Lifestyle
Why do we leap day? We remind you (so you can forget for another 4 years)
A clock showing February 29, also known as leap day. They only happen about once every four years.
Olivier Le Moal/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Olivier Le Moal/Getty Images
A clock showing February 29, also known as leap day. They only happen about once every four years.
Olivier Le Moal/Getty Images
Nearly every four years, the Gregorian calendar — which is used in the majority of countries around the world — gets an extra day: February 29.
For some people, leap day means frog jokes and extravagant birthday parties. For many, it may conjure memories of the 2010 rom-com Leap Year, which harkens back to the Irish tradition by which women can propose to men on that one day. And others likely see it merely as a funny quirk in the calendar, or just another Thursday.
Leap day means several different things to Alexander Boxer, a data scientist and the author of A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for Our Destiny in Data.
Literally speaking, he says, it’s an “awkward calendar hack” aimed at making up for the fact that a year isn’t a flat number of days, but more like 365 and a quarter. But there’s more to it than that.
“I think the significance of the leap year is that it’s a great reminder that the universe is really good at defying our attempts to devise nice and pretty and aesthetically pleasing systems to fit it in,” he told NPR’s Morning Edition.
Boxer says it’s also a great reminder that the calendar most people rely on every day is actually the product of multiple civilizations, building off each other as they share in what he calls “this great undertaking of trying to understand time.”
So where did leap year come from, and what are we supposed to do with our extra day? NPR’s Morning Edition spoke with experts in astronomy, history and economics to find out.
Why do we have leap years?
Most people know that a single day is about 24 hours long, and that there are 365 days in a year.
But it actually takes Earth 365.242190 days to orbit the sun, says Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“And that .242190 days to go around the sun is the entire reason why we have a leap year,” she explained.
Centuries ago, people kept track of the sun’s position — such as for a solstice or the longest day of the year — to know when to do things like plant and harvest. Over time, she says, the need grew for a centralized calendar system.
The Hebrew, Chinese and Buddhist calendars, among others, have long contained entire leap months. The West is no stranger to leap years either.
The Julian Calendar, which Julius Caesar introduced in 45 BC, included an extra day every year. He borrowed the idea from the Egyptians, though his math wasn’t exactly correct. Caesar overestimated the solar year by about 11 minutes, leading to an overcorrection by about eight days each millennium. That explains why Easter, for example, fell further and further away from the spring equinox over time.
Pope Gregory XIII sought to address that problem in the 16th century with the Gregorian Calendar, which adds leap days in years divisible by four, unless the year is also divisible by 100. To make matters even more confusing, a leap day is still added in years divisible by 400.
Why add the extra day in February? Boxer, the data scientist, says the Romans considered it an unlucky month. On top of that, they were deeply suspicious of odd numbers. Because February only had 28 days to begin with, they “just shoved it into February,” though leap day used to be on the 24th.
Ultimately, says Boxer, the calendar is a compromise.
“On the one hand, you don’t want a calendar that makes it so complicated to know how many days it’s going to be from one year to the next,” he added. “But on the other hand, you want to make sure that winter holidays, too, in the winter and summer holidays, stay in the summer, especially if your holidays are related to things like agriculture, harvest holidays and whatnot.”
What does leap day mean for birthdays?
One tangible impact of a leap year is that birthdays will fall on a different day of the week than their usual pattern.
“If your birthday was on a Tuesday last year, you’re going to skip over Wednesday and you’ll have a birthday on a Thursday,” said Faherty. “Not to mention those poor people that are born on February 29, a day that only exists every four years.”
There are about 5 million people worldwide with a Feb. 29 birthday, according to the History Channel. The list of so-called “leaplings” includes celebrities such as motivational speaker Tony Robbins and hip-hop artist Ja Rule. And peoples’ odds of joining their ranks are small — about 1-in-1,461, to be exact.
Several leaplings told NPR that there’s no set rule on which day to celebrate their birthday in a non-leap year. Some prefer Feb. 28, others March 1 and many do both.
“My answer to this question has evolved over the years,” said Michael Kozlowski Jr., a leap day baby based in Belgium. “It used to be February for the reasons that I identified more with that month compared to March. But these days I honestly like to celebrate both days or even the entire week. It seems only fair and it works and it feels great.”
They acknowledged both pros and cons of having a leap day birthday. Several said that while they were teased about it in grade school, it helped them develop a thicker skin and gave them a fun fact for life — plus more days to celebrate.
