Something Extra: Why Is There A February 29th?

MIAMI (CBS4) - One curse of presidential campaigns is that they take place in leap years, so we're condemned to an extra day of the endless political season.

But what would happen if we didn't have leap years?

In two words: calendar chaos.  Within a few hundred years we'd see bikinis on Christmas, fur coats on the fourth of July.

The problem? The earth takes 365.24 days to circle the sun.

Julius Caesar's calendar almost figured out how to deal with that extra twenty four percent of day, but not quite.

By the 1500s, the Julian calendar had gotten skewed by almost two weeks, so Easter was coming early, slipping back into winter from spring.

Enter Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.  His calendar introduced leap years and a February 29th every four years except for turn-of-the- century years that aren't divisible by four hundred. Got that?

So-called "leapsters" or "29ers" lined up at 4 a.m. at Disneyworld because it's celebrating by staying open twenty four hours today.

Today is the birthday of about five million people worldwide.

Happy birthday.  I'm sorry you'll have to wait four years for the next one, but remember, it's all for a good cause.