowly as it builds up, you end up with extra days that are unaccounted for. Right? And the Egyptians were the first people to really realize the need for this. Um, they didn't really do much about it, but they noticed it. Okay? It wasn't until it was really Julius Caesar, who was the 1st 1 to implement it. And he had the Roman calendar to kind of build off of. And the Roman calendar had 355 days, 10 days short, 10 day shorter. And it maintained seasons by adding a 22 or 23 day month every second year. And another oddity of the Roman calendar is that the days or the months I'm sorry pretty much consisted of odd amounts of days. So it went back and forth between 29 31 February was the oddball with 28 days. And so even numbers were considered bad luck in the Roman culture during this time. So February was the unlucky month. And this is also the month that they recognize that they would honor, like ones that they had lost or noble people with that throughout their history that had died. So February's feud is an unlucky month in the Roman calendar. Maybe that's why they made it so short. BSO All this obviously sounds very complicated cause you have, like, these days than every other year. You have a whole extra month. And Julius Caesar wanted Thio try. Find a way to simplify this. So he met with his astronomer and they decided to add a day every four years because, like I said, if Earth circulates 365 point to force almost an extra quarter of a day, them 4/4 equals equals one. So one day we'll almost one and then it's over, corrects itself. So going back to the Gregorian calendar, you know, I truly believed before we started this episode that we just do leap your every four years. Well, that's not the case, because every 100 years or so that leap year over cracks and therefore we have to take a day out inside, but every 400 years we have to add another day back it. So, um, 1718 119 100 didn't have leap years, but 2000 did, because that number was divisible by 400. Yeah, because basically, Caesars Caesar's calendar basically still left an annual surplus of 11 minutes and what that man was, the calendar ends up drifting off by a whole day after 128 years and by the 14th century had straight a full 10 days. So it doesn't seem like 11 minutes is it seemed like a lot, but it adds up. And so by 15 seventies, Pope Gregory, the 13th knew that something had to be changed because the dates were all so much. It made it really hard for you when there's to be celebrating holidays, particularly Easter. Yes, and so in 15 82 he institute the Gregorian calendar, which added that rule where it's every four years, except for years evenly divisible by 100 but not 400 into your century years and a lot of implementing the grog Gregorian calendar did have to do with when they were celebrating Easter, and that was part of why they didn't necessarily get a lot of support for it. Initially, some countries implemented it later. Yeah, So there were a lot of Protestant countries that didn't adopt a Gregorian calendar until 17. 75. And a lot of that was due to their suspicion of the pope. If you know anything about the history of the church, the Catholics and the Protestants didn't really get along and there were, like, wars and yes, bloodshed. And so it is understandable that they weren't necessarily like, Oh, yes, we will do as you say, um, in the American colonies actually adopted it in 17. 52. But they had to skip 11 whole days to catch up to two Gregorian calendar, which seems crazy that you like somebody be like, Oh, just, you know, um, be like, OK, so today's the second, but tomorrow's gonna be the 12 so efforting. Some sources say that there were protests and riots, but then a lot of experts also speculate that that was probably over exaggerated. But I could see like how losing 10 days would be pretty upsetting in your calendar. Like all of a sudden, we're 10 days forward, like, how do you pay your bills. How do you do? Is your bread and still the same amount? Like, But you just lost 10 days and the girl born calendars like use pretty much worldwide now, which is also known as like the Roman Catholic calendar. And it originally reckoned the eye the years as a d. So on your Dominion, which is the year of Our Lord or BC before Christ. And so it became like a big thing of like, Why did this, like Super Christian calendar, kind of overtake the entire world, even though not everyone in the world is Christian, obviously, And really, the biggest answer is because one the calendar spread around the world. They're through Christian colonization. So as European countries basically overtook other areas, they took the calendar with them. And the other thing was, as international trade started to increase, it became convenient for everyone to use the same calendar like can you imagine? Even something as simple is like trying to book a flight and like you're in another country and they're on a whole nother different calendar system. And they're not even 2020. There's like a whole nother year, which is still the case in some countries, not not everyone uses the Gregorian calendar, so yeah, well, everybody uses the Gregorian calendar, but most everybody. But there are a lot of countries that also use traditional calendars that are specific to their country or region. Um, especially when it comes to celebrating holidays and things like that. I think that probably the most well known is probably China, like you always hear talk about Chinese New Year, which is usually like in late January early February, and I never really understood why. But when we were doing this research, there's home at how China had a leak here in 2015 on, we had one in 2016. But they're leap years are like a month long, right? Yeah, the