Interesting Leap Year Facts

2012 is a Leap Year, which means we're going to have an extra day in February to enjoy. So why do we need to add this day every four years? Well, when the Earth makes its annual trip around the sun, it doesn't take exactly 365 days. It's a little more like 365 and 1/4 days. Because of this, every four years our calendar falls a day behind the solar year. To remedy this, we catch ourselves up by adding an extra day to the month of February every four years. If we didn't, in 100 years the solar year and calendar year would be 25 days apart. We can't have that, or eventually our seasons would not match up with the months we currently associate them with. Egyptians were the first people to add a leap day every four years. However, the Romans were the first to choose February 29th as the official date. (www.womens-place.com)