| Leap Year Marylyn Mitchell |
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1960 strange things will happen! Gray haired ladies will be eligible for sweet-sixteen parties. There will be fourteen-year-old gr andf athers, and four-year-old brides.
Timid bachelors, according to the popular legend, will spend a lot of time hiding in caves. In short, 1960 is a Leap Year, the one year in four with an extra day at the end of February. Scientifically, the extra day is to give the world a chance to catch up with the extra five hours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-six seconds that exceeds the normal year of three hundred and sixty-five days. Historically, the figure goes back to the days of ancient 'Egypt'. The astronomers noticed, by the stars, that the calendar seemed to be losing time. Since it was very important to know the exact date that the 'Nile' would overflow, they added one day every fourth year, not at the end of February as we do, but between February twenty-fourth and February the twenty-fifth. Julius Caesar borrowed this Egyptian system and renamed it, the 'Julian Calendar'. This system worked for a while, but it soon began to get out of line again with the stars. In 1582 Pope Gregory eliminated all days between October fourth and October fifteenth of that year, and decreed that only the 'hundreds' years divisible by four hundred would be Leap Year. He called this new system, 'The Gregorian Calendar'. England and her colonies did not adopt this new system until 1752. Today everyone follows this calendar, adding a February twenty-ninth to all years divisible by four. But every century year is not a Leap Year, unless it can be divided by four hundred. The origins of the traditional rights of women to propose marriage in Leap Year are obscure. The Roman name for Leap Year was 'Bissextile Year', which was misinterpreted to mean, 'Two Sexes' Year' and then that was interpreted as giving women a man's privilege of proposing during these years. However, this idea actually found it's way into the law books of Scotland, France, Genoa and Florence, and was a universally accepted unwritten law in England. So in 1960 eligible young men, you had better be on your guard! |