WHAT A LEAP!
Sweden had an unusual day in history-February 30, 1712! it was because Sweden's calendar then was not synchronised with either the Julian or the Gregorian calendar. Sweden"s calendar was finally converted to the Gregorian system in 1753 with a 10-day correction by leaping from February 17 to March 1.
In order to catch up with the solar cycle, the practice of adding one extra day every 4 years(366 days instead of 365) was first introduced in 45 BC by the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar. The Julian calendar which remained in use in some countries until as late as the 20th century had thus taken into account the yearly shortfall of 6 hours.
A year that is evenly divisible by 4 is a leap year. But century years are not leap years unless they can be evenly divided by 400. This is because the exact period of 365.242 days has been rounded off to 365.25 for convenient measurement. However, over many centuries the difference between the approximate value (0.25 day) which is about 11 minutes, accumulates significantly. To compensate for this, the leap year is omitted three times every 400 years. Thus 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years but 1600 and 2000 were.
This change was incorporated in the Gregorian calendar that we use today which is actually a modified version of the Julian calendar.
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें