Leap year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In order to get a closer approximation, it was decided to have a leap day 97 years out of 400 rather than once every 4 years. To implement the model, it was provided that years divisible by 100 would be leap years only if they were divisible by 400 as well.

Highlighted by harryli

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, so a leap year has an extra month, often called an embolismic month after the Greek word for it.

Highlighted by harryli

leap month is added according to a complicated rule, which ensures that month 11 is always the month that contains the northern winter solstice

Highlighted by harryli

Marriage proposal

There is a tradition, said to go back to Saint Patrick and Brigid of Kildare in 5th century Ireland, but apparently not attested before the 19th century, whereby women may make marriage proposals only in leap years.

Supposedly (but disputed), in a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), fines were levied if the proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown, in order to soften the blow.^[7] Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to 29 February.

Others regard these supposed folk traditions as unhistorical.^[8]

In Greece, it is believed that getting married in a leap year is bad luck for the couple. Thus, mainly in the middle of the past century, couples avoided setting a marriage date in a leap year.

1908 postcard

1908 postcard

Highlighted by skarkar