Mystery of leap years

We all know that February 29th is a leap year. That is a year in which the month of February is 29 days instead of 28 days. As if this year will be 366 days instead of 365 days. This day usually comes after every four years. Why is the month of February so long?

The fact is that for centuries man has been trying to solve this mystery. The ancient Egyptians discovered that the earth did not complete its orbit around the sun in 365 days, but took a little longer. That is why for the last thousand years man has been trying to find out how the seasons can be harmonized and farming and other activities can be done under one system.

The earth's orbit around the sun is not 365 days but a quarter of a day longer. That is 365 days, five hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds. And since the earth revolves around the sun, the change of seasons also depends on the relationship between the earth and the sun. So if you keep 365 days each year, then every year there is a difference of a quarter of a day and the calendar starts to move away from the seasons.

That is why, about 45 BC, Julius Caesar, king of Rome, set up a commission to reform the calendars, deciding that one of every four years should be 366 days. That is why, in the time of Julius Caesar, 90 days were added in 46 BC to better manage the agricultural seasons. This was the year when the year went by 445 days.

Julius Caesar called it the "Last Year of Confusion", but for ordinary people it was a year of chaos. The time of sowing was fixed but everything else went wrong from shipping schedules to legal agreements between people.

After the death of Julius Caesar, instead of adding one day every four years, this increase was made every three years. Thus once again the Roman calendar began to run beyond the seasons. Augustus Caesar, the reformist king who came after Julius Caesar, tried to solve this problem in 8 BC. They skipped three years of leaps, or so to speak, by leaping over them and leaving them behind, and so on until the 16th century. That is why Julius Caesar and Augustus are still remembered in the calendar months. Julius in the form of July and Augustus in the form of August.

In the 16th century, Pope Gregory tried to solve this problem by changing the calendar. He set up a commission to determine that there would be 97 leap years instead of 100 leap years every 400 years. Before that there was a leap year every four years from 45 BC to the 16th century.

There are also benefits to making a leap year. For example, we now know that the longest day of the year will always be June 21, the shortest day will be December 21, and the two equal days will be March 21 and September 21. Therefore, due to the leap year, the manipulation of the sun and the earth gets a sequence and chaos does not spread. If the leap year had not been changed, there would have been a clear difference every 400 years. Now the seasons have certainly adapted to human beings to grow crops and crops, and this is unlikely to change for thousands of years.

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