Plus, many online forms — including for the DMV — don’t recognize Feb. 29 as a possible birth date. Raenell Dawn, the co-founder of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, told NPR in 2020 that those logistics can cause trouble, especially when it comes to things like driver’s license expirations. But she also said there’s no reason for leaplings to change their birth date.
“Humans program the computer, so the humans need to program it correctly,” she said. “‘Cause February 29 is everyone’s extra day. And it’s a day that started in 45 B.C. And it’s the most important date on the calendar because it keeps all the dates on the calendar in line with the seasons.”
What should you do — and not do — on Feb. 29?
There are lots of superstitions and traditions about leap day on the internet, and a few celebrations to look forward to IRL.
A decades-old French satirical newspaper, La Bougie du Sapeur, goes to print only on Feb. 29 — this year included. There are also festivities in the “Leap Year Capital of the World,” as Anthony, Texas, is known.
Leapling Mary Ann Brown petitioned Congress to give Anthony, Texas — and Anthony, New Mexico, on the other side of the state line — that designation in 1988 because of the “numerous number of leap year births that happened within the two towns,” Mayor Anthony Turner told NPR over email.
In years past, he said, the community marked leap day with a parade that stretched between the two towns of Anthony. This year, the Texas side is hosting a two-day leap year festival, complete with live music, local vendors and an exclusive barbecue dinner for leap day babies.
“This is an opportunity for the community to take pride in the fact that they live in the leap year capital of the world, and a great chance for everyone from everywhere to join us and enjoy the true beauty of our lovely town,” Turner added.
Worldwide, most leap day lore revolves around romance and marriage, as the History Channel explains.
According to one legend, complaints from St. Bridget prompted St. Patrick to designate Feb. 29 as the one day when women can propose to men. The custom spread to Scotland and England, where the British said that any man who rejects a woman’s proposal owes her several pairs of fine gloves. In Greece and some other places, it’s considered bad luck to get married on leap day.
Katherine Parkin, a history professor at Monmouth University, said she doesn’t believe any of the myths are true — but doesn’t think they had to be in order to take hold, which they did in America as early as the 1780s.
An example of one of many early 20th century postcards by cartoonist Clare Victor Dwiggins — “Dwig” — showing women pursuing men in a leap year.
Katherine Parkin
hide caption
toggle caption
Katherine Parkin
An example of one of many early 20th century postcards by cartoonist Clare Victor Dwiggins — “Dwig” — showing women pursuing men in a leap year.
Katherine Parkin
The real origin, she believes, is that people have historically liked to challenge gender and gender roles.
“And in the case of marriage, to have a reversal of that power, I think is really unusual,” she added. “And it ties perfectly with this unusual date. Where did it come from and where did it go? And so I think it really plays well into people’s imagination and playfulness.”
But Parkin says her research points to darker undertones behind the tradition — namely, that it was actually intended to ridicule women.
She points to the proliferation of postcards in the 20th century — which people would send each other across all kinds of relationships — that portrayed women who proposed to men as desperate, unattractive and aggressive, such as holding butterfly nets and pointing guns at guys.
“It’s proving to … reinforce that it’s a leap year and that this tradition exists and yet at the same time telling women, you really don’t want to do this because it looks bad for you,” Parkin said. “As a historian, I look back to this tradition and see it as part of an American desire to offer women false empowerment.”
Of the more than 100 people who responded to an NPR callout about their leap day celebrations and traditions, several said they had gotten engaged or married on Feb. 29. Only one explicitly mentioned gender roles.
“I think this is the day that (traditionally) a woman was able to propose?” wrote Suzanne Forbes. “If so, I plan on proposing to myself in a beautiful southern setting (likely [Georgia], while solo kayaking)!”
What if we didn’t have leap years?
Not everyone loves leap day.
Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, is one critic. He argues that the current calendar, in which dates occur on different days of the week each year, creates scheduling problems as well as confusion around holiday dates.
That’s why he and Johns Hopkins astrophysics professor Dick Henry have created the Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar, a proposal for a new calendar that would implement an occasional leap week rather than leap day.
“The great thing about the permanent calendar is that it never changes,” Hanke explained. “The date would be on the same day. Every year, year after year after year … January 1st is always on a Monday. July 4th is always on a Thursday. December 25th, Christmas, is always on a Monday.”
