Though February 2015 fitted superbly on the calendar page, it is not necessary to always fit. This lack of days, this craziness of the annum is the Romans’ decision. Here is the interesting story of why February has only 28 days.
Romulus,the first king of Rome, had an issue with the growing number of festivals, banquets, military ceremonies, and cultural celebrations to keep record of. Romans wanted a calendar to arrange all of them. Ancient astronomers already had perfect strategies for the time between 2 solar equinoxes. However nature had offered people a good, easy pie chart in the sky to track the movement of time, so early Rome, to get rid of this, made effort to own a lunar calendar.
The calendar had 10 months of either 30 or 31 days, starting from March to December, and we could still look at the traces of that calendar today. However, they ended up with a problem shows that year was a short of small number of days for four seasons. Romans were engaged in some other works so they did not bother dying while winter to count those 61 and a 1/4 extra day. They’d simply started the next year on the new moon days before the spring equinox. It is basically not a bad system, unless you do not have to figure out what day it is in the middle of December and March.
Thus the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, wanted something else. Even numbers were regarded as the bad luck in Ancient Rome, so Numa decided to remove a day from all the even-numbered months. And being crazy for Luna, Numa desired to have his calendar must cover 12 cycles of the moon, but that was also a even number, so the calendar was ended up with 355. Numa shared the rest into 2 months and arranged them on to the end of the year. So, that’s the reason why February has 28 days.
But again it is an even number, so the month was devoted to spiritual purification. Romans agree to have that one slide.
But, they could not alter the rules of the universe, and neither of these calendars seem reasonable anywhere in regard to the orbit of the sun.
Actually, February was split in 2 parts. The first 23 days was considered as a part and the remaining as second part.
Every year, Numa’s mythical calendar would be inappropriate with the seasons by a few more 10 days. Thus, every other year, the final few days of February were disregarded and a twenty seven day leap month was included after February 23rd or 24th.
This manner every 4 years would average out to 366 and a ¼ day.
When Julius Caesar came to power, things had gone very confusing. so in 46 BC, he changed the Rome’s lunar calendar to a solar calendar. January and February were moved to the starting of the year, and Caesar included 10 days to different months to obtain a total of 365. Because of the tropical year is a somewhat longer than 365 days, Julius included a leap day every
4 years, but they inserted it after February 23 that is in the middle of the month.
February, which is now at top of the calendar, kept its 28/29 days. We can only consider it’s because Julies Caesar, like many other people before and after Caesar, just desired it to be March.
