Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1900 — Wh[?] This Is Not a Leap Year. [ARTICLE]

Wh[?] This Is Not a Leap Year.

Yesterday ought to have been the 29th day of February—but it wasn’t. In other words, a leap due along about now, in the ordinary run of things but this time it fails to connect. And this, briefly stated, is the reason: The astronomical year is very nearly exactly 365 days and 6 hours in length. To keep the calendar year running along in about the same track as the astronomical year, each calendar year has 365 days, and to account for the extra 6 hours, every fourth yeur has 29 days in February and is a le p year. However as the fractional day of the astronomical year is not. quite six hours it is found that adding one day in ever four years is a little more than is needed to keep even. This excess amounts to almost exactly three days in 400 years. Therefore, to keep even, •three leap years are skipped in every four hundred years. And these skips come with the century years, that is the years that end the centuries:' As 1700, 1800 and 1900. But one century year in every four must be a leap year, and the year 2000 will be one. The rule for locating any ordinary leap year, is that any year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year; as 1888, 1892 1896 etc. But when it comes to the century years they must be exactly divisible by 400 to be leap years. ' As*the years, 1200, 1600 and 2000. Our last leap year was 1896 and our next one will be 1904. —-