Leapers
You've got to feel sorry for people born on February 29th, only getting to celebrate a real birthday every four years.
I suppose the most famous usage in fiction of such a birthday is from The Pirates Of Penzance, so let's hear a selection.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:15 AM
5 Comments:
Happy 12th birthday Professor Volokh!
Here are the lyrics from the song "A Paradox" from the show, that explain the dilemma:
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence – I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy –
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover,
That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you’re only five and a little bit over!
Dear me!
Let’s see! (counting on fingers)
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I’ve been alive.
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
The Roman calendar originally didn't even have the months of January and February. There were ten months -- March through December -- which alternated 30 and 31 days each. Then there were approximately 60 days that were not part of any month. Presumably in the earliest era the length of this block wasn't based on a fixed pattern; rather, each year the best astronomers would have to decide exactly when March 1 would be.
Later they partitioned the non-month block into January and February, and February retained the variable length.
In school I was taught that the 30-31 day alternation was broken in July and August because Caesar Augustus wanted his month to be as long as Julius Caesar's. But that's a myth.
A myth which the BBC published as "Leap Day Facts" today
You can see in the etymology of September, October, November and December that they used to be the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months.
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