Leap Day: The Calendar's Rarest Birthday
February 29 exists only in leap years, a calendar correction introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC to account for the extra quarter-day it takes Earth to orbit the Sun. People born on this date — called "leaplings" — celebrate their actual birthday once every four years, creating curious legal complications around age and milestones that vary from country to country.
February 29
What Else Happened on February 29
Odo wasn't supposed to be king. He was a count, not a Carolingian. But when Vikings besieged Paris in 885, he held the city for eleven months while Emperor Char…
Christopher Columbus was stranded on Jamaica's north coast in February 1504, his ships worm-eaten and unseaworthy, his crew starving and on the verge of mutiny.…
Abel Tasman left Batavia on January 29, 1644, commanding three ships with orders to find out if New Guinea connected to the mysterious southern land he'd glimps…
Abel Tasman left Batavia in 1644 to find whether New Guinea connected to the mysterious southern land he'd glimpsed two years earlier. He sailed the entire nort…
The raid on Deerfield happened at 4 a.m. in a February snowstorm. The attackers walked over snowdrifts piled against the town stockade — winter had built them a…
Sweden tried to phase out the Julian calendar gradually — dropping leap days over 40 years instead of jumping forward 11 days at once like everyone else. They s…
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