Their calendar divides the year into four three-month quarters, each with the same number of days. The first two months of each quarter — including January and February — would always have 30 days, and the third month would have 31. Every six years, there would be an extra seven days at the end of December, which Hanke says would “eliminate calendar drift.”
Hanke argues that his proposed calendar would save confusion and potentially money, pointing to studies in the United Kingdom that show the economic gains associated with having public holidays on weekends. And he believes it would be easy for a president to implement the new system by executive order, something that he and Henry have even drafted, just in case.
Still, he describes their lobbying efforts as more of a “soft sell” at the moment.
It seems like the current calendar system — with its leap days and years — may be here to stay, despite the many possible alternates. Faherty, the astronomer, says if someone truly wanted to keep track of their path around the sun, one could “build yourself a henge and know when the solstice is and carry on from that.”
“But we don’t do that,” she said. “We gave it an interval and we follow that, so now we’re stuck. And now you have to enter these leap days, to try and do our best to fix the human need to have a document that says where exactly you are in the position that the Earth is falling around.”
And that’s probably enough to think about for the year, maybe even the next three.
Adam Bearne and Julie Depenbrock contributed reporting.
Tracy Morgan, left, and Daniel Radcliffe star in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
Tracy Morgan, as a presence, as a persona, bends the rules of comedy spacetime around him.
Consider: He’s constitutionally incapable of tossing off a joke or an aside, because he never simply delivers a line when he can declaim it instead. He can’t help but occupy the center of any given scene he’s in — his abiding, essential weirdness inevitably pulls focus. Perhaps most mystifying to comedy nerds is the way he can take a breath in the middle of a punchline and still, somehow, land it.
That? Should be impossible. Comedy depends on, is entirely a function of, timing; jokes are delicate constructs of rhythms that take time and practice to beat into shape for maximum efficiency. But never mind that. Give this guy a non-sequitur, the nonner the better, and he’ll shout that sucker at the top of his fool lungs, and absolutely kill, every time.
Well. Not every time, and not everywhere. Because Tracy Morgan is a puzzle piece so oddly shaped he won’t fit into just any world. In fact, the only way he works is if you take the time and effort to assiduously build the entire puzzle around him.
Thankfully, the makers of his new series, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, understand that very specific assignment. They’ve built the show around Morgan’s signature profile and paired him with an hugely unlikely comedy partner (Daniel Radcliffe).
The co-creators/co-showrunners are Robert Carlock, who was one of the showrunners on 30 Rock and co-created The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Sam Means, who also worked on Girls5eva with Carlock and has written for 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt.
These guys know exactly what Morgan can do, even if 30 Rock relegated him to function as a kind of comedy bomb-thrower. He’d enter a scene, lob a few loud, puzzling, hilarious references that would blow up the situation onscreen, and promptly peace out through the smoke and ash left in his wake.
That can’t happen on Reggie Dinkins, as Tracy is the center of both the show, and the show-within-the-show. He plays a former NFL star disgraced by a gambling scandal who’s determined to redeem himself in the public eye. He brings in an Oscar-winning documentarian Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to make a movie about him and his current life.
Tobin, however, is determined to create an authentic portrait of a fallen hero, and keeps goading Dinkins to express remorse — or anything at all besides canned, feel-good platitudes. He embeds himself in Dinkins’ palatial New Jersey mansion, alongside Dinkins’ fiancée Brina (Precious Way), teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall) and his former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who lives in the basement.
If you’re thinking this means Reggie Dinkins is a show satirizing the recent rise of toothless, self-flattering documentaries about athletes and performers produced in collaboration with their subjects, you’re half-right. The show feints at that tension with some clever bits over the course of the season, but it’s never allowed to develop into a central, overarching conflict, because the show’s more interested in the affinity between Dinkins and Tobin.
Tobin, it turns out, is dealing with his own public disgrace — his emotional breakdown on the set of a blockbuster movie he was directing has gone viral — and the show becomes about exploring what these two damaged men can learn from each other.
On paper, sure: It’s an oil-and-water mixture: Dinkins (loud, rich, American, Black) and Tobin (uptight, pretentious, British, practically translucent). Morgan’s in his element, and if you’re not already aware of what a funny performer Radcliffe can be, check him out on the late lamented Miracle Workers.
