Today in History - February 29
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A year that is evenly divisible by 100 is not a leap
year
unless it also is evenly divisible by 400.
Explanation: The time required for Earth to make one lap around the
sun -- to go from vernal equinox to vernal equinox -- is approximately
365.2422 days. Because the period of 365 days that our calendar assigns
to the basic year falls approximately 0.2422 of a day short of the time
it actually takes to orbit the sun, the calendar adds one day to every
fourth year. This quadrennial "leap year" causes the average duration
of
a year to be approximately 365.2500 days. Because this quadrennial
adjustment
overshoots its goal by approximately 0.0078 of one day, the calendar
"skips"
the quadrennial adjustment at the turn of each century. This centennial
"re-adjustment" causes the average duration of a year -- over the long
run -- to be approximately 365.2400 days. Because this centennial
readjustment
overshoots its goal by approximately 0.0022 of one day, the calendar
"un-skips"
the centennial re-adjustment once every four centuries. This
quadricentennial
"re-re-adjustment" causes the average duration of a year -- over the
very
long run -- to be approximately 365.2425 days. All of this has the
effect
of reducing the difference between our calendar and our actual orbit
around
the sun to approximately 0.0003 of a day -- about 26 seconds.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A2)(Internet)
HISTORY OF LEAP YEAR: Roman Emperor Julius Caesar took
the first stab at fixing the calendar when dates were no longer in sync
with the seasons. First, he created one extra-long year – 445 days – to
get things back on track. He followed that with a pattern of three
365-day years and one 366-day year – leap year. Fifteen centuries
later, though, the calendar was off-kilter again. It turns out that
Caesar’s plan created three extra leap years every 400 years. So in
1582, Pope Gregory XIII came up with a way to fix the problem. That
year, the calendar jumped from October 4 to October 15. Gregory also
set up a new rule to get rid of those three extra leap years. Under the
Gregorian calendar, only century years divisible by 400 are leap years.
One in 1,461 people are "Leapies," born on Leap Year Day. There are
approximately 200,000 people in the United States with Leap Year Day
birthdays and 4 million in the world. Leap year happens only in years
in which January 1 and December 31 of the same year fall on different
days of the week. The Henriksen family of Stavanger, Norway, has three
siblings born on consecutive Leap Year Days – Heidi on February 29,
1960; Olav on February 29, 1964; and Leif-Martin on February 29, 1968.
45 BC
Feb 29, The first Leap Day was recognized by
proclamation of Julius Caesar. Under the old Roman calendar the last
day of February was the last day of the year.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1288 Feb 29, Scotland made it
legal for women to propose to men. The Scottish Parliament passed a
Leap Year Act whereby women could propose to men. The tradition had
begun in 5th century Ireland.
(SFEC, 6/8/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1468 Pope Paul III was born.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1504 Feb 29, Christopher Columbus,
stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a
correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into
providing food for his crew.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1692 Feb 29, Sarah Goode and
Tituba were accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, sparking the
hysteria that started the Salem Witch Trials.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1712 Feb 29, Marquis Louis Joseph
de Montcalm, Commander of French Forces in North America during French
and Indian War, was born. [see Feb 8]
(HN, 2/29/00)
1736 Feb 29, Anna Lee, founder of
the Shaker movement in America, was born.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1784 Feb 29, Marquis de Sade was
transferred from Vincennes fortress to the Bastille.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1792 Feb 29, The composer
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (d.1868) was born in Pesaro, Italy. His work
included the opera “La Donna del Lago,” based on the Walter Scott
romance “The lady of the Lake.”
(WUD, 1994, p.1246)(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)(AP,
2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)
1796 Feb 29, President Washington
proclaimed Jay's Treaty in effect; it settled some outstanding
differences with Great Britain.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1841 Feb 29, John Philip Holland
(b.1840), inventor of the modern submarine, was born in Liscannor,
County Clare, into a family that had survived the Great Potato Famine.
Following his immigration to America in 1873, Holland settled in
Paterson, New Jersey where he taught school and, with financial backing
from the Irish Fenian Society, began developing his first submarine. In
1881, Holland launched the Fenian Ram, a 31-foot-long submersible
powered by a 15-horsepower internal combustion engine. With Holland at
the controls, the Ram dived 64 feet beneath New York Harbor that
summer, only to be seized by the Fenians when they lost interest in the
project. In 1895, the J.P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company, won a contract
from the U.S. Navy to build a submarine. After one discouraging
failure, the second submarine, the Holland VI, passed her sea trials
and was purchased by the U.S. Navy on April 11, 1900 for $150,000. [see
Feb 24]
(HN, 2/29/00)
1856 Feb 29, Hostilities in
Russo-Turkish war ceased.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1860 Feb 29, Herman Hollerith,
inventor of a tabulation mechanism (1864) that was a forerunner to the
computer, was born.
