The Math of Leap Days

The extra, or "bissextile" day is actually inserted immediately after February 23.

The Romans picked up the Egyptians' idea of treating a common year as 360+5 days, since 360 is a highly composite number and all (the Mayans ended up doing the same). But instead of treating the extra 5 days as "epagomenal" (outside any month), they were treated as the last five days before the first month of spring, i. e. the last five days of February.

Treating the five-day block of Feb 24 through Feb 28 as inviolate meant i

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/tZEzwewSvO0/the-math-of-leap-days

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