WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -
However, there is one exception to the leap year rule involving century years, like the year 1900. Since the usual year is slightly less than 365.25 days long, adding an extra day every 4 years results in about 3 extra days being added over a period of 400 years.
For this reason, only 1 out of every 4-century years is considered as a leap year. Century years are only considered leap years if they are evenly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1700, 1800, 1900 were not leap years, and 2100 will not be a leap year. But 1600 and 2000 were leap years, because those year numbers are evenly divisible by 400.
Leap Day facts and figures:
* Chance of being born on leap day: about 1 in 1,500.
* 187,000 people in U.S. and 4 million people in the world born on Leap Day.
* Biggest Leap Day festival in the U.S. takes place in Anthony, Texas and New Mexico (it’s a border town). Almost 10,000 “Leapers” attended the last year’s festival in 2004.
* Average length of the solar year: 365.242216 days give or take a fraction of a second.
* The Gregorian calendar has a 400 year long cycle and the calendars have the same week days–Feb. 29, 2008 is a Friday and Feb. 29, 2408 is a Friday.
* The Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years during those 400 years.
* The longest time between two leap years is 8 years. Last time was between 1896 and 1904. The next time will be between 2096 and 2104.
Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology, www.infoplease.com, www.leapyearcapital.com, www.timeanddate.com
