7 Things you need to know about leap years

• 7 Things You Need to Know

on leap years

The onset of 2016, indicated in the Chinese calendar as the year of the Fire Monkey - a leap year. Since ancient times it was believed that a leap year brings misery and suffering.

We tell whether this really is.

The main difference from the rest of the leap year - the number of days in the year. Their - 366, that is, one day more than the usual year. Where did he come from? Tropical year lasts exactly 365 days, and 365 plus an additional 5 hours and 48 minutes. For four years, just run over the extra day.

The term "leap year" for the first time began to be used in the Roman Empire and was introduced by Julius Caesar. In Latin it was called "bissekstus" in Greek is pronounced "vissekstus" in Russia - "visokos". We added an extra day month of February. Later on February 29 has been called "Kasyanov's Day", in honor of the saint, who was known for his bad temper.

By the way, in the Jewish calendar, leap year is called the year, to which is added per month, not the day. The 19-year cycle has 12 common and 7 leap years.

It just so happened that a leap year anciently attributed to various disasters, catastrophes, disease and pestilence. However, scientists believe that the reason human fears - in themselves, in human psychology. After all, in nature there is no such thing as a "leap year" - he came up with people. And all folk beliefs associated with it, have no scientific basis. It has long been proven that the leap years in the number of natural disasters or "man-made" troubles are no different from the ordinary. Leap years have their own sad record. For example, in China, there was the strongest earthquake of February 2, 1556, in which 830,000 people died. A July 28, 1976 earthquake in the East China claimed 750,000 lives. The victims of a powerful earthquake in & n≈bsp; Ashgabat in 1948 were about 100 thousand people, and in 1988 from the disaster 23,000 people were killed in Armenia.

In 1912, the sinking "Titanic." On leap years fall and crash the French airliner "Concord", and the loss of the Russian submarine "Kursk", and more.

However, other natural disasters and human "creation" does not fall under the magic leap years. Strong volcanic explosion in 1815 in Indonesia "buried" 92,000 people. Devastating floods that happened in 1887 in China on the Yellow River, claimed the lives of 900 thousand people. A terrible cyclone in the history of recording weather observations in 1970 took the life of 500 thousand people in Bangladesh. And such examples can result in a lot. 1905 th, 1914 th, 1917 th, 1941 th years, which fell the most terrible and bloody upheaval in the history of the last century were not leap years.

So maybe it's not about magic numbers? The only ones who really "suffer" - born February 29, because they have to celebrate his birthday once every four years.