World

What if we didn’t have leap years? And what if you’re born on one?

Published

2 years ago

February 29, 2024

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What if we didn’t have leap years? Maybe you haven’t given it much thought.

But people born on a “leap day” have given it many thoughts.

We’ve spoken to a number of them and asked about how their date of birth has affected their lives.

“I just want people to know that my birthday does exist,” one 29 February-born woman told Sky News.

We’ll get to that shortly.

First, what’s the deal with leap years anyway?

What if we didn’t have them?

A leap year means there’s an extra day in the calendar – 29 February.

They were introduced because most modern calendars worldwide have 365 days in them, but the actual solar year – the length of time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun – is approximately 365.25 days.

NASA explains: “To make up for the missing partial day, we add one day to our calendar approximately every four years. That is a leap year.”

If you don’t add that extra day approximately every four years, our calendars would eventually fall out of sync with the seasons.

Leap year origins

The leap year is thought to have been introduced by the Egyptians to balance the seasons in the third century BC.

They were observing a 365-day year that included a leap year every four years to correct the calendar, according to the National Geographic.

But this wasn’t quite working long-term, because a solar year still isn’t exactly 365.25 days – it’s just a tiny bit shorter at 365.2422.

It meant that even with a leap day every four years, each calendar year was about 11 minutes shorter than the seasonal calendar, meaning the calendar ended up being an entire day short every 128 years.

By the 16th century, the Romans decided to take drastic action, as they believed Christian holidays were being celebrated on the wrong days.

Pope Gregory XIII unveiled his own Gregorian calendar in 1582, and dropped 10 days from the month of October that year to sync things back up with the seasons.

The National Geographic said: “He also developed a new leap year system that used the solar year of 365.2422 days, added one leap day every four years, but dropped three leap days every 400 years to keep the calendars from drifting.”

Leap day traditions

One inadvertent tradition that comes with a leap year is full-time employees doing an extra day’s work for free.

That’s because if you’re paid a fixed annual salary, it doesn’t change based on how many days there are in the year.

If you’re paid by the hour, however, 29 February could be your lucky day, because if you’re working extra hours on the Thursday, you are entitled to claim those hours in the same way you do on any other workday.

Women proposing to men

This one’s a bit more fun.

29 February is known for being the day when women can propose to men.

You might be thinking: “But women can propose to whoever they want, whenever they want.”

But the tradition is believed to have started hundreds of years ago in an attempt to give women more power in their love lives.

Irish legend has it that St. Brigid of Kildare, a nun, complained to St. Patrick that maidens had to wait too long for potential suitors to propose.

So St. Patrick was forward-thinking enough to offer them one day every four years where women had the same proposal rights as men.

Proposal penalty

In 1208, the Scots not only adopted the proposal tradition, but also supposedly passed a law stating that any man who rejected a leap day proposal would have to pay a fine.

In other European countries, particularly in affluent areas, another penalty was that the proposal refuser would have to buy the woman he denied 12 pairs of gloves.

Bad luck?

There are certain nations where leap years and days get a bit of a bad rap.

Like in Greece, where superstition dictates that any marriage beginning during a leap year is destined for divorce, or in Italy, where Romans once believed February was a bad month that should be dedicated to the dead – therefore extending it was simply depressing.

Another Scottish superstition claims that anyone born on a leap day is doomed to have a life of suffering.

What it’s actually like to have a leap day birthday

Sky News has heard from a lot of people born on leap days, who are unofficially known as “leaplings”.

And thankfully, none of them appear to be having the sort of bad luck that Scottish superstitions prophesise.

Most 29 February babies are happy to be leaplings, Nicole Garcia tells us. Nicole, a mum of two from Michigan, is turning 11 this year, she says.

She’s given us her leap year birthday, of course, something that she often does when asked her age.

“I’d rather be younger,” she jokes.

Nicole is an admin of the Facebook group “February 29th, LEAP YEAR BABIES!”, which has almost 4,000 members who share the same birthday. And me, who asked to be let in.

If you’re a 29 Feb baby feeling a bit of leapling loneliness, it’s the place to be.

When asked their age, many members either follow Nicole’s lead and let you do the maths, or they’ll give you two numbers – their actual age and their leapling one.

Pros and cons

Most of the feedback we got from the group’s members suggested they love having such a unique birthday, but that a surprising amount of people don’t actually have any understanding of what a leap day is.

“Some people don’t even believe you when you tell them. I just want people to know that my birthday does exist,” Nicole says.

Her birthday might only come around every four years on paper, but she has found a satisfying alternative.