(HN, 2/29/00)(WSJ, 3/21/00, p.A20)
1864 Feb 29, Union Brig. Gen.
Judson Kilpatrick split his forces at the Rapidan River ordering Col.
Ulric Dahlgren to lead 500 men his men to Goochland Court House, while
the remainder followed Kilpatrick in his raid on Richmond.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1864 Feb 29, Lt. William B.
Cushing led a landing party from the USS Monticello to Smithville, NC,
in an attempt to capture Confederate Brig. Gen. Louis Hebert, only to
discover that Hebert and his men had already moved on Wilmington.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1868 Feb 29, British Prime
Minister Benjamin Disreali formed his first cabinet.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1896 Feb 29, A person born on this
day would have celebrated their first birthday in 1904. The year 1896
was a leap year, thus February had 29 days. The next leap year was not
until 1904. Leap years, which have 366 days instead of the common 365,
are those years divisible by four, except centesimal (those ending in
00) years unless they are divisible by 400. Therefore, three of every
four centesimal years are common years, including 1900.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1904 Feb 29, Jimmy Dorsey
(d.1957), orchestra leader, was born in Shenandoah, Pa.
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1904 Feb 29, President Theodore
Roosevelt appointed a seven-member commission to hasten completion of
the Panama Canal.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1908 Feb 29, The artist known as
Balthus was born in Paris.
(AP, 2/29/08)
1916 Feb 29, Dinah Shore, actress
and singer, was born. [see Mar 1, 1917]
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1924 Feb 29, Al Rosen, baseball
player, was born.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1936 Feb 29, Jack R. Lousma,
astronaut, was born.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1940 Feb 29, Hattie McDaniel was
the first African American to win an Academy Award--best supporting
actress--for her performance in Gone With The Wind, which won a total
of 8 Oscars.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1940 Feb 29, "Gone with the Wind"
won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939. Victor
Fleming was named best director, Vivien Leigh best actress, and Hattie
McDaniel best supporting actress, the first black performer to receive
an Oscar. Best actor went to Robert Donat for "Goodbye, Mr. Chips."
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1944 Feb 29, Dorothy Vredenburgh
accepted an appointment by the Democratic National Committee becoming
the first woman secretary of a national political party in the U.S.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1944 Feb 29, US forces caught
Japanese troops off-guard and easily took control of the Admiralty
Islands in Papua New Guinea.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1952 Feb 29, The first pedestrian
"Walk/Don't Walk" signs were installed at 44th Street and Broadway at
Times Square.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1956 Feb 29, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower announced he would seek a second term.
(AP, 2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)
1960 Feb 29, the first Playboy
Club, featuring waitresses clad in "bunny" outfits, opened in Chicago.
Hugh Hefner closed the corporate-owned clubs in 1986, calling them
"passe."
(AP, 2/29/00)
1960 Feb 29, An 5.7 earthquake in
Morocco's southwest Atlantic coast killed as many as 12,000. The town
of Agadir destroyed.
(AP, 2/25/04)
1964 Feb 29, President Lyndon B.
Johnson revealed that the U.S. secretly developed the Lockheed A-11 jet
fighter.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1968 Feb 29, At the Grammy Awards,
the Fifth Dimension's "Up, Up and Away" won record of the year for
1967, while album of the year honors went to the Beatles for "Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1968 Feb 29, President Johnson's
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the
Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move
"toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
(AP, 2/29/00)
1968 Feb 29, Robert McNamara
resigned as US Secretary of Defense as a result of the Tet disaster. He
was succeeded by Clark Clifford for 9 months who worked to reverse US
policy in Vietnam.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.A2)
1968 Feb 29, The discovery of the
first "pulsar," a star which emits regular radio waves, was announced
by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell at Cambridge, England.
(AP, 2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)
1972 Feb 29, Henry "Hank" Aaron
became the first baseball player to sign a baseball contract for
$200,000 a year.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1980 Feb 29, Pres. Carter signed a
law that renamed the Arctic National Wildlife Range to the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and more than doubled its size. The law
directed the Interior Dept. to assess oil potential in 1.5 million
acres of the coastal plain. A ban was put on drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge. In 2002 Pres. Bush pushed to overturn the
ban. Estimates on oil there ranged from 3.2 to at least 5.7 billion
barrels.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A9)(SSFC, 8/28/05,
p.A13)(http://tinyurl.com/2udcgx)
1980 Feb 29, former Israeli
foreign minister Yigal Allon, who had played an important role in the
Jewish state's fight for independence, died at age 61.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1984 Feb 29, Liberace's palimony
suit was thrown out of court.
(SFC, 2/29/00,
p.A1)(www.bobsliberace.com/decades/1980s/1980s.html)
1984 Feb 29, Canadian Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau announced he was stepping down after
more than 15 years in power.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1984 Feb 29-1984 Mar 1, In one of
the largest battles of the Iran-Iraq war, the two armies clashed and
inflicted more than 25,000 fatalities on each other.
