Bob ... I think you hit on something again. You do this all the time. Having to backtrack after your post. Something made sense .... scary when things make sense.
It was the Gregorian calendar reform. The Roman calendar system initiated by Julius Caesar, I guess, (it’s named after him), did not properly deal with the leftover hours at the end of Earth’s circuit of days around the sun.
Informally, we call a year 365.25 days. That gives us a leap year every four years, with February having 29 days when Presidents assume office. Or something like that.
But that doesn’t take care of a few odd minutes. Whoever did the calculations, sans calculator, for Pope Gregory, was a genius. Among other things, every four hundred years we have a leap year as usual, but on ordinary century marks, like 1900 and the next one, 2100, we do not have a leap year.
That’s right. The year twenty-one hundred will not be a leap year. Mark your calendars.
I like to get people nodding their heads in understanding, as I hold forth on aspects of my belief system.
Then, when I see that happening, I hit them with a vision of such astonishing ramifications that their eyes start rolling back in their heads.
And that is when I smile ...