What are the important events that happened on February 29? Here are historical events, facts, and some myths about this day.
February 29: Facts & Myths About This Day
February 29 is the 60th day of the year 2024 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 306 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Thursday.
Under the Julian calendar, this day is February 16, 2024 – a Thursday. Both day of the week are the same but did you notice the difference with the Gregorian calendar?
When this day started, 474,768 hours has elapsed since midnight of January 1, 1970 – the Unix epoch.
Strange as it may, if we name this day after a polygon then it will be called ‘hexacontagon’ day.
Pisces is the zodiac sign of a person born on this day. Amethyst is the modern birthstone for this month. Bloodstone is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 335 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
The ancient Maya civilization believes that the end of the world will happen on December 21, 2012. There are now 4,087 days since this fabled cataclysmic event.
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A person who is born on February 29 may be called a “leapling” or a “leap year baby”. In non-leap years, they typically celebrate their birthday on either February 28 or March 1.
February 29: This Day In History
February 29, known as a leap day in the Gregorian calendar, is a date that occurs in most years that are evenly divisible by 4, such as 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 do not contain a leap day, with the exception of years that are evenly divisible by 400, which do contain a leap day; thus 1900 did not contain a leap day while 2000 did. Years containing a leap day are called leap years. February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year, with 306 days remaining until the end of that year.
Leap years
Although most years of the modern calendar have 365 days, a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, during which an extra 24 hours have accumulated, one extra day is added to keep the count coordinated with the sun’s apparent position.
It is, however, slightly inaccurate to calculate an additional 6 hours each year. A better approximation, derived from the Alfonsine tables, is that the Earth takes a complete revolution around the sun in 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds. To compensate for the difference, an end-of-century year is not a leap year unless it is also exactly divisible by 400. This means that the years 1600 and 2000 were leap years, as will be 2400 and 2800, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not, nor will be 2100, 2200 and 2300.
The Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years, which is exactly 20,871 weeks including 97 leap days. Over this period, February 29 falls 13 times on a Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday; 14 times on a Friday or Saturday; and 15 times on a Monday or Wednesday.
The concepts of the leap year and leap day are distinct from the leap second, which results from changes in the Earth’s rotational speed.
The leap day was introduced as part of the Julian reform. The day following the Terminalia (February 23) was doubled, forming the “bis sextum”—literally ‘double sixth', since February 24 was 'the sixth day before the Kalends of March’using Roman inclusive counting (March 1 was the 'first day'). Although exceptions exist, the first day of the bis sextum (February 24) was usually regarded as the intercalated or “bissextile” day since the third century. February 29 came to be regarded as the leap day when the Roman system of numbering days was replaced by sequential numbering in the late Middle Ages.
An English law of 1256 decreed that in leap years, the leap day and the day before (February 25 & 24) are to be reckoned as one day for the purpose of calculating when a full year had passed. In England and Wales a person born on February 29 legally reaches the age of 18 or 21 on February 28 of the relevant year. In the European Union, February 29 officially became the leap day only in 2000.
In cases of New Zealand citizens, the NZ Parliament has decreed that if a date of birth was February 29, in non-leap years the legal birth date date shall be the preceding day, the 28th. This is affirmed in §2(2) of the Land Transport Act 1999.
In France, there is a humorous periodical called La Bougie du Sapeur (The Sapper’s Candle) published every February 29 since 1980. The name is a reference to the sapper Camember, a comic strip character born February 29, 1844 who was created by Georges Colomb in the 1890s.
February 29 Historical Events
- 1704 –Queen Anne’s War: French forces and Native Americans stage a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing 56 villagers and taking more than 100 captive.
- 1720 –Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden abdicates in favour of her husband, who becomes King Frederick I.
- 1892 –St. Petersburg, Florida is incorporated.
- 1936 –Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuts on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
- 1940 –Finland initiates Winter War peace negotiations
- 1940 –For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award.
- 1956 –U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces to the nation that he is running for a second term.
- 1972 –Vietnam War: Vietnamization – South Korea withdraws 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from Vietnam.
- 1988 –South African archbishop Desmond Tutu is arrested along with 100 clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town
- 1988 –Svend Robinson becomes the first member of the Canadian House of Commons to come out as gay.
Who were born on February 29?
- 1852 –George Maximilianovich, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg, Russian nobleman (d. 1912)
- 1908 –Dee Brown, American writer (d. 2002)
- 1928 –Joss Ackland, English actor
- 1928 –Tempest Storm, American burlesque performer
- 1932 –Jaguar, Brazilian cartoonist
- 1936 –Jack Lousma, American astronaut
- 1944 –Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, Italian illustrator
- 1952 –Raisa Smetanina, Russian cross-country skier
- 1964 –Lyndon Byers, Canadian hockey player and Boston radio personality
- 1968 –Chucky Brown, American basketball player
Who died on February 29?
- 1600 –Caspar Hennenberger, German Lutheran pastor, historian and cartographer (b. 1529)
- 1740 –Pietro Ottoboni, Italian cardinal (b. 1667)
- 1868 –Ludwig I of Bavaria (b. 1786)
- 1944 –Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, President of Finland (b. 1861)
- 1964 –Frank Albertson, American actor (b. 1909)
- 1980 –Gil Elvgren, American artist (b. 1914)
- 1988 –Sidney Harmon, American film producer (b. 1907)
- 1996 –Ralph Rowe, American baseball player and manager (b. 1924)
- 1996 –Shams Pahlavi, Persian princess (b. 1917)
- 2004 –Kagamisato Kiyoji, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 42nd Yokozuna (b. 1923)
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