There are less than two weeks left in February, and time is running out for my online sale. Get your copy of Stroke of Luck (print or e-book) on Amazon for a tidy 24% discount.
Of course, there is one extra day to place your order, with this being a leap year.* Extra day or not, leap to it and save!
* Did You Know?
The tradition of inserting an extra day into February every four years is how the calendar is aligned to the rotational frequency of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
But wait… one orbit takes 365.24219 days. That means if a whole day is added every four years, for an average of 365.25 days, the calendar would be lengthened a bit too much.
As a result, the schedule of leap years is adjusted slightly to reduce this mismatch. If the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, the leap year is skipped. The year 2000 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not. The next time a leap year will be skipped is the year 2100. This gives an average calendar year of 365.2425 days, almost exactly matching the orbital frequency.
My Second Running Life 