Whenever these two characters are firing fusillades of jokes at each other, the series sings. But, especially in the early going, the showrunners seem determined to put Morgan and Radcliffe together in quieter, more heartfelt scenes that don’t quite work. It’s too reductive to presume this is because Morgan is a comedian and Radcliffe is an actor, but it’s hard to deny that they’re coming at those moments from radically different places, and seem to be directing their energies past each other in ways that never quite manage to connect.
Precious Way as Brina.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
It’s one reason the show flounders out of the gate, as typical pilot problems pile up — every secondary character gets introduced in a hurry and assigned a defining characteristic: Brina (the influencer), Rusty (the loser), Carmelo (the TV teen). It takes a bit too long for even the great Erika Alexander, who plays Dinkins’ ex-wife and current manager Monica, to get something to play besides the uber-competent, work-addicted businesswoman.
But then, there are the jokes. My god, these jokes.
Reggie Dinkins, like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt before it, is a joke machine, firing off bit after bit after bit. But where those shows were only too happy to exist as high-key joke-engines first, and character comedies second, Dinkins is operating in a slightly lower register. It’s deliberately pitched to feel a bit more grounded, a bit less frenetic. (To be fair: Every show in the history of the medium can be categorized as more grounded and less frenetic than 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt — but Reggie Dinkins expressly shares those series’ comedic approach, if not their specific joke density.)
While the hit rate of Reggie Dinkins‘ jokes never achieves 30 Rock status, rest assured that in episodes coming later in the season it comfortably hovers at Kimmy Schmidt level. Which is to say: Two or three times an episode, you will encounter a joke that is so perfect, so pure, so diamond-hard that you will wonder how it has taken human civilization until 2026 Common Era to discover it.
And that’s the key — they feel discovered. The jokes I’m talking about don’t seem painstakingly wrought, though of course they were. No, they feel like they have always been there, beneath the earth, biding their time, just waiting to be found. (Here, you no doubt will be expecting me to provide some examples. Well, I’m not gonna. It’s not a critic’s job to spoil jokes this good by busting them out in some lousy review. Just watch the damn show to experience them as you’re meant to; you’ll know which ones I’m talking about.)
Now, let’s you and I talk about Bobby Moynihan.
As Rusty, Dinkins’ devoted ex-teammate who lives in the basement, Moynihan could have easily contented himself to play Pathetic Guy™ and leave it at that. Instead, he invests Rusty with such depths of earnest, deeply felt, improbably sunny emotions that he solidifies his position as show MVP with every word, every gesture, every expression. The guy can shuffle into the far background of a shot eating cereal and get a laugh, which is to say: He can be literally out-of-focus and still steal focus.
Which is why it doesn’t matter, in the end, that the locus of Reggie Dinkins‘ comedic energy isn’t found precisely where the show’s premise (Tracy Morgan! Daniel Radcliffe! Imagine the chemistry!) would have you believe it to be. This is a very, very funny — frequently hilarious — series that prizes well-written, well-timed, well-delivered jokes, and that knows how to use its actors to serve them up in the best way possible. And once it shakes off a few early stumbles and gets out of its own way, it does that better than any show on television.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Andy Richter has found his place.
The Chicago area native previously lived in New York — where he first found fame as Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on “Late Night” — before moving to Los Angeles in 2001. Three years ago, he moved to Pasadena. “Now that I live here, I would not live anywhere else,” he says.
There are some practical benefits to the city. “I am such a crabby old man now, but it’s like, there’s parking, you can park when we have to go out,” Richter says. “The notion of going to dinner in Santa Monica just feels like having nails shoved into my feet.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
But he mostly appreciates that Pasadena is “a very diverse town and just a beautiful town,” he says.
For Richter, most Sundays revolve around his family. In 2023, the comedian and actor married creative executive Jennifer Herrera and adopted her young daughter, Cornelia. (He also has two children in their 20s, William and Mercy, from his previous marriage.)
Additionally, he’s been giving his body time to recover. Richter spent last fall training and competing on the 34th season of “Dancing With the Stars.” And though he had no prior dancing experience, he won over the show’s fan base with his kindness and dedication, making it to the competition’s ninth week.
He hosts the weekly show “The Three Questions” on O’Brien’s Team Coco podcast network and still appears in films and TV shows. “I’m just taking meetings and auditioning like every other late 50s white comedy guy in L.A., sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7:30 a.m.: Early rising
It’s hard for me at this advanced age to sleep much past 7:30. I have a 5 1/2-year-old, and hopefully she’ll sleep in a little bit longer so my wife and I can talk and snuggle and look at our phones at opposite ends of the bed, like everybody.
