What if we didn’t have leap years? And what if you’re born on one?
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.
Pic: AP
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.
Pic: iStock
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.
A baby born in Texas on the leap day in 2012. Pic: AP
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 baby born on 29 February 2012 in Kansas. Pic: AP
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.
The White House has hit out at an “appalling” attempt by a Democratic senator to return a father wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Chris Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday to speak to the country’s leaders about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was removed from the US by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
Washington acknowledged Mr Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error”.
The US Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return, upholding a court order by Judge Paula Xinis, but Trump officials have claimed Mr Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang.
Mr Garcia’s lawyers have argued there is no evidence of this.
Speaking about Mr Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the Democrats “still refuse to accept the will of the American people”.
She alleged Mr Garcia was an “illegal alien MS-13 terrorist” and claimed his wife petitioned for court protection against him after alleged incidents of domestic violence.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Pic: AP/Jose Luis Magana
After outlining the allegations against Mr Garcia, she went on: “All of that is not enough to stop the Democrat Party from their lies.
“The number one issue they are focused on right now is bringing back this illegal alien terrorist to America.
“It’s appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats are plotting his trip to El Salvador today, are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens.”
After making a statement, Ms Leavitt introduced Patty Morin, who described graphic details of her daughter’s murder by an immigrant from El Salvador.
Rachel Morin was raped and murdered by Victor Martinez-Hernandez along a popular hiking trail northeast of Baltimore.
Afterwards, Ms Leavitt left without taking any questions from reporters.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Pic: CASA/AP
Senator travels to El Salvador
Mr Van Hollen met with the El Salvador vice president during his trip to the Central American country.
But he did not meet with President Nayib Bukele, who publicly met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week, nor did he meet Mr Garcia himself.
US senator Chris Van Hollen has been in El Salvador.
Pic: Reuters/Jose Cabezas
In a post on X, he said he would continue to fight for Mr Garcia’s return.
During Mr Bukele’s trip to the White House earlier this week, he said he would not return Mr Garcia, likening it to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States”.
Along with Mr Garcia, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, who it claims are gang members without presenting evidence and without a trial.
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‘I’m talking about violent people’
Judge’s contempt warning
It comes hours after a US federal judge warned that he could hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador.
The comments are an escalation in a row which began last month when US district judge James E Boasberg issued an order temporarily blocking the deportations.
However, lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air – one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras.
Mr Boasberg verbally ordered the planes to be turned around, but the directive was not included in his written order. The Trump administration then denied refusing to comply.
Charges could be brought forward by the Justice Department, NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, reported.
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However, that could create an uncomfortable situation for the department, which is headed by the attorney general – a position appointed by the president.
If the executive-led Justice Department refused to prosecute the matter, Judge Boasberg said he would appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt.
The judge wrote: “The Constitution does not tolerate wilful disobedience of judicial orders – especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.”
He gave the government a 23 April deadline.
White House director of communications Steven Cheung said the administration would seek “immediate appellate relief” – a review of a decision within a lower court before the case has been resolved.
World
Israeli troops will remain in ‘security zones’ in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria indefinitely, minister says
Israel’s troops will remain in “security zones” in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria indefinitely, according to the country’s defence minister.
Israeli forces have taken over more than half of the Gaza Strip in recent weeks in a renewed campaign to pressure the territory’s rulers Hamas to free hostages after a ceasefire ended last month.
Israel has also refused to withdraw from some areas in Lebanon following a truce with Hezbollah last year, and it seized a buffer zone in southern Syria after President Assad’s regime was overthrown last December.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said his forces “will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria”.
He said that “unlike in the past” the military was “not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized”.
His comments could further complicate talks with Hamas over a ceasefire and the release of hostages.
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Gazans struggle to find bodies under rubble
On Wednesday, health officials said Israeli strikes in Gaza killed 22 people, including a girl who was less than a year old.
Fifty-nine hostages are still inside Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, after dozens of others were previously released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz. Pic: AP
Meanwhile, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Israel’s continued presence in some areas in Lebanon was “hindering” the Lebanese army’s full deployment as required by the ceasefire negotiated with Israel.
The war left over 4,000 people dead, many of them civilians.
Two Israeli drone strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday killed two people, the health ministry said. The United Nations said Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 70 civilians since the ceasefire took effect in November.
Read more:
Lack of rescue equipment leaves Gazans dying under rubble
A timeline of events since the 7 October attacks
Israel has said it must keep control of some areas to prevent a repeat of the Hamas attack that triggered the latest conflict in Gaza.
The war began when militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 51,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The figure includes more than 1,600 people killed since a ceasefire ended and Israel resumed its offensive last month to pressure Hamas to accept changes to the agreement.
The health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its total count but said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children.
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
The aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Another one of child victims of the attack
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
Read more:
Israeli air strike hits Gaza hospital
Red dye dumped into US embassy in Israel protest
Israel shot at ambulances over ‘perceived threat’
“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
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