Talk:February 30

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!!Were there any months with __31 days__ in February?

Yes, until Julius and Augustus Caesar took them away to make July and August 31 days. RickK 04:23, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This is probably a myth, albeit a very old one. There is no historical evidence for the claim that Augustus changed the days in February. Claus T 13:26, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Why does February have less days than all other months?

There is theory/comments going around that February has less days because in the Book of Job 3:1-10, Job cursed the day he was born and asked the Lord to blot out that day, let it not be known. Please provide feedback and any proof/evidence you may find in history. - (unsigned)

This is just something someone made up. It's wrong. Job was speaking figuratively about his personal misery, rather than concretely about calendar reform. The Book of Job was written about 470 B.C. The author would not have been using a Roman calendar. In any case, February was introduced into the Roman calendar by Pompilius (c. 715-673 BC), and moved to its position between January and March in 450 B.C. The length of February was set at 28 days by Julius Caesar in 45 BC - without reference to Job. It is also sometimes said that Augustus shortened February to lengthen the month named after him, August. It's also not true. -- Nunh-huh

The Job thing is a joke. You're right, Nunh-huh, the author of Job would have used the Jewish calendar not the Roman. Jess Cully 00:00, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

was there February 30 in France after The French Revolution?

Kind of yes. All month in the French Republican Calendar had 30 days, however there was no February anymore, but the two months Pluviôse and Ventôse, the first one till February 19-21, and the second covering the last few days of February. So more a no... andy 19:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sweden

Why didn't the Swedes continue carrying out their plan to drop the leap days in February 1704 and 1708? --Metropolitan90 16:31, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Good question! My guess is that they just forgot. Others think that the Swedes soon realised in 1700 that they were out of step with everyone else in the world, and that they'd be better off going back to the Julian or adopting the Gregorian ASAP (though that doesn't explain why it took them till 1712 to get round to it). Jess Cully 00:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Climate Models

Climate Models often simplify things by having 12 months of 30 days.

[1]

Not sure whether this is worth a mention in this article though. crandles 21:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

This is probably worth a mention. Feel free to add information regarding it if you'd like, since you're the climate expert. --Randy 05:24, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Notice a link on the page goes to a non-existant page, http://www.metoffice.com/research/hadleycentre/models/GDT/ch23.html Not looked to see if the proper connection would be found. Brian 81.174.167.128 20:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Recovered from Wayback Machine. — Joe Kress 07:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A Future February 30

I remember reading something around 1999-2000 that sometime between 3000-3999 AD there will be a February 30, in order to keep the sun and calenar together. If this is so, we need to add it to this page.--Bedford 04:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. I think there will be a need to have an extra day but this is likely to take the form of a 29th Feb on a year when there wouldn't otherwise be one. crandles 21:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
We just had such a year in 2000 - every 100th year is not a leap year, but every 400th is. On the other habd the year is getting (I think) longer so eventually months may need to bumped up in days. Rich Farmbrough 22:46 14 March 2006 (UTC).
No I was wrong Notice that the average of these four is 365.2422 SI days (the mean tropical year). This figure is currently getting smaller, which means years get shorter, when measured in seconds. Now, actual days get slowly and steadily longer, as measured in seconds. So the number of actual days in a year is decreasing too. (from Tropical year. Rich Farmbrough 22:52 14 March 2006 (UTC).

Personally, I don't think they'll worry about it. Assuming they even still use the Gregorian Calendar, why should they worry about a single day? Personally, I think a future calendar will be simpler not more complex, as they won't worry about keeping the solstices and equinoxes on the same date. Perhaps going back to the Julian calendar, or even completely eliminating leap years all together Nik42 06:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

that would never happen because even slight inaccuracies in time/calendar keeping can cause huge problems over time. over the years, those extra days would build up, and we'd have summer begining on march 12 or something. it has happened in the past, and calendars had to be completely restuctured due to this.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.188.178 (talk • contribs)

So what? I don't see how that's a significant problem. By that logic, people in the southern hemisphere should've moved their calendar 6 months so that winter starts in December instead of July. There's nothing inherent in March that says it HAS to be a spring month. By the time the seasons moved, people would've become used to the new seasonal/month associations. Nik42 01:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Something like that will inevitably happen, but not as fast as some of you predict. It will take tens of thousands of years for a big change to happen and we will be making constant adjustments to the calendar to prevent that change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.172.44.238 (talk) 23:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe we will, but I doubt it. Why should we? It takes thousands of years for the Gregorian to get even one day away from the solar calendar. Why should it be a problem if sometime in the distant future, Spring starts, on average, on March 20 instead of March 21? Why should people get worked up over that? At any rate, trying to predict what people in teh distant future will do with teh calendar is ridiculous. Nik42 05:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linked title

Having February 30 in the article as linked-title makes it format oddly - a line break with excessive spacing above it. The invisible note says it's designed to make it format properly (30 February or February 30, depending on your preference), but I think that's a poor trade-off. I've changed it to "30th of February" - and we'll see what people think. - DavidWBrooks 00:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It took me a while to follow what you were saying, but I agree, I though it might have been the Swedish calendar picture that was causing it, but I was wrong. I think that Linked title may have been designed to work at the start of a line, or the template had been changed at some time and nobody remembered that it was used in February 30, which is one of the few places it still is used, a Template Day has/will soon have replaced all the others Linked title templates on the 365 normal day pages. --Drappel 06:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Template:Linked-title used to work properly within this article, but obviously it was recently changed, because the same problem occurred on January 1. I have reported both at Template talk:Linked-title. I disagree with the use of the Template:Day template in January 1 because similar info is repeated in the main paragraph. — Joe Kress 19:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
While this is not the place to discuss January 1, since you have mentioned it I will, if you have a problem with the main paragraph of January 1 why not change the main paragraph of January 1. Perhaps that is a stupid question but since I have no understanding of templates it seems the simple answer --Drappel 02:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
There could be a February 30 in 4000 because The years are getting shorther by the second. Why are the leap days in years that end in '00 Always Tuesdays? February 30, 4000 would be a Wednesday. User:CDHgrün 03:25:, 29 October 2007 {UTC} —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.102.5.92 (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)