I thought this would be fun to play around with today Feb 28, 2009 and tomorrow Sunday March 1, 2009.

HAVE FUN! Are there any members here born on February 29????? How old are you this year????

February 29 in recent years

2008 (Friday)

2004 (Sunday)

2000 (Tuesday)

February 29 in the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used today, is a date that occurs only once every four years, in years evenly divisible by 4, such as 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 or 2016 (with the exception of century years not divisible by 400, such as 1900). These are called leap years. February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year, with 306 days remaining until the end of that year. It is also known as bissextile day or Leap Day.

Although the modern calendar counts a year as 365 days, a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, as an extra 24 hours have accumulated, one extra day is added to keep the count coordinated with the sun's apparent position.

It is however slightly inaccurate to calculate an additional 6 hours each year as the time actually taken for the earth to complete a revolution around the sun is in fact 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. To compensate for the 11 minutes difference, a century year that ends in two zeros is not a leap year unless it is also evenly divisible by 400. This means that 1600 and 2000 were leap years, as will be 2400 and 2800, but 1800 and 1900 were not, and neither will 2100 and 2200 be. To correct the remaining error (which amounts to one day every 3236 years) it has been proposed that years evenly divisible by 4,000 should not be leap years; but this rule has not been officially adopted.

The Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years, which is exactly 20871 weeks including 97 leap days. Over this period February 29 falls 13 times on a Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday; 14 times on a Friday or Saturday; and 15 times on a Monday or Wednesday.

The concepts of the leap year and leap day are distinct from the leap second, which results from changes in the Earth's rotational speed.

The leap day was introduced as part of the Julian reform. The day following the Terminalia (23 February) was doubled, forming the so-called "bis sextum"