{"id":784,"date":"2016-02-29T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=784"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:55:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:55:37","slug":"leap-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/leap-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Leap Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the Julian calendar in order to bring the date for celebrating&nbsp;Easter closer in line with the date the early Church had celebrated it. He removed 10 days, skipping from October 4 to&nbsp;October 15, 1582, established February 29 as the official day to be added&nbsp;during a leap year, revised how leap years were determined, and also set January 1 as the first day of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although most Catholic countries adopted these reforms after they were enacted in 1582 by the papal bull\u00a0<em>Inter\u00a0gravissimas<\/em>, Protestant and Orthodox countries resisted. England\u00a0and her colonies did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until almost two centuries later as this excerpt from the <a href=\"https:\/\/findit.library.nd.edu\/Record\/002740099\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1752 edition of\u00a0<em>Poor Richard Improved<\/em><\/a>, an almanac published by Benjamin Franklin,\u00a0explains<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-797\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"939\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r-1024x939.jpg\" alt=\"BOO_002740099-01v_02r\" class=\"wp-image-797\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r-1024x939.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r-300x275.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r-768x704.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-01v_02r.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-799\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"939\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r-1024x939.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-798\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r-1024x939.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r-300x275.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r-768x704.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-02v-03r.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-799\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"939\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r-1024x939.jpg\" alt=\"BOO_002740099-04v-05r\" class=\"wp-image-799\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r-1024x939.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r-300x275.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r-768x704.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/files\/2016\/02\/BOO_002740099-04v-05r.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the Julian calendar in order to bring the date for celebrating&nbsp;Easter closer in line with the date the early Church had celebrated it. He removed 10 days, skipping from October 4 to&nbsp;October 15, 1582, established February 29 as the official day to be added&nbsp;during a leap year, revised how &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/leap-day\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Leap Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75052],"tags":[77938,77948,77931],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-history-culture","tag-book","tag-otd-holidays","tag-printed-ephemera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11656,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/11656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}