other. Their systems really complicated, But the Chinese calendar is what's considered a lunar solar calendar. So the Gregorian is looking mostly at how we rotate about the sun. But the Chinese calendar also looks at the phases of the moon. So months begin on the day of the new moon, which, if you don't know what the new moon is, that's what it's like, blacked out pretty much like you can't see it and years begin on the second or third new moon after the winter solstice. And so it's like a very different way of even building a calendar. And I think if I remember correctly, the year and according to the Chinese calendar right now is yes. So in China, uh, the year is 4718. Um, it's kinda hard to think about. It is it is a There's a little bit higher than what we've got, you know, just just a little bit. But, yes, that they use that traditional calendar, particularly to celebrate their govern, their holidays. So that's why they're New Year's, not when our New Year is, but there are other countries that have similar things as well. So you have South or North Korea. Um, you know, in 1997 they decided that one of the ways they wanted to stress their own independence was by adopting a slightly altered calendar. Those in 1997 Yeah. Oh, okay. And, um, they decided to start this new calendar. So the first year of this new calendar began in 1912 which is the year that their first leader, Kim, to sung was born. And so by that calendar, North Korea, the year is 10 909. So you got 109 on one end, you got 4700 something on the other, so different. It's funny that you mention that because Russia did something similar. So when the Soviets took over Russia during the October Revolution of 1917 their goal was also to change the culture and society and one of the things that they wanted to eliminate. WAAS. The perception that they needed to go to church on Sunday, so they change the structure of their weak, and they made it. So everyone had one day off a week, but those days could all be different. So 1/5 of the country was still working when you had your day off. And this wasn't super convenient if you wanted to spend time with your family, but you had a day off, so the whole point was to disrupt the culture and disrupt the religion. So North Korea is not isolated in this incident, or in this instance of ah, changing a calendar for the sake of changing a culture, I think one of the more complex is in India, so they finally did create a unified national calendar of India in 1957. But they're still different nations and tribes that have their own calendars even outside. So you know you have the Gregorian. You have the unified national calendar, India, and then you have these tribal calendars. And so some of them start their chronology from Krishna's death date, which is 31 02 BC others data firm Vikram's rise to power in the year 57 then 1/3 group go by the Buddhist calendar. They start their chronology from Buddha's data death, which is 5 43 80 So what you learn is that they're all these different years. Um, like all over There's an article in 2018 and they're like while the rest of us air celebrating 2018 in Thailand, they'll be ringing in the year 2561 in Ethiopia will be 2011 and Israel to be 57 78 and on and on to in the traditional calendars tend to like treat leap years in different ways of some are adding a day somewhere, adding a months. Um, like it very so greatly. And it's it's very interesting way We're like outlining this episode, and we're like, Wow, this just got a whole lot more complicated than either of us were intending because we're like, Well, what year is it in this country? What year is it in that country? And I'm like, uh, I didn't account for any of this 12 go, particularly when, as we can get the Chinese calendar, that they're so many rules as to like how it's converted and as I'm like reading over, I'm like, I'm like, This is too much like my brain does not know what is going on here trying to find Oh, because it's very complicated when they have a leap year and when they don't and what all the rules are because it can vary in days, right? Yeah, it can vary, and especially when you're basing it off the moon because the moon has cycles, but there are various is what there's some. Even there's some months where you have two full moons, and so if you're basing it off the lunar cycle, maybe somebody else can explain this to us. What all this means what they're like. The first leap month after a lunar month containing two solar center points is a fake leap month and must be removed. And they're there to leap month of the lunar year than the first leap month after the winter solstice is considered in her calorie like I'm like, I don't know what any of this make e with all of this thing said, You know, last week's episode was about the Space Force and China making it to the moon. It's like I could see why the moon would be really important to China, just culturally, let alone like from a war standpoint. But to like, let's say, they were to, like, hypothetically, create nuclear weapons on the moon. What if they, like, knocked the moon out of alignment? How does how does their calendar change now? But hopefully nobody knocks the moon out of alignment because that would get really messy for everyone. What have I think a lot of is because, like the Gregorian, other calendars are based more on religious stuff. I mean, that they're obviously sciences played into is well, the Chinese calendar is very specifically like science was like Here's the Sun. Here's the moon this hour creating our calendar so that astrology is, like, really important, our astronomy. Wrong chord. It's a common mix up, but I mean, but Leap Year does play a role a little bit in astrology cause. Astrologers