Leap Year

It is a leap year. If you were aware of this, what you may not know is that there are a tonne of various superstitions and traditions surrounding the year mostly linked with love and bad luck.

Why does February get an extra day in this year that takes place every four years. It is because of Earth's rotation. 

The reason we have leap years is because the Earth’s orbit is not exactly 365 days long thereby resulting in what's known as 'drift'.

By all the calculations the rotation actually takes approximately 365.2422 days for our moving planet to complete one revolution around the sun. This is straightforwardly a tremendous reality of earth science.

That definitely means each typical 365-day year ends a quarter-day short of undeniably the complete orbit.

Therefore, leap years essentially ensure that our calendars align with the Earth’s orbit and line up with equinoxes and solstices.

There are two occasions recorded in history, when the date of 30th February was added. First, when Finland was a part of Sweden. It was during the 1700s. 

Then Sweden decided that it would shift from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The year 1700 should have been a leap year in the Julian calendar, but the leap year was not celebrated in Sweden.

There was a glitch and the years 1704, and 1708 were considered leap years. Because of this, the country lagged behind in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. 

This country thought that it would return to the Julian calendar. In Sweden, the date was fixed at 30 February 1712 because the Julian calendar was adopted in that year and 2 leap days were added.

In 1753, Sweden again moved towards the Gregorian calendar, but the surprising thing was that year, a correction of 11 days was considered and March 1 was fixed directly after February 17. Thus, people felt that 11 days of their lives were stolen. 

The second occasion of February 30 in history is seen according to the Soviet Revolutionary calendar.

The Soviet Union implemented a revolutionary calendar in 1929, which was for 1930–31 and included the date of February 30. 

For this reason, this is also a very famous incident in history. In this calendar there used to be weeks of 5 days within a month. 

There used to be 30 days in every working month. The remaining 5-6 days were taken up as leave without a month.