Leap Year Trivia

According to Time and Date.com, we need to add a day to our Gregorian calendar every four years to align it with the earth's rotation around the sun (otherwise we would lose about 6 hours per year, ultimately turning our seasons upside down), but it's not exactly as simple as dividing by four.

Julius Caesar first introduced the Leap Year, but the only rule was that a year was divisible by four, which led to too many Leap years in the Julian calendar.

Now we do the math like this. A year is a Leap year if:

• The year is evenly divisible by 4;

• If the year can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless;

• The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.

Other calendars handle it differently, such as the Chinese calendar, which has a 13th Leap Month about every three years. The Jewish calendar also adds a thirteenth month periodically, and it's considered a very lucky month.

Despite the science, what always seems to capture our imaginations are birthdays and anniversaries that can come only once every four years. In some countries, such as Ireland, women were traditionally allowed to ask a man to marry her on Feb. 29.

Rapper Ja Rule (1976), singer Dinah Shore (1916-1994), and actor Antonio Sabato jr. (1972) share a birthday today. The chances of being born on a Leap Year are 1 in 1,461.