believed that people who are born on February 29th have unusual talents, and they believe that it's a day it was significant power. So, um and like they were 20. Knight has a lot of weird Ms of in light traditions in fifth Century Ireland, ST Bridget complain to ST Patrick about women having to wait for men to propose. Oh yes, and there's a movie about this, and he finally gave in and said, If side February 29th as the day that women would be allowed to propose on DDE, Queen Margaret of Scotland continued this tradition, and she actually passed the law in 12 88 saying that woman could pro proposed to any man she fancies. And if the man refused, he would actually to pay a fine Oh, my goodness of either a kiss silk dress or a pair of gloves for the rejected Lee. That's not that great of a fine. And, uh, I mean, I think it was maybe vice talked about how, like, a lot of these traditions are very sexist. So, like in Aurora, Illinois, up until it 1980 on February 29 they would basically have all the different governmental officials stepped down and allow women to take their place for the day. And so it was like, kind of like it was kind of a mockery business. It would allow they would deputize single women specifically and allow them to arrest bachelors for $4. Fine. Um, but it's like the whole premise of like, well, women can actually run the government. But for this one day, you know, we'll let them one day every four years, and everything is the things I tried to pass. Like it was all like, silliness and like, craziness. But, uh, I guess it was kind of but there is a movie based off of the proposing thing. I think it came out like 2010. 2011. Time frame, maybe. Yeah. What? I remember things named Matthew Goodman. I may be wrong. He's like the male character in the okay. And there was a quote where he said he knew it was gonna be a terrible movie, but he wanted to be. It was gonna be film close to home, and he just had him and his wife had just had a new baby. So close toe. Uh, but, uh, what does it mean if you enlist into the military on February 29th? Because that's what I did. They told me after I enlisted it. They're like, Oh, you might have some trouble getting paid because you have listed on Leap Day. And I really wish they had told me that before because I really did have several administrative errors and the only thing we could conclude was that it was because I am listed on February 29th. Yeah, and and their struggles are like riel, especially for people who have birthdays on February 29th. Um, so people who are born on February 20 night considered leap flings is what they call it the labeling and the odds of being a leaping or one and 1461 so they're not very high. I feel like that's a really scary name like leap flings like it feels like something out of, um, like a goblin's child or something like you're gonna get me or like, a leech. Well, maybe that's why. Maybe that's why the Scottish believe that being born on Leap Day was bad luck. And basically, you were Do you for a life of, um, hardship Leap Ling? Um, a little leap ling one, famously, because there's, like, different people that were listed, but only when I knew who it was was actually. Jar, roll Your friend Sarah. Do you like our rule? But, uh, yeah, but one of the things I thought about they've had a lot of people who are born on Leap Day have a lot of issues with any kind of registration or identification. Oh, no, I can only imagine it seems like my problem, but more exaggerated. Yes, very much so. Because a lot of businesses and organizations don't have that date in their system. Some of the examples they gave was one lady tried to register for a sleep study, and her birthday was rejected by the clinics. I t's system the dot The doctor she went to had the correct date. All the different testing centers had different dates um, sometimes they'll have patiently in valid expiration dates on driver's license. Because if your license is good for five years, like here in Georgia, your license expires on your birthday. Um, like, but if you're born on leap year than five years like it doesn't exist, they have, like, running towards some life insurance plans. Oh, no. They use the P person's birthday rather than Catholic, calculating actual years of life. So it looks like you've only been alive 10 years versus 40 or whatever. Did I give them a better insurance right limit? They can't claim their life in show like I don't Yeah, um I think one of the more interesting stories talk about how it gets really hard to like, especially like significant milestones. So, like Kingston yetis, Uh, like your 21st birthday are hard to celebrate if you don't actually have the day like you choose when you're going to celebrate it. Um, but there was a story of one girl. She went Thio bar for her 21st birthday, and the bouncer actually tour up her idea, saying that there wasn't a February 29 0 my goodness is that she was reimbursed to replace her i d and given a free drink. But I mean, like, they're really, uh you know, there's really a lot of issues with having that birthday. Oh, my goodness. Um, and some women will try to either schedule a C section or thio get induced to try to avoid it. And they've even had it because they don't wanna leap Ling. Yeah, pretty much. And they've even had some doctors who would change the date to, like, March 1st or the 28th which is illegal. Um, like there was a store of one way. She's like, 40 something years old, and she had only found out, like, a few years prior that she was born on Leap Day because her birth certificate said March 1st because I thought the doctor changed it to, So OK, so I enlisted for six years on my first enlistment. So theoretically, that could have been a 24 year