What Is The Point Of A Leap Year?

Dividing time up into an acceptable calendar is something that we take for granted now but this was a real challenge for ancient people. The Egyptians, five thousand years ago, divided each year into twelve different moths and each month was divided into a different number of days. They took each year to be 365 days, but the rotation of the Earth around the Sun actually takes 365 and a quarter days. That meant that every four years, an extra day occurred.

This day was added in to every fourth year, which was called a leap year, and was added to the shortest month of the year – February. In a leap year, February has 29 days instead of the usual 28.

The point of a leap year is therefore convenience, a way of matching up the calendar year and the solar year so that we keep to time, but don't notice the extra day.