. This huge meridian sundial once stood on the Campus Martius in Rome, its calendrical functionality a constant reminder of Augustus’ greatness.
But the Julian calendar was not perfect either, since the year was in fact just a little bit shorter than 365.25 days. Pope Gregory corrected this mistake in hisof 1582. As well as adding a leap day every four years, he also opted to lose three days every 400 years. This was a Catholic decision, which Protestant and Orthodox calendars resisted for some time. Greece was the last country to accept the Gregorian reform in 1923.
The year 2000, for example, was a leap year, since it was divisible by four. But since it was also divisible by 400, the dropping of the extra day every 100 years was not carried out. This long-term solution creates an average year length of 365.2425 days, still slightly off the required target of 365.2421897 days, making even this complicated modern arrangement incorrect by one day over a period of just under 4,000 years.
This error is not to be confused with why we sometimes include leap seconds at the end of June or December. This correction influences only the length of the day. It is also not trivial, not done in any regular fashion and is determined by the deviation of the calendar by the. Since this adjustment is so small it is influenced by the general slowing down of the Earth’s rotation and the complex system of all the solar system bodies upon Earth.
So not only are leap years the result of millennia of mathematical work, they are also the consequence of rulers imposing their will on people’s day to day lives, and the gradual understanding of our place in the universe. Controlling calendars means controlling the rhythms of a culture – which is something for all of us to think about on February 29.
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