“Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
Thirty-one most others date,
While February has twenty-eight.
Except in leap year, that’s the time
When February’s days count twenty-nine.”

You may have learned this little poem while growing up.  With 2016 being a leap year, we recognize the underappreciated winter holiday on Feb. 29.

While most of us may not notice anything different this coming Monday, it will be a very special day for some local residents.

Dawn and Mitchell Rubemeyer of Waterloo were married Feb. 29, 1992. This year, they will be celebrating their sixth – and 24th – anniversary.

“It was about two months short of being the 10th anniversary of our first date, which may lead you to believe that I popped the question,” Dawn said.  “I didn’t. We were waiting for me to finish college.

“When our first anniversary (or first quarter anniversary) was approaching, Mitchell asked if he needed to acknowledge it since it wouldn’t be an official Feb. 29 one. I answered, ‘If you want to make it to our real first anniversary, you better acknowledge it.’”

Dawn said they picked the date for three reasons. First, they thought 2/29/92 would be an easy date for Mitchell to remember. Secondly, they wanted to go skiing on their honeymoon. And thirdly, Dawn said she had worked in florist shops and knew flowers would be less expensive after the Rose Bowl to Valentine’s Day time span.

Ezra Acup of Waterloo was born on Feb. 29, 1996. He said he will turn five years old this year — well, technically 20.

Acup said he does not have any special plans to celebrate, but remembers his birthday cakes being decorated with frogs when he was younger.

He also remembers one leap year birthday when he was in middle school. The school made announcements of student birthdays over the intercom.  The principal announced that Acup was three years old. He said he was teased about his age for the rest of the day.

Acup’s driver’s license says his birthday is Feb. 28 in non-leap years.

But what is leap year and why is it necessary to add a day roughly every four years?

It takes the Earth about 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds to orbit around the sun, give or take a few hundredths of a second.

However, our Gregorian calendar has only 365 days. If we didn’t add an extra day almost every four years, we would lose about six hours a year, adding up to 24 days in a century.

Julius Caesar took the first leap of faith to align the calendar year with the solar timeline by introducing leap year in 46 B.C.

According to the Julian calendar, any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year.  This, however, resulted in too many leap years, and time was moving ahead by leaps and bounds.

It wasn’t until more than 1,500 years later that Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, correcting Caesar’s faulty math.

The rule now is that there is a leap year every year that is divisible by four — except for years that are both divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400.  For example, the year 2000 was a leap year, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.

But why is it called leap year? In 365-day years, known as “common years,” fixed dates advance one day in the week per year. For example, Christmas fell on a Thursday in 2014 and on a Friday in 2015.

With the added leap day, dates advance two days instead of one.  In 2016, Christmas will “leap” over Saturday to fall on Sunday.

People born on leap day are called “leaplings” or “leapers.”  About 4.1 million people worldwide have been born on Feb. 29. The chances of having a leap birthday are one in 1,461.

Famous people born on leap day include singer Dinah Shore, 16th century Pope Paul III, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, jazz musician Jimmy Dorsey, actors Dennis Farina and Antonio Sabato, Jr., and rapper Ja Rule.

Although Acup’s driver’s license says his common year birthday is Feb. 28, most states recognize March 1 as the first day leapings, or leapers, can legally drive, vote, join the military, buy alcohol or start collecting Social Security is March 1 in non-leap years.

The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies is a club for people born on Feb. 29.  More than 10,000 people around the world are members. The group’s goal is to promote leap day awareness and help leap day babies get in touch with each other.

While many traditions and superstitions surround leap day and leap year, perhaps the best known is the tradition of allowing women to propose to men on Feb. 29.

This tradition is believed by many to date to fifth-century Ireland. St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick that women had to wait too long for suitors to propose.

In a quantum leap, St. Patrick gave women the last day of the shortest month of a leap year to pop the question. According to legend, Bridget immediately dropped to one knee and proposed to St. Patrick.

He refused, kissing her on the cheek and offering her a silk gown.

Others believe the tradition started in Scotland when Queen Margaret declared in 1288 that women could propose on Feb. 29.

She ruled that men who refused must pay a fine in the form of a kiss, silk dress, pair of gloves or a fine of one pound.

To give men fair warning and a chance to avoid the proposal, the queen declared that women were required to wear a red petticoat on the day of the proposal.

Many are skeptical of this story, however, as the queen was only five years old at the time.

In the United States, the tradition was celebrated with some people referring to Feb. 29 as Sadie Hawkins Day. On this day, women had the right to run after unmarried men with the intention of proposing to them.

Sadie Hawkins was a female character in the Al Capp comic strip “Li’l Abner” who inspired Sadie Hawkins dances in which girls would ask the boys to attend the dance with them.

However, Sadie Hawkins Day in the comic strip was on Nov. 5.

Some countries also have traditions for men who prefer to look before they leap and refuse proposals on Feb. 28. In Denmark, the man must give the woman 12 pairs of gloves, supposedly to help the woman keep her hands covered to hide that she is not wearing a wedding or engagement ring.

In Finland, the woman must be given enough material to make a skirt.

Although some may choose to set their wedding date for Feb. 29 in a leap year, in Greece and Italy it is considered bad luck to marry on any day during a leap year.

Having an extra day in the year is not necessarily good news for everyone. Workers paid fixed annual or monthly salaries essentially work for free on Feb. 29.