Then the dogs need to be walked. I have two dogs: a 120-pound Great Pyrenees-Border Collie-German Shepherd mix, and then at the other end of the spectrum, a seven-pound poodle mix. We were a blended dog family. When my wife and I met, I had the big dog and she had a little dog. Her first dog actually has passed, but we like that dynamic. You get kind of the best of both worlds.
8 a.m.: Breakfast at a classic diner
Then it would probably be breakfast at Shakers, which is in South Pasadena. It’s one of our favorite places. We’re kind of regulars there, and my daughter loves it. It’s easy with a 5-year-old, you’ve got to do what they want. They’re terrorists that way, especially when it comes to cuisine.
I’ve lived in Pasadena for about three years now, but I have been going to Shakers for a long time because I have a database of all the best diners in the Los Angeles metropolitan area committed to memory. There’s just something about the continuity of them that makes me feel like the world isn’t on fire. And because of L.A.’s moderate climate, the ones here stay the way they are; whereas if you get 18 feet of winter snow, you tend to wear down the diner floor, seats, everything.
So there’s a lot of really great old places that stay the same. And then there are tragic losses. There’s been some noise that Shakers is going to turn into some kind of condo development. I think that people would probably riot. They would be elderly people rioting, but they would still riot.
11 a.m.: Sandy paws
My in-laws live down in Long Beach, so after breakfast we might take the dogs down to Long Beach. There’s this dog beach there, Rosie’s Beach. I have never seen a fight there between dogs. They’re all just so happy to be out and off-leash, with an ocean and sand right there. You get a contact high from the canine joy.
1 p.m.: Lunch in Belmont Shore
That would take us to lunchtime and we’ll go somewhere down there. There’s this place, L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, in Belmont Shore. It’s fantastic for some pizza with grandma and grandpa. It’s originally from Naples. There’s also one in Hollywood where Cafe Des Artistes used to be on that weird little side street.
4 p.m.: Sunset at the gardens
We’d take grandma and grandpa home, drop the dogs off. We’d go to the Huntington and stay a couple of hours until sunset. The Japanese garden is pretty mind-blowing. You feel like you’re on the set of “Shogun.”
The main thing that I love about it is the changing of ecospheres as you walk through it. Living in the area, I drive by it a thousand times and then I remember, “Oh yeah, there’s a rainforest in here. There’s thick stands of bamboo forest that look like Vietnam.” It’s beautiful. With all three of my kids, I have spent a lot of time there.
6:30 p.m.: Mall of America
After sundown, we will go to what seems to be the only thriving mall in America — [the Shops at] Santa Anita. We are suckers for Din Tai Fung. My 24-year-old son, who’s kind of a food snob, is like, “There’s a hundred places that are better and cheaper within five minutes of there in the San Gabriel Valley.” And we’re like, “Yeah, but this is at the mall.” It’s really easy. Also, my wife is a vegetarian, and a lot of the more authentic places, there’s pork in the air. It’s really hard to find vegetarian stuff.
We have a whole system with Din Tai Fung now, which is logging in on the wait list while we’re still on the highway, or ordering takeout. There’s plenty of places in the mall with tables, you can just sit down and have your own little feast there.
There’s also a Dave & Buster’s. If you want sensory overload, you can go in there and get a big, big booze drink while you’re playing Skee-Ball with your kid.
9 p.m.: Head to bed ASAP
I am very lucky in that I’m a very good sleeper and the few times in my life when I do experience insomnia, it’s infuriating to me because I am spoiled, basically. When you’ve got a 5 1/2-year-old, there’s no real wind down. It’s just negotiations to get her into bed and to sleep as quickly as possible, so we can all pass out.
new video loaded: Prada Peels Back the Layers at Milan Fashion Week
By Chevaz Clarke and Daniel Fetherston
February 27, 2026
Movie review: Ballet-themed erotic drama ‘Dreams’ dissipates in finale
Takeaways from AP’s report on the ICE detention center holding children and parents
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’ falls before it rises — but then it soars
Xiaomi 17 is a small(ish) phone with a big(ish) battery
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 50 people
Anthropic CEO says he’s sticking to AI “red lines” despite clash with Pentagon
ICE blasts Washington mayor over directive restricting immigration enforcement
-
World3 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts3 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Louisiana5 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Denver, CO3 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT