Dear All,
A Happy Leap Year Day to everyone. Should any reader be unfamiliar with my
four-yearly greeting, please look at the sundial list archive for Wed Feb
24 09:11:48 CET 2016 with the Thread Name "Happy Leap Year Day to everyone".
I was delighted, in 2012, to note that not a single
!
The Romans dealt with leap years by doubling
the length of the sixth day before the first
of March and this was referred to as:
ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martii
before day twice sixth first of March
It took a while before the fiction of a single
48-hour day was accepted as two
Dear Roser,
You are right that checking Wikipedia entries
in several languages is interesting. They all
make mistakes!!
Spanish: this entry is correct to say that
24 February is the extra day but has little
to say about the Latin. Curiously it mentions
the Italian word but asserts that this is
Just in case you are wondering why the 6th day before the 1st March isn't
February 23rd.
The Romans had no zero, so their counting system was different from the way
we do it.
Now Then
Mar 1 = 0 1st
Feb 28 = 1 2nd
Feb 27 = 2 3rd
Feb 26 = 3
King
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 7:59 AM
To: Sundial Mailing List ; frank.k...@cl.cam.ac.uk
Subject: Ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martii
Dear All,
A Happy Leap Year Day to everyone...
Those who think that I am a few days early
should read my little article in the December
issue
and this was referred to as:
ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martii
before day twice sixth first of March
It took a while before the fiction of a single
48-hour day was accepted as two ordinary days
and, importantly, it was the first of these
two days which was deemed the intercalary day
