Ever wonder why there are only 28 days in February? You probably think it’s because it’s cold and rainy, with changeable weather that not many people like and they want to get it over with. Everyone awaits March, the month that signals spring and brings summer a bit closer.
February has only 28 days, except once in four years. The “leap year” is the one in four during which an extra day is added to February.
But how did these date-related changes start?
Back in the 8th century, calendars were unlike ours. For one thing, there were only ten months, not twelve. For another, the calendar year was officially launched in March, in order to align with the onset of agricultural practices.
This 10-month calendar is called the “Romulus calendar.” According to Wikipedia, the calendar looked like this:
Martius: 31 days
Aprilius: 30 days
Maius: 31 days
Junius: 30 days
Quintilis: 31 days
Sextilis: 30 days
September: 30 days
October: 31 days
November: 30 days
December: 30 days
As you can see, January and February were later additions. The calendar only bothered to begin the count with spring, because winter was considered a more insignificant period of the year. March was considered the beginning of the year, in part because the turning of the seasons at the equinox happens in that month.
Counting these ten months tells you that you’re 61 days short of a full year as we know it today. It wasn’t until King Numa came along around 713 BC and said what everyone else was most likely thinking, “This doesn’t make any sense. We need to put a name to this anonymous period.”
And with that royal pronouncement, January and February were born. King Numa meant for January to have 29 days and February 28.
As a result, the new 355-day year had the following structure:
Martius: 31 days
Aprilius: 29 days
Maius: 31 days
Iunius: 29 days
Quintilis: 31 days
Sextilis: 29 days
September: 29 days
October: 31 days
November: 29 days
December: 29 days
Ianuarius: 29 days
Februarius: 28 days
Once again, however, this turned out to be a flawed attempt at creating a functional, accurate calendar. Using this system of counting the days in each month meant that eventually the calendar would be severely misaligned with the actual weather and lunar positions, and it would be harvest time in real life – but only spring in the Numa calendar.
The Romans had an idea for solving this issue and accounting for this misalignment: simply add a leap month of 27 days called Mercedonius.
Unfortunately (as you might have guessed) this caused even more trouble, especially when it was abused by those in power for their benefit. It wasn’t until Caesar’s time that we got it all right, around 44 BC.
Julius Caesar created a calendar based on the sun’s position, and increased the year’s duration to 365 days rather than 355.
The ten additional days were assigned as follows: January, August, and December got two extra days; April, June, September, and November got an extra day. Running out of days, February remained the shortest month with only 28 days. Unless it’s a leap year, then it has 29.
This is known as the Julian calendar and it was finalized during the time of Augustus, Caesar’s successor.
The Gregorian (or Western) calendar was introduced in 1852 and it’s the one most widely used around the world. It’s an upgraded version of the Julian Calendar.
What do you do if you were born on a leap year on February 29th?
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