Hey, I’m Working an Extra Day for the Same Salary This Month! Not Fair!

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February 8th, 2012

Everything you wanted to know about February 29th

February has 29 days since 2012 is a leap year. Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days to circle once around the Sun. If we didn’t add the day on February 29 nearly every 4 years, we would lose almost six hours every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days! In the 16th century the two were out of step by about 10 days and in 1582, Pope Gregory implemented a new Gregorian calendar. This corrected the errors of Julian calendar which added one day every four years. This was too much, however, and the Gregorian corrected this by making all century years, that is those such as 1500 and 1900, not leap years, but if the year was divisible by 400 it would be a leap year. So 2000 was a leap year.

The formula

Simply put, years divisible by 4 are leap years, those divisible by 100 are not but those divisible by 400 are and finally those divisible by 4,000 are not. This should keep everything working nicely for at least another 20,000 years, by which time it will be someone else’s problem!

February

The extra day was allotted to the month of February which is the shortest month in the calendar. So in a Leap Year, February has 29 days. If you were born on “Leap Day” like my daughter-in-law, your birthday is a day of complete confusion: it was yesterday. No it’s today. Are you sure it’s not tomorrow? Daughter-in-law, of course says she only has a birthday every 4 years, and that I should treat her in accordance with her solar age.

Workdays

Here’s an interesting point. I, together with millions of others around the world, will be working an extra day this month, for no extra pay. My boss will profit, no doubt. He will be invoicing out the job or task by the hours worked but he will not be paying me for any extra hours I work. If I normally work 52 weeks of 5 days at 8 hours a day that is 2,080 hours. This year I will work an extra 8 hours with no pay. Not fair.

Women’s day?

According to myth or tradition, Leap Day is the day when women are allowed to propose to men. According to tradition, this practice started in the fifth century. Want to know what day of the week Leap Day will be? It occurs on the same day every 28 years. That means it will be 2040 before Leap Day is on a Wednesday again.

The Guinness Book of Records

Like everything else that is related to the sun or moon there are many related superstitions and myths. And there are also challenges: According to the Guinness Book of Records, one family in the UK has three generations born on February 29th.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 at 5:53 am and is filed under Economy, Employment, Finance, Personal / Internet, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hey, I’m Working an Extra Day for the Same Salary This Month! Not Fair!

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