Happy Leap Day! We get a limited number of February 29ths in our lives, so all of us here at the library hope you will enjoy this one. The next time that Leap Day will fall on a Wednesday will be 2040, which will be the 73rd anniversary of Moraine Valley.
Check our this Christian Science Monitor article, “Leap year: why we have a need for the occasional Feb. 29” for an explanation of Leap Year. You may also want to take a peak at “Leap Year” in the Encyclopedia Britannica (MVCC ID required).
The invention of the modern calendar took 1000s of years, but it allows people to accomplish so many tasks. It nails down our understanding of time into measurable segments based on regular astronomical patterns. There is a GREAT book in the library’s college by Duncan Steel called Marking time : the epic quest to invent the perfect calendar. It will make you see our calendar, which we use everyday, in a new light. Very cool.