a wolf angel is not a good angel

We all know the obvious rule: every year divisible by 4 is a leap year (Julian calendar, still in use in the Russian Orthodox church): it gets ahead 1 day every 128 years. We also know that centuries aren’t, unless they’re divisible by 400, too (Gregorian calendar, which we use): it gets ahead 1 day every 3289 years.

Since these are not quite right, there have been rules proposed to keep the calendar even closer:

• years divisible by 4000 are not leap years (John Herschel, an astronomer, suggested this): it gets ahead 1 day every 18,519 years.
• the 400 year rule is dropped; years that have a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900 are leap years (Greek Orthodox church, also in use in Russia): it gets ahead 1 day every 41,667 years.
• years divisible by 3200 are not leap years (a group in the US Navy proposed it): it gets behind 1 day every 117,647 years, so leap seconds are added every so often (3 out of 4 years, more or less).

I had to do the dull leap year program in some programming class or another (probably several). Wouldn’t've been more exciting if you also got to choose which calendar you wanted? Or got info on all of them?

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 29th, 2004 at 9:48 am and is filed under Random bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.