please empty your brain below
Actually, I’d like enjoy reportage on Bounds Green.

Dazzling Darren | 29.02.24 - 7:13 a.m. | #

13. Frederick had 67, not 63, years to go, as he would not have a birthday in 1900. He says his 21st birthday will be in 1940, meaning he was born in 1852 (or 1856 if he was not aware of the century rule) and the action is therefore set in February 1873 or 1877, a few years before its first performance in 1879. (Although anachronisticaly the Major General's patter song refers to "that infernal nonsense "Pinafore"", which premiered in 1878).

Timbo | 29.02.24 - 8:09 a.m. | #

A great compendium, thanks! Re 21, that list of No 1s does indeed make a superbly representative playlist, and remarkably takes us through the lean years since the 1990s (at least that’s what this oldie feels) with some new classics.

Phil SW11 | 29.02.24 - 8:10 a.m. | #

More pedantry and fact checking. Sorry.
7. The traditional nine months relates to last period. If we use 268 days from ovulation/fertilisation then the best date is 6 June the previous year. However, only 5% of births hit the exact 268 days.

Freddie | 29.02.24 - 8:18 a.m. | #

More pedantry. Sorry.
7. All I said was that the odds are a lot higher than 1 in 1461 if your parents have sex on May 29th, and that remains true.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 29.02.24 - 8:22 a.m. | #

It is only the 516th Leap day in places which were already part of the Roman Empire in 45BC, and converted to the Gregorian Calendar in the 18th century.
In the Julian calendar it is the 518th.
In Rome, which converted to Gregorian in 1582, it is the 515th.
In Britain, which only came under Roman rule in 43AD, it is the 494th.
If you don't count those leap days that were cancelled out by omitting days when converting to Gregorian, it is the 505th in Rome, and the 483rd in Britain.

Timbo again | 29.02.24 - 8:22 a.m. | #

I hadn’t heard of the word bissextile but that explains why the Spanish is año bisiesto.

The Chinese character 閏 has a pleasingly literal meaning - the symbol for king inside the symbol for gates because the king would stay within the palace gates on intercalary days.

Alan | 29.02.24 - 8:24 a.m. | #

There’s a challenge in parkrun, to do a Saturday run on every date of the year, called Date Bingo.

If you missed doing parkrun on Sat 29th Feb 2020, you’ve got to wait twenty eight years later until 2048 before Feb 29th falls on a Saturday again.

Geofftech | 29.02.24 - 8:28 a.m. | #

No pedantry from me.
Great post
Thanks

I am going to go and play some Chicory Tip

MO | 29.02.24 - 8:42 a.m. | #

16. I do not know if our daughter proposed to her partner 4 years ago but she is getting married today, 29 February 2024.

Sara | 29.02.24 - 8:45 a.m. | #

I'm intrigued about the extra school holiday... on using a famous search engine, the fifth result was a Mr Geezer's blog, and the other results were about employees

Herned | 29.02.24 - 8:45 a.m. | #

I've got your leap year playlist and as a user can update it regularly even though it's only every 4 years. Thanks for setting it up. Quite a contrast in styles there.

Dave B | 29.02.24 - 9:14 a.m. | #

16) My wife proposed to me 4 years ago today. :-)

Mark | Homepage | 29.02.24 - 9:23 a.m. | #

May 29th was obviously a special day in for Mr. and Mrs. Henriksen of Stavanger

Michael | 29.02.24 - 9:34 a.m. | #

17. The delightful thing that makes this work is that the 97 leap days round 400 years up to an exact number (20,871) of weeks, a number not itself divisible by 7. So no date falls equally on all days of the week. New Year's Day and Christmas Day are most often on a Sunday, Tuesday or Friday; Easter Day is most often on a Sunday.

HTFB | 29.02.24 - 9:44 a.m. | #

Fascinating.
12. A bit more pedantry. Most salaried workers routinely have to work different numbers of days in a year because neither 365 nor 366 is divisible by 7. So a leap year is not special in that respect.

Malcolm of Kent | 29.02.24 - 10:01 a.m. | #

HTFB
Easter Day is always on a Sunday.

dg writes: he knows

Timbo again again | 29.02.24 - 10:15 a.m. | #

17. And the 13th more likely to fall on a Friday...

Rob | 29.02.24 - 10:21 a.m. | #

More pedantry. Re 12, yes (assuming schools always provide the same number of Monday to Friday weeks of school in a calendar year) then a leap year gives children an extra day's holiday, but not necessarily in the leap year. Ignoring leap years they would get an extra week's holiday every seventh year, the leap year brings this forward by one year.

dg writes: incorrect assumption

RogerB | 29.02.24 - 10:36 a.m. | #

15. The UK learning to drive rule has a pleasing logic to it as the learner would reach 17 at the same moment if it were a leap year. The NZ approach is just plain wrong in that respect.