enlistment. So But on my actual completion of my enlistment, which day do you think they let me? Was I released technically from duty, I guess the first Yeah, it was It was a day extra instead of the 28th which is fine. I stayed in, so it's like it doesn't matter. Um, but they did. The people who have leap day birthdays also have some, like psychological term loyal because hope, goodness in the capital increase feelings of isolation and loneliness and even like small things like, Um, when you were like an elementary school or even sometimes it was some workplaces. They'll have like a calendar with every race birthdays on there, like your birthday's on account and you get left out. There's like, simple things that most of us don't even think about that they sometimes kind of left out of. I'm telling you, enlisting on February 29th made my life really difficult for six years or in certain aspects. But to have that be your birthday, I can. I can understand why they'd have some inner turmoil about Yeah, Another thing about Leap Day is you think you have this whole extra day, and so that's like a whole extra day that's contributing to the economy. You'd think that'd be a good thing, right, like I obviously would, given economic boom every four years. But it's not necessarily that way. Oh, make sure an extra day doesn't necessarily equal extra earnings. So that one article this was written in 2016. They looked at the S and P 500 for the past 10 leap years, early days, and they found that it was up on five days and down on five days. So not really super conclusive. But there are also some issues when you look at payroll and things like that, just think about this before we started recording. And so if you are a salad salary employee, you're not necessarily working for free on February 29th. But you are working for less. So if you make $50,000 a year, then that means that for that year you're gonna be making 73 cents less per day. Well, the other thing with salary workers is they're making less per day. But they're also having to pay for an extra day of gas to get to work if they drive. And so they're having to pay for other expenses as well, even though they're making less for the year, are more or less per pay for the year. Catch hourly workers do make Maur and you do get some latent membership benefits. So if you have ahh, Netflix account what they're going to charge you for an extra day, even though Amber's argument was favors already shorter. So you're getting shortchanged anyway. Well, not in that Netflix instance. But if you're paying rent, then you're getting well forever. Because because if you're paying a monthly subscription right, you're paying this like the same every month, Right? Treatments? True? Yep, But it's after the corporations for February, but not for Leigh Day, because they're getting short change yet. And so because of all this light weirdness, they're like, Well, we could monopolize Lee. They we have this extra day. Why not do something with it? And so there have been proposals to make February 29th a national holiday because there are a lot of workers who feel like they're working unfairly because they're not getting paid anymore to work an extra day right. And they said that it would also add a bigger benefit to a con to the economy, especially if they added some sort of like special, like celebrations or traditions related to it. So there's an episode of 30 Rock called Leap Year Early Day on DDE they have like a big celebration. So they have. Ah, was it was his name. Leap Day. Williams. I think on and he's like, He's like I've arrived that wearing like yellow and blue and there's like festivities everywhere is what this concept of like you can do anything on Leap Day. Um, it kind of makes me think of, um, what's that movie where you can commit any crime? Um, I know some I don't know. It's called the I purge the purge. This is They weren't talking about bad things on. It was more like like the guy who runs the company in the show. Jack Don Icky. Like him and his friends, they have a challenge to see who could make the most money on Leap Day for their businesses so they can have bigger gains. There's, Ah, one character, um, Tracy Jordan, and if you've ever watched the show, he's like an entertainer and not always the best decision maker. And apparently at some point he had accepted gift cards to Benny Hana as a payment for something he had done, and so he had, like $50,000 building on gift cards. But they expired on March 1st on, because it was leap day. He had one data. He he was able to use it. And so they're like trying to eat $50,000 worth of Benny, huh? What is what is Benny? Hana is like one of those, like Japanese restaurants where they cook in front of you. Uh, tracking for $20. You get more food than you can eat like a lot of food. Um, yes. I like making something where it was more celebrated might bring in more money for the economy. And some of that gets even more complicated when you start talking about there Such a thing as leap seconds in today's today society. But we have the Gregorian calendar, but like what sets your time on like your phone or your Smart Watcher computer is all measured by atomic time and atomic time is a complicated was not really complicated, but it's defined. It defines a second as exactly nine trillion, 192,631,770. Oscillations of a cesium 1 33 Adam so want to complicate? That's what I mean, like, what does that mean in English, I don't know. But it is more reliable than just looking strictly at solar time, because there are things that can affect the speed of Earth's rotation, including large weather patterns. Somebody one of the articles I talked about, they talk about how like the earth sometimes you know, just