“I decided to take an extra day. I celebrate on the 28th and the 1st,” she says.

A lot of leaplings do this, apparently, but the law can actually dictate when leaplings’ common-year birthdays are. In the UK, for example, they legally become a year older on 1 March.

Even though important documents like birth certificates and passports can say 29 February, going with your assigned alternative birthday can become a necessity when filling out online forms, because a lot of them don’t provide 29 February as an option.

It can be an issue in the flesh, too. Geri Rafferty, another leapling from the US, remembers turning 21 – the legal age for drinking in America – in 1985 and going to the shops on 28 February to buy a bottle of wine to share with a friend.

She said the store clerk looked at her ID, which said 29 February, and refused to sell her the alcohol, insisting that her birthday was the next day, even though there was no 29 Feb that year.

Geri said: “I was so mad! My friend bought me the wine and we had a great celebration. The next day [1 March], I returned to the same package store and picked out the same bottle of wine. I slammed it down on the counter and told the clerk that now I was ‘officially’ 21 and could buy my own alcohol! The celebration continued that night as well.”

Selina Paggett, who is turning 16 – or 64 – suggests her mum must have known about the trouble a leap day birthday would cause her in the future.

She says: “After my birth early morning (2.34am, 1960), my mum pleaded with her doctor to enter Feb 28th on my birth certificate instead of Feb 29th. The doc replied: ‘NO ma’am, I will not falsify this document.'”

Canadian Claudia Femia, who’s turning 13 (52), said her mum had the opposite experience and was asked to change her birthday to another day when she was born.

Two leap day world records

Being born on a leap day is already an anomaly, but here are some seriously rare occurrences logged by Guinness World Records.

A world record was presented to the Henriksen family in Norway in 1968 for most siblings born on a leap day – and no, it wasn’t triplets.

The three children of Karin and Henry Henriksen, Heidi (b.1960), Olav (1964) and Leif-Martin (1968) were all born on leap days.

Then there’s the record for most generations born on leap day, which was awarded to the Keoghs in 1996. The Irish family had Peter Anthony (1940), his son Peter Eric (1964) and his granddaughter Bethany Wealth (1996), who were all born on 29 February.

World

Hurricane Melissa: What we know about the powerful storm approaching Jamaica

Published

22 mins ago

October 28, 2025

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Hurricane Melissa: What we know about the powerful storm approaching Jamaica

Hurricane Melissa, the world’s most powerful hurricane of the year so far, is closing in on Jamaica, with forecasters warning it could have a “catastrophic” impact.

The Category 5 hurricane has reached speeds of 175mph, already making it one of the strongest ever in the Atlantic basin.

A storm of Category 4 or higher has not hit Jamaica since records began 174 years ago.

It is expected to make landfall in the coming hours, continuing towards eastern Cuba and across the southeastern or central Bahamas.

Here’s what we know so far.

How bad could it be?

“Catastrophic” flash flooding and numerous landslides are likely when the hurricane hits, according to the US National Hurricane Centre, which warned of “total structural failure”.

Parts of the Caribbean island could see rainfall of up to 40 inches and it could cause a “life-threatening” storm surge on Jamaica’s southern coast, peaking around 13ft above ground level, the US centre said.

The storm is expected to be particularly bad along the coast of Kingston, which is home to critical infrastructure, including Jamaica’s main international airport and power plants.

Live updates as hurricane approaches

Jamaica’s prime minister Andrew Holness said he expected “major damage to our road infrastructure, bridges, drains and possibly some damage to ports and airports” and warned it would take “far more resources than Jamaica has to recover”.

There are 850 shelters across the island, he added, enough for more than 20,000 people. Jamaica has a population of roughly 2.8 million.

All of Jamaica is expected to experience hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall and flooding.

Has anyone died because of the hurricane?

Officials have said the storm is already responsible for at least seven deaths in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.

The three deaths in Jamaica happened during preparations for the storm’s arrival as people were cutting trees, health minister Christopher Tufton said. Thirteen people were injured, mostly due to falling off ladders and rooftops.

He urged Jamaicans to be careful during preparations, adding they should ensure all homes are stocked with enough drinking water and non-perishable food.

On Monday evening Matthew Samuda, the environment minister, said the time to prepare for the storm was over and that “the time now is to listen to instruction”, advising the public to start using resources sparingly.

Evacuation orders issued as power outages hit

Jamaica’s government has issued mandatory evacuation orders for at least seven areas in the southeast that are designated as high risk.

As of Monday night, many people had remained in their homes, according to Jamaica’s minister for science, energy, transport and telecommunication, Daryl Vaz.

