Why do we leap day? We remind you (so you can forget for another 4 years)
Nearly every four years, the Gregorian calendar — which is used in the majority of countries around the world — gets an extra day: February 29.
For some people, leap day means frog jokes and extravagant birthday parties. For many, it may conjure memories of the 2010 rom-com Leap Year, which harkens back to the Irish tradition by which women can propose to men on that one day. And others likely see it merely as a funny quirk in the calendar, or just another Thursday.
Leap day means several different things to Alexander Boxer, a data scientist and the author of A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for Our Destiny in Data.
Literally speaking, he says, it's an "awkward calendar hack" aimed at making up for the fact that a year isn't a flat number of days, but more like 365 and a quarter. But there's more to it than that.
"I think the significance of the leap year is that it's a great reminder that the universe is really good at defying our attempts to devise nice and pretty and aesthetically pleasing systems to fit it in," he told NPR's Morning Edition.
Boxer says
