Why is february shorter

The Romans believed even numbers were unlucky, so Numa tried to make each month odd. But to reach the quota of , one month had to be even. February ended up pulling the short stick, probably because it was simply the last month on the list.

Martius: 31 days Aprilius: 29 days Maius: 31 days Iunius: 29 days Quintilis: 31 days Sextilis: 29 days September: 29 days October: 31 days November: 29 days December: 29 days Ianuarius: 29 days Februarius: 28 days. Of course, a day calendar had its bugs. After a few years went by, the seasons and months would fall out of sync. So to keep things straight, the Romans would occasionally insert a day leap month called Mercedonius.

The Romans would erase the last couple days of February and start the leap month on February 24—further evidence no one ever cared much for the month. This caused headaches everywhere. The additional 57 days required were allocated to "Januarius" currently known as January and "Februarius" currently known as February , which were the last two months of a year at that time Figure 2.

As "Februarius" was the month for "purification" in ancient Rome for execution of prisoners, purification and atonement, the ancient Romans could "tolerate" having an even number of days for the month. This also made February the month with the least number of days in a year.

Figure 2. The months and the number of days in each month in the calendar after the reform by King Numa Pompilius. However, the time required for the Earth to revolve around the Sun once is approximately After the above calendar had been used for a long time, the difference between the months and their corresponding seasons became larger and larger, causing confusions.

In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar decided to reform the calendar by adding 10 days to various months, making the total number of days in a year to Besides, he added a leap day to February every four years, just like the year This is known as the Julian Calendar Figure 3. Figure 3. Official Partners. Make a Donation. Donor Memberships. Become a Member. Gift Memberships. Code of Conduct. Gift Certificates. Group Visits. Birthday Parties.

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