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by sierra_ann on August 16th, 2006

sierra_ann

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Why was there no leap year in 1900?

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  • by Jenniferocious on August 16th, 2006

    Jenniferocious

    1900 was not a leap year because 1900 is not divisible by 400.

    Read ahead for some good information about which years are leap years:

    In the Gregorian calendar, a normal year consists of 365 days. Because the actual length of a sidereal year (the time required for the Earth to revolve once about the Sun) is actually 365.2422 days, a "leap year" of 366 days is used once every four years to eliminate the error caused by three normal (but short) years. This would make any year that is evenly divisible by 4 a leap year: for example, 1988, 1992, and 1996 are leap years.

    However, there is still a small error that must be accounted for (because the extra amount of days in the sidereal year are not quite a quarter day... .2422 is less than .25). To eliminate this error, the Gregorian calendar stipulates that a year that is evenly divisible by 100 (for example, 1900) is a leap year only if it is also evenly divisible by 400.

    For this reason, the following years ARE NOT leap years
    1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600
    because they are evenly divisible by 100 but NOT by 400.

    The following years ARE leap years
    1600, 2000, 2400
    because they are evenly divisible by both 100 and 400.
    -------------------------------
    The above information was taken from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=214019 ...
    EXCEPT, as Bob pointed out... their 365.25etc number for how many days are in a year appears to be incorrect. I changed that one item in the answer above to reflect the number of days the website below uses for its calculation, which seems to be more correct. Bob's comments make sense.

    http://www.timeanddate.com/date/leapyear.html

    Comments

    • Good answer! Though I did not know people went to Microsoft support to report the leap years as a problem or something to them lol. I learned a lot of things from this answer :)

      donovan reynolds.

      by donovan reynolds. on August 16th, 2006

    • The arrangement of leap years, as described in this answer (and which I think is correct) is consistent with a “real” year being 365.2425 days.

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on October 5th, 2006

    • But, as this answer explains, we actually get slightly less than one leap year out of every four.  This only makes sense if a “real” year is slightly LESS than 365.25 days. …

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on October 5th, 2006

    • If a “real” year was very slightly more than 365.25 days (such as the 365.25635 claimed in this answer) then we would occastionally need an extra leap year, in addition to the one year out of every four. …

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on October 5th, 2006

    • If a “real” year was exactly 365.25 days, then a leap year every four years would correct this exactly. …

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on October 5th, 2006

    • Numbers in this answer don't make sense. …

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on October 5th, 2006

    • Wikipedia says a year is 365.242375 days... http://leapyearday.com/hr/why.html says a year is 365.24219 days... whatever... so long as the seasons come on time... I'll be happy!

      Persky Bunkermeister

      by Persky Bunkermeister on October 7th, 2006

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