“It’s very difficult, and it has always been a problem because people basically don’t take the event as seriously as they ought to,” Mr Vaz told Sky News.

He added that evacuation numbers were still “way below” the government’s targets.

Colin Bogle, a Mercy Corps adviser based near Kingston, suggested many families were sheltering in their homes due to fears rather than complacency.

“Many have never experienced anything like this before, and the uncertainty is frightening,” he said.

“There is profound fear of losing homes and livelihoods, of injury, and of displacement.”

An estimated 52,000 people lost power as the hurricane approached, mostly in the western part of the country, the Jamaica Public Service said.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, it said crews had managed to restore power for 30,000 of those affected and that they were continuing to work on the issues.

It added heavy rain and difficult terrain were “creating access challenges” and that “the safety of our crews and the public is our top priority”.

British holidaymakers locked down in hotels

Jamaica’s peak holiday season runs from mid-December to mid-April, but its tropical climate brings warmth all year round.

Hurricane season runs from June until November, but the country continues to attract tourists.

One of them is Andrew Tracey, a British holidaymaker who told Sky News he has been locked down in his hotel room until Wednesday at the earliest, having arrived on 20 October.

He also estimated there were at least 200 people from the UK staying at the same complex.

With all airports in Jamaica closed, his flight was cancelled and there was “nothing really we could do”, he said.

“If I knew that the hurricane would hit while I was out here, I wouldn’t have gone at all,” he said.

“It’s hard to comprehend what we’re about to expect. I’ve never experienced any kind of hurricane, let alone a Category 5.

“The tension in the hotel last night when we went down for dinner was definitely one of nerves, even locals.”

What route will Hurricane Melissa take?

Eastern Cuba is next in the path of Melissa, with tropical storm conditions expected to hit on Tuesday evening, including rainfall of up to 20 inches.

More than 500,000 people living in coastal and mountainous areas vulnerable to heavy winds and flooding have been evacuated, according to authorities.

Some 250,000 people were also accommodated in shelters around Santiago de Cuba, the second-largest city that lies right in the hurricane’s expected path.

A hurricane watch is in effect across the southeastern and central Bahamas, along with the British Overseas Territory, Turks and Caicos Islands.

They could be affected on Wednesday and the National Hurricane Centre expects flash floods with up to 8 inches of rainfall in tropical storm and hurricane conditions.

World

Warships, the CIA and potential ‘precision attacks’ – the US-Venezuela crisis explained

Published

6 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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Warships, the CIA and potential 'precision attacks' - the US-Venezuela crisis explained

US warships in the region, the green light for covert operations, and deadly strikes on what the Trump administration claims are “narco terrorists” – could America’s next move be to strike Venezuela?

President Donald Trump has accused President Nicolas Maduro of leading an organised crime gang (without providing evidence) and declined to answer when questioned if the CIA has the authority to assassinate him.

In return, the Venezuelan leader has accused Mr Trump of seeking regime change and of “fabricating a new eternal war” against his country, as he appealed to the American people for peace.

The rhetoric coming out of the White House, coupled with the presence of military ships in the region, has raised questions about a possible armed conflict between the US and Venezuela.

The question in the air is: Will the US actually attack Venezuela?

What are US warships doing?

The docking of the USS Gravely guided missile destroyer in the capital of Trinidad and Tobago – just 25 miles from the coast of Venezuela – is the latest incident to escalate tensions.

Venezuela’s government condemned the arrival and called it a provocation by Trinidad and Tobago and the US.

The USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier – the largest warship in the world – is also moving closer to Venezuela.

It comes as the US has acknowledged carrying out at least seven strikes since September on vessels near Venezuela that it claims were transporting drugs, killing at least 32 people.

Venezuela’s government says the strikes are illegal, amount to murder, and are acts of aggression.

Earlier this month, Trump confirmed he has authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations – including lethal operations – in Venezuela.

The CIA has a long history of operations in Latin America, with actions varying widely from direct paramilitary engagement to intelligence gathering and support roles with little to no physical footprint.

What could happen?

To get an idea of what could happen next, Sky News spoke to Dr Carlos Solar, an expert on Latin American security at the RUSI defence thinktank.

He says the level of military strategy the US is applying around Venezuela seems “unproportionate” for the task of tackling drug trafficking.

“A build-up this size can only suggest there’s a strategic military goal,” he added.

Dr Solar says the role of the CIA is “not surprising”, as the US often deploys spying capabilities in countries deemed adversarial.