(www.iranchamber.com/history/iran_iraq_war/iran_iraq_war2.php)
1984 Feb 29, In Switzerland a
court ruled that the villagers of Zermatt owned the Matterhorn.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1988 Feb 29, A Nazi document was
discovered that implicated participation of Austrian president and
former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in WWII deportations.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1988 Feb 29, South African
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders were arrested while
kneeling near Parliament with a petition against government bans on
anti-apartheid groups. All were freed hours later.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1992 Feb 29, Muslims and Croats in
Bosnia-Herzegovina began casting ballots in an independence referendum;
Serbs boycotted the vote, calling it illegal.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1996 Feb 29, About 30 television
and entertainment industry executives met with President Clinton at the
White House, where they promised to devise a TV ratings system.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1996 Feb 29, Daniel Green was
convicted in Lumberton, N.C., of murdering James R. Jordan, the father
of basketball star Michael Jordan, during a 1993 roadside holdup. Green
was sentenced to life in prison; an accomplice who had testified
against him, Larry Demery, is also serving a life sentence.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1996 Feb 29, A Peruvian commercial
jetliner crashed in the Andes, killing all 123 people on board.
(AP, 2/29/00)
2000 Feb 29, George W. Bush beat
John McCain in Virginia, Washington and North Dakota primaries. Al Gore
beat Bill Bradley in Washington.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 29, Sparky Anderson was
elected to the baseball Hall of Fame along with Turkey Stearnes of the
Negro leagues and 19th-century second baseman Bid McPhee.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2000 Feb 29, Doris Haddock (90),
known as "Granny D." completed a 3,200 mile trek to Washington from
California to urge Congress to enact reforms.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A3)
2000 Feb 29, In Michigan a
6-year-old boy shot and killed Kayla Rolland (6) with a .32 caliber
semiautomatic after a quarrel in the Theo J. Buell Elementary School in
Flint. Jamelle James (19), the owner of the stolen gun, was later
arraigned on a manslaughter charge.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 29, The Algerian army
began a crack down on Islamic militants following the massacre of 25
shepherds near Brezina. Over the next 3 weeks they killed 35 militants
around El-Bayadh and Ghardaia.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 29, In Chechnya 84
Russian paratroopers were killed after rebels attacked a guard post
near Ulus Kert. Most of the soldiers were from Pskov. Many were
suspected to have died from Russian artillery called in after the
position was overrun.
(SFC, 3/11/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 29, In India the
government announced a 28.2% increase in military spending, tax
increase on higher income people and cuts in government payroll.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A13)
2000 Feb 29, Israel released the
1961 prison memoir of Adolph Eichmann.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A12)
2000 Feb 29, In Nigeria the
government made an agreement with northern leaders to stop enforcing
Shariah where it was in effect and to not adopt it in other regions for
the time being due to recent clashes.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A14)
2000 Feb 29, In Zimbabwe former
guerrillas invaded white-owned farms and occupied at least 36 with no
official interference.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A14)
2004 Feb 29, In the Academy Awards
"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" won a record-tying 11
awards, taking best picture and sweeping each of its categories. Sean
Penn took the best-actor prize as a vengeful father in "Mystic River,"
and Charlize Theron won for best actress as serial killer Aileen
Wuornos in "Monster." Supporting-performance Oscars went to Tim Robbins
as a man emotionally hamstrung by childhood trauma in "Mystic River"
and Renee Zellweger as a hardy Confederate survivor in "Cold Mountain."
(AP, 3/1/04)
2004 Feb 29, Jerome Lawrence (88),
playwright, died. His 39 plays included “Auntie Mame.”
(SFC, 12/28/04, p.D1)
2004 Feb 29, In central China a
bus carrying migrant workers to faraway factory jobs plunged off a
mountain road, killing 12 and injuring 35.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, In Germany Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder's party was handed a stinging defeat by voters in
Hamburg in elections reflecting the pent-up anger over his push to cut
cherished state benefits.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Haiti's Pres.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and flew into exile. The capital fell
into chaos, and the US said international peacekeepers, including
Americans, would be deployed soon. Boniface Alexandre, the Supreme
Court Justice, took over as interim president. PM Yvon Neptune
continued as head of the government. Guy Philippe (36), head of a band
of former exiled soldiers, said his forces would stop fighting.
(AP, 2/29/04)(ST, 3/2/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 29, Israel's Supreme
Court ordered the government to suspend work for one week on a section
of the West Bank security barrier, an attorney said, while security
forces arrested three Palestinian youths who planned an attack.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Japan's agriculture
minister slammed a senior poultry industry executive for failing to
report the deaths of tens of thousands of chickens on his farm, where
officials have confirmed the country's third outbreak of bird flu.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2004 Feb 29, Spain averted a
bombing by the Basque separatist group ETA after the Civil Guard
stopped a small truck and found about 1,100 pounds of bomb-making
chemicals.
