A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.
For example, in the Gregorian calendar (common calendar), February in a leap year has 29 days instead of the usual 28 so the year lasts 366 days instead of the usual 365. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in...
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A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.
For example, in the Gregorian calendar (common calendar), February in a leap year has 29 days instead of the usual 28 so the year lasts 366 days instead of the usual 365. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an 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.
In the Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, most years that are divisible by 4 are leap years. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to...
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