Google published a Google Doodle about „why is there a leap day?“ on Februaray 29th 2016. On the Google homepage worldwide there was published the Leap Year 2016 Google Doodle.
A leap year is a year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.
Each leap year has 366 instead of 365 days. This happen because the astronomical year is not count in days and is a little bit longer than the seasonal year. A leap year take place every 4 years else if the year is divisible by 100 or 400.
A leap year is a year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By insertingan additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.
For example, in the Gregorian calendar, each leap year has 366 days instead of the usual 365, by extending February to 29 days rather than the common 28. Similarly, in the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, Adar Aleph, a 13th lunar month, is added seven times every 19 years to the twelve lunar months in its common years to keep its calendar year from drifting through the seasons.
The name “leap year” comes from the fact that while a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next, the day of the week in a leap year will advance two days due to the extra day added at the end of February. For example, Christmas fell on Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, and Thursday in 2003 but then “leapt” over Friday to fall on a Saturday in 2004.
On Februaray 29th, 2016 Google published a worldwide Google Doodle about the leap day 2016.