Why Do We Have Leap Year?

The standard calendar which now serves as the standard calendar for civil use throughout the world, has both common years and leap years and is called The Gregorian calendar.

A common year has 365 days and a leap year 366 days, with the extra— or intercalary— day designated as February 29.

The Gregorian calendar is closely based on the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC and was further refined  by Pope Gregory XIII In 1582.

A leap year occurs every four years to help synchronize the calendar year with the solar year, or the length of time it takes to complete the Earth’s orbit around the sun, which is about 365 days and a quarter of a day.

The length of the solar year, however, is slightly less than 365¼ days-by about 11 minutes. To compensate for this discrepancy, the leap year is omitted three times every four hundred years.

In other words, a century year cannot be a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years.

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