If you think January is a long month you’ll be pleased to hear it’s almost February at last! But there’s something different about this February – our trusty Heathhall Business Centre calendar tells us it has an extra day. Yes, 2020 is a leap year.
Summer in February
Why do we need leap years and what do they have to do with self storage? Well for a start, If there were no leap years, February would eventually become a summer month for we Northern Hemisphere dwellers. Blame Earth’s orbit around the sun, which takes approximately 365.25 days. It’s that .25 that creates the need for a leap year every four years.
Here on planet Earth, our calendars have to work hard to stay in sync with the natural rhythms of Earth’s orbit around the sun. That’s why leap days are added to the calendar to help synchronise it with Earth’s orbit.
During non-leap years, aka common years – like 2019 – the calendar doesn’t take into account the extra quarter of a day actually required by Earth to complete a single orbit around the sun.
Over time and without correction, the calendar year would drift away from the solar year and the drift would add up quickly. For example, without correction, the calendar year would be off by about one day after four years. It’d be off by about 25 days after 100 years. You can see that, if even more time were to pass without the leap year as a calendar correction, eventually February would be a summer month in the Northern Hemisphere.
Leap Year Marriage Proposals
We humans like to attach significance to these things and of course, there are leap year traditions which have stood the test of time. We’re all familiar with the – slightly old-fashioned and non-PC – tradition of the woman taking the leap day opportunity to ask her man to marry her but what you might not know is that if the man refuses, there’s a price to pay – almost literally!
If the man refuses, he then is obliged to give the woman money or buy her a dress. In some societies, they go a step further, and if the man refuses marriage, he then must buy 12 pairs of gloves for the woman, suggesting that the gloves are to hide the woman’s embarrassment of not having an engagement ring!
Check out our Tenant Directory
So what do leap years have to do with self storage? Nothing! We just thought it was an interesting topic for our leap month blog post…
Maybe you could use your leap day on 29th February to check out all that Heathhall Business Centre has to offer – see our tenant directory for inspiration!