Volume 18 , Issue 9

1896 History of Leap Year

The St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, dated 12 January 1896, Sunday, page 19, reported on "The History of Leap Year.

Found on Newspapers.com

1896 was one of those years when twenty-nine days were accredited to February, and was therefore called leap year. How this name originated was not known, but several theories had been advanced, one of which seemed possible enough back then. The best one of these suggests that it was so named on account of the blank which occurs during every fourth year in the Roman calendar, in which eery day excepting the 29th of February was celebrated as the anniversary of some saint. Thus the year that contained the day that was skipped, or "Leaped over," without any anniversary, right have been called a "Leap year."

no matter from what source the name sprung, every one had the same idea brought to their minds when they hear the words spoken, for this was the year when a privilege of a very peculiar nature was conferred upon certain interesting persons. How this privilege came to be allowed them was not known, but it was possible that the necessity of allowing it had been felt, and, in anticipation of these days of the "new women," it was thought better to limit their power to every fourth year rather than every year. The privilege was that of permitting women to woo men.

The first European division of the year known is Romulus' and was the one that our division was based upon. It had ten months, with a total length of 304 days. This error of sixty-one days was not corrected until Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, came to the throne. He added two more months and called them January and February. This, of course, caused more confusion and did not correct the error to any great extent, as the year was still not long enough, Not until Julius Caesar's reign was the year made long enough, and then Caesar made a year with only 500 days in it, which caused so much trouble that the year 46 BC was called the "Year of confusion." The attempt to correct this fault bought about "Leap year."

Caesar introduced the varying number of days in February, giving that month 29 days ordinarily and 30 days every fourth year. This was all right until Augustus Caesar got in power and then, as July, the month named after Julius had more days in it than August, his month, he cut one day off of February and added it to August, giving the months 30 and 31 days alternatively.

This arrangement worked very well, but as calculations had only been figured in fractions of a day, a slight error was still on hand, which by the time of Pope Gregory XIII., in 1582, had amounted to ten days, In that year the Pope decreed that the 5th of October should be the 15th and this was adopted by all countries except Russia, which still cringed tot he old style.

The errors of the past having been corrected, Gregory set about to prevent a recurrence, and, as it was only equal to about three days in four centuries, he decreed that of the last years of the century, only those that are divisible by 400 are leap years. So that 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not leap years. Thus only every fourth centurial year, just as only every fourth ordinary year, is a leap year.

The year's division back then was exactly as it was after Gregory had corrected it. But there still remained a slight error. The amount was only one day in 3,900 years, and so it was proposed to make the year 4000, otherwise a leap year, a common year. After that the length of the year would so exactly correspond with the time of the earth's revolution that it would not differ more than one day in a thousand centuries, so for some little time, at least, the number of privileged years would remain as at present.

A glance over the history of leap year showed what a vast amount of head work was done to bring the world to its present place in 1896, and, of course, all of those persons who possessed any privilege by virtue of this being a leap year should at once take complete advantage of that which had been attained at such a great cost.
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