2012 is a leap year
From the Sun's print edition:
Baltimore Sun librarian Paul McCardell offers this post:
Happy New Year! We will have an extra day this year because 2012 is a leap year. February will have 29 days instead of 28 and the year will have 366 days instead of 365.
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, leap years are necessary because the length of a year is 365.242 days, so an extra day is added, in most cases, every four years and on years that are evenly divisible by four.
Also, check out Joe Burris' article on a proposal by two Hopkins professors to overhaul the calendar so the same dates fall on the same days year after year. What do you think?
A toast to new beginnings and hopefully a year filled with nice weather.
Comments
The statement "every four years and on years that are evenly divisible by four" is inaccurate, along with being ungrammatical. More accurate would be to say "an extra day is added in years evenly divisible by four except for those years evenly divisible by 100 but not by 400. For example, 1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was."
Posted by: Nitpicker | January 1, 2012 10:29 PM
I like that new calendar proposal. Thanks for pointing it out.
Posted by: Perry | January 2, 2012 7:57 AM
With all the details today, it's easy to overlook quite a bit. Good example, I didn't realize we were in a leap year. Thanks for the reminder. @ nitpicker - Happy Nit Picky New year at ya.......
Posted by: ruth | January 2, 2012 9:47 AM