Now the leap year has passed by for another for year, here are a bunch of interesting leap year factoids and other interesting snippets of information since its world book day that may have slipped you by.
Leap Year Facts
Firstly, How often does a leap year occur? Many would say its every 4 years, but that isn’t entirely true. Since keeping the calendars in sync isn’t quite as simple as just adding an extra day every 4 years, there are a few extra rules, which determine leap years.
- Firstly, there IS a leap year if the year number is divisible by 4
- BUT if the same year is divisible by 100 there IS NOT a leap year
- UNLESS the same year is divisible by 400 then our leap year is BACK ON!
That is why we had a leap year in 2000 but why there won’t be one in 2100
There are around 4 million people in the world who have a birthday on Feb 29th and when its not a leap year they can choose either between 28th of Feb or the 1st March
In some cultures leap year babies are considered to be special and thought to have unusual talents but in other cultures they are considered to be unlucky as they are thought to be more difficult to raise then there non-leap siblings.
And since its world book day today!
The world’s smallest book is Teeny Ted from Turnip Town and measures 0.07mm by 0.10mm
The world’s largest book is Bhutan: A visual Odyssey Across the Kingdom which measures 1.5m by 2m.
The world’s best selling book is the bible with an estimated 6 billion sales followed by Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tang with around 900 million sales.
The world’s largest bookshop is the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in New York City, which covers an area of 14,300m2 and has 12miles of shelves
The worlds largest library is the Library of Congress in Washington DC, USA which has 28 million books on 500miles of shelving. It would take 8 hours driving at a constant 70mph to pass them all!!
And finally the Official world book day is the 23rd of April, but due to the clashes with Easter many countries hold it earlier to avoid such potential issues!