wobble. So it's not always super consistent, but atomic time is. But every now in the end, the atomic time and the solar time get just slightly out of alignment, and they have to add in what's called a leap second. Actually, in June of 2015 they had to add one. And especially when you start talking about like coding and things like that, if you don't get everything timed just right, are done just right. You could have significant impacts. So my co worker like this last week was telling me a story about how his counterpart brought in, um, a clock into the office. And it's either atomic or solar. One of the 21 of like one of the clocks that automatically sets itself Aye, aye, said every day at two o'clock the clock just wigs out and you don't actually know what type of this, So just like spins a lot. And then it's like there was one day where he thought it was like four o'clock in the afternoon when it was still two o'clock and he got all excited and he was getting ready to leave. So he's like We have this really high tech thing, but for like this short period in the day, it's not accurate at all. So I don't know if that's I don't know how accurate that is or what kind of clock it is like, Is it solar or is an atomic? But I was like, Oh, maybe she's broken. I don't know. I don't think they said it was like like cutting edge technology or something like it was a little special. I kind of want to see for myself. So maybe two o'clock tomorrow I'll go see my coworkers clock. Yeah, so things like that, like we don't think about how all those things play into our technology. So Microsoft actually published an article a few years ago. Talking about it was a leak, how to prepare for leap year. And, he said, because for software developers leap year composed particular challenges, they said. Is your code ready for leap year? Uh um, because if you're coding is often doesn't account for that, then you can have the off by one issue, especially when it comes to date range enquiries, which made me want to let go to even really been on, like an events page that picked the dates you want to like Like what's going on in Savannah from the state to this date. Will they have the 29th on their, um, you can also have the potential for exceptions and crashes. Um, and it's not just the 29th that's affected, but also December 31st. And the reason why? Because most systems are coded for 365 days, and all of a sudden you have 366 days. Oh, interesting, Yeah, So some examples of where this is calls an issue was in 2012. The Tom Tom GPS navigation system had above and fell to identify users locations, and it was you to a bug in the coding for Elite Day and 2010 up PlayStation. That network had an outage because their code misidentified 2010 as a leap year, even though it wasn't so. They had the wrong gear as a leap year. But probably the biggest, but probably less known is in 1996. A leap year bug calls process control systems at an aluminum smelting plant in New Zealand to shut down at midnight on December 31st 0 no, because it was a 366 day and it resulted in millions of dollars and damage to the equipment because all of a sudden the temperatures were unregulated for molten metal. So there's one more complication to that. So there's three different types of years that we kind of acknowledged, and one is a tropical year. One is a common year, and the third is sleepier. So a tropical year is roughly 365 days, as we mentioned with 3650.24 a common years, 365 days and a leap years 366 days. However, there's a little bit of variation now. A tropical cool year can also be a solar year, so this could be like interchangeable. A tropical year can vary by up to half a Knauer every single year, so much so that 2032 is going to be a longer year than other years. And 2027 is going to be shorter than like than other years. So just a little bit, Yeah. What we learned as calendars and time are weird way

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I think this is gonna

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be an easy episode and then really easy, but definitely got a little bit complicated. Were like doing her outline. Were like, what? Yeah, and I went on a website to see, um, like, what if we didn't have leaped here? What would today's date be? And without leap year, today would be June 14th 2021. So we'd be, like a full year and 1/2 ahead, which is what I see. Not to mention today's like one of the has been, like cooler. We finally got some cold weather in Savannah, so it being June and cold would be I would love for June to feel like this. I mean, in June, I would like for it to feel like this. No expense. It's hot and human. So with your leap day, take advantage of it. Maybe do something you wouldn't normally do or something you've always wanted to do spend that time doing something. It's not Saturday this year. Hopefully, we should make us a societal. That's hard to say. We should make a societal tradition to stimulate the economy with a leap day or just even. Just do something. Just do something you enjoy. Take advantage of it. Don't just do the same old same. Oh, if you can't, you don't have to Because as Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock said, nothing's impossible on Leap Day. Yeah, huh. But they'll also look out for the old because apparently the last leap year we had a bunch of companies did like 29% off of a bunch of stuff. So look for suddenly. Day deals. Yeah, like the economy, stimulate the economy. I think that's all we have for you today. Um, leap, flings. If you wanna find us, you can find us on Facebook at why Blank matters and on Instagram and Twitter, Why underscore Underscore matters and leave us a review and we will see you again next week. CIA