Since Monday is officially a Leap Day, consider these historical nuggets, courtesy of BBC.com (http://tinyurl.com/BBCleap):

The Romans observed a 355-day calendar with an extra 22-day month every two years. Emperor Julius Caesar (pictured left) didn’t like having the feast days slip-sliding around into different seasons under this messy arrangement, so he ordered his astronomer, Sosigenes, to tidy things up. Sosigenes’ solution was to create the calendar we have now — 365 days, with one extra day every four years.

So how did the short month with the occasional extra day wind up being February? Ian Stewart, emeritus professor of mathematics at Warwick University, says it was essentially an exercise in ego-flexing.

During Julius Caesar’s reign, February had 30 days. However, when Caesar Augustus (pictured right) became emperor, he felt slighted that the month named for him, August, only had 29 days — after all, Julius Caesar’s month, July, had 31. To solve the problem, Augustus swiped a few days from February to make August have 31 days like July. And who was going to stop him?

— Elleda Wilson