Friday, February 27, 2004
About time [3300]
Our Gregorian calendar includes one leap year every four years, except in century years not divisible by 400. That's a total of 97 extra days every 400 years, making an average year length of 365.2425 days. Very very close to the correct length of 365.24219 days, but still not exactly correct. Pope Gregory was only out by 26 seconds a year, but those few seconds add up to one whole day every 3300 years. Not a problem we're ever going to have to worry about, but in a few millennia someone's going to need to drop an extra February 29th to kick the calendar back in line.
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