Tomorrow is a leap day, something we have every four years, give or take. An extra day to the short month of February. The unfortunate souls who are born tomorrow will have to choose whether they celebrate their birthdays on Feb. 28, or March 1. As they grow older, celebrating your birthday every four years becomes more appealing. What 44 year old wouldn't want to be 11?

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be born on a leap year. How about getting married on leap day? Lots of symbolism there (Taking the leap to marriage) and you would only have to give a gift every four years.

Sounds a bit more cheap and gimmicky. Besides, if you have had the extraordinary good fortune to have your marriage last 40 years, you really wouldn't want to say you had only been married 10 years.

Don't believe me? Ask someone who has been married 40 years, and they will clue you in.

So, what's the deal with this whole leap year, besides moving hoildays an extra day later in the week? Who came up with this concept?

For those of you who weren't paying attention in elementary school when you were more than likely taught this lesson, here's a refresher.

Leap years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the earth's revolutions around the sun. The vernal equinox is the time when the sun is directly above the Earth's equator, moving from the southern to the northern hemisphere.

The mean time between two successive vernal equinoxes is called a tropical year--also known as a solar year--and is about 365.2422 days long.

Using a calendar with 365 days every year would result in a loss of 0.2422 days, or almost six hours per year. After 100 years, this calendar would be more than 24 days ahead of the season.

By adding a leap year approximately every fourth year, the difference between the calendar and the seasons can be reduced significantly, and the calendar will align with the seasons much more accurately.

The Julian calendar was used for many years, but it introduced too many leap days, increasing the amount of days between the the equinoxes. So, in 325 AD, a big meeting was held to hash out a new calendar. To properly realign the number of days between the equinoxes, a number of days had to be dropped. However, it wasn't until 1582 that the present day Gregorian calendar was adopted by Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. They dropped 10 days from October to make the whole thing work. Great Britian and its colonies (including us) did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, dropping 11 days. Sweden and Finland had a "double" leap year in 1712. Two days were added to February--creating a date of February 30, 1712.

Not fun times to be calendar publishers.

I was listening to a radio program discussing astronomy and the scientists were discussing the importance of moons in relation to planets and what would happen if a moon was somehow destroyed. For the large gas giants in our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus it would be rather insignificant.

For the earth, it would be disastrous. The moon, in addition to regulating the tides, acts as a counter balance to the earth's rotation, keeping our days at about 24 hours, give or take a few seconds. Without the moon, scientists estimate our solar day would be much shorter -- 10 hours was the estimate that was given.

Can you imagine a 10 hour day? Some people work that many hours now, but a shift of this magnitude would give an entirely new meaning to the phrase "working day and night."

Enjoy your "leap day."

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.