“With the chances of a military conflict looming, having the most intelligence capable on the ground would be reasonable.”

Asked what could happen next, Dr Solar told Sky News: “One scenario is Trump authorises a round of long-range precision attacks in Venezuela’s territory linked to drug trafficking operations, eventually forcing Maduro to reciprocate later.

“We saw this early in the year when the US attacked Iran’s nuclear facilitates and Tehran returned missiles to US bases in Qatar.

“If the US decides to move more strongly, destroying all critical military targets from the Venezuelan forces, then the US could have Maduro surrender and leave the country immediately.

“This would be the least disruptive without causing greater destabilisation of the country.”

What does Trump say about Venezuela?

Trump said his reasons for the strikes on vessels were the migration of Venezuelans, allegedly including former prisoners, to the US – and drug trafficking.

“I authorised for two reasons really,” he said. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America…they came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border,” he told reporters. “And the other thing are drugs.”

He has accused Venezuela of trafficking huge amounts of cocaine into the US, and alleged Mr Maduro is the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang – a claim most of his own intelligence agencies do not support.

The US leader has not provided evidence for the claim about prisoners, and Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay pointed out the fentanyl drug that is causing destruction in America is largely manufactured in Mexico, not Venezuela.

“We are looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Mr Trump added. It is not clear what actions this could entail.

The Pentagon recently disclosed to US Congress that the president has determined the US is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

When asked if the CIA has the authority to execute Maduro, which would be a massive intervention, Trump declined to answer. Instead, he said: “I think Venezuela is feeling heat.”

What does Venezuela’s leader say?

Maduro has been in power since 2013, including re-elections in contests marred by accusations of fraud.

The last decade has seen his country gripped by spiralling hyperinflation and a humanitarian crisis that has seen an estimated eight million Venezuelans flee the country.

As the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier moved closer to Venezuela, Maduro accused the US government of “fabricating a new eternal war” against his country.

“They promised they would never again get involved in a war, and they are fabricating a war that we will avoid,” he said in a national address.

“They are fabricating an extravagant narrative, a vulgar, criminal and totally fake one,” he added, perhaps a reference to Trump’s claim that he is the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang and that his country trafficks cocaine into the US.

“Venezuela is a country that does not produce cocaine leaves.”

Tren de Aragua, which traces its roots to a Venezuelan prison, is not known for having a big role in global drug trafficking but instead for its involvement in contract killings, extortion, and people smuggling.

Venezuela has raised a complaint to the UN Security Council and demanded accountability from the US.

World

Over 1.2m people a week talk to ChatGPT about suicide

Published

6 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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Over 1.2m people a week talk to ChatGPT about suicide

An estimated 1.2 million people a week have conversations with ChatGPT that indicate they are planning to take their own lives.

The figure comes from its parent company OpenAI, which revealed 0.15% of users send messages including “explicit indicators of potential suicide planning or intent”.

Earlier this month, the company’s chief executive Sam Altman estimated that ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly active users.

While the tech giant does aim to direct vulnerable people to crisis helplines, it admitted “in some rare cases, the model may not behave as intended in these sensitive situations”.

OpenAI evaluated over 1,000 “challenging self-harm and suicide conversations” with its latest model GPT-5 and found it was compliant with “desired behaviours” 91% of the time.

But this would potentially mean that tens of thousands of people are being exposed to AI content that could exacerbate mental health problems.

The company has previously warned that safeguards designed to protect users can be weakened in longer conversations – and work is under way to address this.

“ChatGPT may correctly point to a suicide hotline when someone first mentions intent, but after many messages over a long period of time, it might eventually offer an answer that goes against our safeguards,” OpenAI explained.

OpenAI’s blog post added: “Mental health symptoms and emotional distress are universally present in human societies, and an increasing user base means that some portion of ChatGPT conversations include these situations.”

A grieving family is currently in the process of suing OpenAI – and allege ChatGPT was to blame for their 16-year-old boy’s death.

Adam Raine’s parents claim the tool “actively helped him explore suicide methods” and offered to draft a note to his relatives.

Court filings suggest that, hours before he died, the teenager uploaded a photo that appeared to show his suicide plan – and when he asked whether it would work, ChatGPT offered to help him “upgrade” it.

Last week, the Raines updated their lawsuit and accused OpenAI of weakening the safeguards to prevent self-harm in the weeks before his death in April this year.

In a statement, the company said: “Our deepest sympathies are with the Raine family for their unthinkable loss. Teen wellbeing is a top priority for us – minors deserve strong protections, especially in sensitive moments.”

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.