(AP, 2/29/04)
2008 Feb 29, The Ninth US circuit
Court of appeals ruled that the US Navy must protect endangered whales
from the potentially lethal effects of underwater sonar during
anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast, rejecting
Pres. Bush’s attempt to exempt the exercises from environmental laws.
(SSFC, 3/2/08, p.A2)
2008 Feb 29, A divided Virginia
Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal
spamming, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate
free-speech rights.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, At the annual TED
conference in Monterey, Ca., writer Dave Eggers, cosmologist Neil Turok
and religious scholar Karen Armstrong received awards and then made
wishes to the TED community. Eggers wished that community members
engage a local school and seek transformative change.
(SFC, 3/1/08, p.C1)
2008 Feb 29, In southern
Afghanistan Taliban militants blew up a telecommunications tower
following a warning to phone companies to shut down the towers at night
or face attack.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, Algerian security
forces chased some 30 Islamic insurgents planting roadside bombs back
into their refuge east of the Algiers.
(AP, 3/2/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Belgium lawyers
said Belgian writer Misha Defonseca (71) has admitted that she made up
her best-selling memoir, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,"
depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in
the woods during the Holocaust.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Brazil police
killed six alleged drug gang members in Rio de Janeiro, while a
bodyguard for the state security chief was shot dead what appeared to
be an attempted robbery.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, The British military
decided to pull Prince Harry out of Afghanistan "immediately" after
news of his deployment leaked out in foreign media.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, China agreed to
release sensitive records about missing US soldiers and establish a hot
line to the Pentagon.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, France and
energy-hungry South Africa signed three economic accords, including one
for the construction of a 1.36-billion euro coal-fuelled power plant by
French energy giant Alstom.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Ghana 9 Nigerians
were sentenced to 5 years each for faking e-mails and letters,
including one from the Ghanaian president, to dupe a Frenchman out of
$185,000.
(AFP, 3/10/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Guatemala an
overcrowded bus plunged off a highway and rolled into a gully, killing
45 people and injuring 20 more.
(AP, 3/1/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Iraq gunmen killed
3 people and abducted Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho (65) soon
after he left Mass in Mosul, the latest in what church members called a
series of attacks against Iraq's small Christian community. A British
serviceman was killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq, taking the
Britain’s death toll since the start of the conflict to 175.
(AP, 3/1/08)(AFP, 3/1/08)
2008 Feb 29, Italy’s Eni SpA
signed a major oil production agreement with Venezuela. Last month Eni
said it had reached a compensation deal in which Venezuela agreed to a
payment in excess of $700 million.
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.A5)
2008 Feb 29, Hundreds of Serb
police in Kosovo vowed not to follow the orders of the
Albanian-dominated force after the territory split from Serbia.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, Hezbollah denounced
the deployment of US warships off Lebanon and said it won't be
intimidated. The US-backed Lebanese government distanced itself from
the military move.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Pakistan a suicide
bomber killed at least 44 people and injured up to 90 in Peshawar. In
the Swat Valley a police officer was killed in the northwestern Lakki
Marwat district in a bomb blast along with three others. Later in the
day during funeral ceremonies a suicide bomber rammed his car into a
security vehicle, killing a civilian, a security official and injuring
21 others.
(AFP, 3/1/08)
2008 Feb 29, Peruvian officials
arrested seven members from the Coordinadora Continental Bolivariana, a
Venezuela-based leftist movement, including the group's alleged leader,
Roque Gonzalez, who spent eight years in prison for kidnapping a
Bolivian politician. Two more alleged members were arrested on March 17
trying to carry in $65,000 from Ecuador, money Peruvian authorities
suspect is Venezuelan. Coordinadora founder Fernando Rivero told The
Associated Press in Venezuela that the group is entirely autonomous.
(AP, 3/22/08)
2008 Feb 29, Two former Philippine
presidents, once bitter foes, joined tens of thousands of protesters at
a rally to press for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's resignation
over a raging corruption scandal.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, In Sri Lanka a
suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew himself up injuring 7 people
as police tried to search his house in the heavily-guarded Sri Lankan
capital. In a massive search carried out shortly afterwards, police
recovered six powerful Claymore mines, the type commonly used by Tamil
Tiger rebels, from a house in the same area of Colombo.
(AFP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, Turkey's military
said it has ended a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in Iraq,
but said that foreign influence did not play a role in its decision.
(AP, 2/29/08)
2008 Feb 29, The UN refugee agency
said that 3,000 refugees from Darfur have arrived in Chad in the last
week, bringing the total number to over 13,000 in February alone.
(AFP, 2/29/08)
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