February 29th Brain Teaser (And Leap Year Fun Facts)
See if you can get this one: If your baby was born on February 29, 2016 and you decided to celebrate his or her birthday 365 days later, what date would you have celebrated their 1st birthday? (answer below)
As you know, February 29th only happens once every 4 years. Leap years are necessary because the actual length of a year is 365.242 days, not 365 days. So every 4 years, to make up the difference, we add a day.
Experts say February 29th will be one of the biggest days of the year for wedding proposals because it’s a Leap Year and “acceptable for women to ask men to marry.” St. Brigid of Kildare started the Leap Year proposals after she convinced St. Patrick that on February 29th women should be able to propose to their men. Brigid complained to Patrick that women had to wait far too long for men to propose. The legend says that St. Patrick decreed that women could propose on this one day in February during the leap year. Just a taste of what it was like in the 500’s.
Wait! There’s more! Some say that if you’re a salaried employee, then your employer gets a free day of work from you every four years because they’re not paying anything more than in non-leap years. Some employers would argue that you work one less day in three of the four years. Hourly employees may be getting an extra day’s pay for an extra day’s work if they work throughout the year and the leap day falls on a weekday.
In four years you will have forgotten about reading this so we’ll post it again.
Brain teaser answer: February 28, 2017