Monthly Travelcard expiry dates are a minefield around the end of February whether or not it's a leap year. This year, any that started on Jan 30 or 31, or on Feb 1, all run out today. At first glance it seems unfair and used to generate a lot of queries/complaints, but logically it's absolutely correct.

Andrew S | 29.02.24 - 10:53 a.m. | #

21. Disappointed that hits from The Pointer Sisters, Van Halen and Billy Bragg didn't feature

Frank F | 29.02.24 - 10:57 a.m. | #

20) This has blown my mind. Would love to know how statistically unlikely this is.

Also, for the removal of doubt, 29/02/24 will not be the first time that a by-election has been held on a leap day (there was one in 1944 and possibly others?).

Taffy | 29.02.24 - 10:58 a.m. | #

#20, Taffy: 1 in 1,460 days are leap days so very roughly 1 in 2 million people will be born on leap day and die on leap day (boladol). There have been 47 premiers of Tasmania, so it's a 1 in 40,000ish chance that one of them would be boladol. Fairly surprising! On the other hand the all-time list of "holders of public offices which you might vaguely have heard of" will include many more than 2 million people. So a boladol in that list is not surprising at all.

HTFB | 29.02.24 - 11:20 a.m. | #

28: helped me get question 15 correct on today’s Thursday quiz in the Guardian . Thanks

Richard | 29.02.24 - 11:27 a.m. | #

I can't help feeling that I've read this fascinating list somewhere before, perhaps four or eight years ago ... But then, you're entitled to a light day's blogging once every four years!

Keith from Reading | 29.02.24 - 11:41 a.m. | #

A fascinating set of facts.
15) I just assumed Leap Day children celebrated their birthday on 28th Feb- at least it's in the month of the same name.

Rotten UK law making 17 year olds wait an extra day to get their driving licence though!

Cornish Cockney | 29.02.24 - 12:08 p.m. | #

HTFB: thanks for the maths and the wonderful boladol acronym!

Taffy | 29.02.24 - 12:48 p.m. | #

Many many years ago (1988 or 1992, but I think the former based on recollections of what I was working on when) a log in screen on our IBM Mainframe had the date 32nd of January on the 1st February. Programmers will make a guess as to why this happened (though I don't think we ever found out).
I assume it was some wacky home grown thing as I have never seen it mentioned elsewhere - it was all slightly strange, it was supposedly "the most powerful computer in the country not a Cray"

John Styles | 29.02.24 - 1:05 p.m. | #

I was surprised that the Times managed the same number of famous birthdays as usual, although I guess the average fame level was a quarter of the usual.

Was fun to see that all birthdays were of course divisible by 4

TomH | 29.02.24 - 1:08 p.m. | #

I suspect some employers would consider the salaried workforce lucky not to be subject to pro-rata pay-docking in months with fewer than 31 days.

cau1khead | 29.02.24 - 1:51 p.m. | #

7) This is a minor plot point in the Iain Banks novel Whit, where a religious cult have a big "gathering" every fourth 29 May as they believe children born on 29 Feb have special powers.

Friar Sven | 29.02.24 - 3:23 p.m. | #

12: those of us lucky to be paid four-weekly (wages or pensions) never lose out as we receive our income every 28th day! When your State Pension arrives (if it hasn't already), it will be paid four-weekly, or 13 payments in most years.
This does occasionally produce the anomaly of a 'week 53' in some years from the dates of that start and end of the financial year, and raises the remote odds of a 14th payment that year.

Joel | 29.02.24 - 3:29 p.m. | #

12) Not all schoolchildren :)

TW | 29.02.24 - 3:38 p.m. | #

Fascinating.
21) I think, from the dates, that the playlist was compiled in 2016, so 8 years ago rather than 12?

dg writes: started 2012, edited 2016.

Blue Witch | 29.02.24 - 8:01 p.m. | #

John Styles - I think it was 1992 that one of our bits of mainframe software had a leap year recognition failure... no, last digit of 0, 4 or 8 isn't correct. Sad thing is, nobody noticed until the end of the year, when it put out the date as 32nd December...

Jeremy GH | 01.03.24 - 10:59 p.m. | #

12) Joel - By my reckoning, a 14th fourweekly payment is due every 24 years

Jeremy GH | 03.03.24 - 12:18 a.m. | #











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