Happy Leap Day! With an additional 24 hours on our hands this week, we took a few minutes to research Leap Year – and we found some fun facts that will get you jumpin’ for joy.
Why Leap Year?
Earth doesn’t take precisely 365 days to orbit the sun – it takes 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, which gives us an extra six hours a year. It may not seem like much, if we piled those excess hours up over 100 years, our calendar would be off by 24 days. We would fall out of sync astrologically and before we knew it, we’d be seeing winter-like conditions in July and have warm, sunny Decembers.
Who Started It?
Roman emperor Julius Caesar suggested the Leap Day quadrennial trend all the way back in 45 B.C.
Leap Day Babies
Babies who enter the world on Feb. 29 are called “leapers,” “leaplings” or “leapsters” and they typically celebrate their birthdays Feb. 28 or March 1 (or both!).
The odds of being born Feb. 29 are 1 in 1,461. There are approximately 4 million leapsters; of note: motivational speaker Tony Robbins, late TV personality Dinah Shore, and actors Dennis Farina and Antonio Sabato, Jr.
Customs
On Leap Day, it is customary for women to take a leap of faith – by proposing! On Feb. 29, leaping ladies shed traditional courtship roles and pop the question to their astonished amors.
Deals!
Hop to it for Leap Day savings! You can bet that parks, hotels, restaurants and retailers will leap at the chance to entice consumers with springin’ specials – check out TIME’s Top 10 Leap Day Deals.
How Will You Spend Leap Day?
No matter how you decide to wile away your bonus day, today is your day of opportunity. So spend it well.
At Angel MedFlight, we love Leap Year because it means we have another entire day that we can devote to helping patients, families and case managers. We will spend this 24 hours flying patients around the country to reach the treatment they need. Today and every day, we jump at the chance to make a lifesaving difference in patients’ lives.
