{"id":71494,"date":"2024-02-27T13:58:25","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T20:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=71494"},"modified":"2024-02-27T13:58:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T20:58:25","slug":"mckusick-leap-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/mckusick-leap-day\/","title":{"rendered":"#DYK? It’s Leap Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is NAU employee Afton McKusick\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0 **checks notes**<\/em> 10<\/span>th<\/span> birthday.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yup, you read that right. No, child labor laws aren\u2019t an issue. No, it isn\u2019t April Fools\u2019 Day. But it is Feb. 29.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McKusick, a School of Forestry alum who now works for the Center for Service and Volunteerism, is a Leap Year baby\u2014one of the 4 million or so people nationwide born on this rarest of birthdays.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When she was growing up, her unusual birthday wasn\u2019t a big deal; she celebrated on Feb. 28, and the other kids in her classroom didn\u2019t care what day it was as long as they got cupcakes. Her family went to Peter Piper Pizza on Feb. 28 to celebrate.<\/span><\/p>\n

#DYK? People born on Feb. 29 are called \u201cleaplings\u201d or \u201cleapers.\u201d
\n<\/i><\/strong>Source: <\/i>ThoughtCo<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the big birthdays, she had big birthday parties\u2014lots of kids running around, and there was always a pinata.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now she still celebrates either Feb. 28 or March 1, depending on her work schedule; celebrations include dinner with her family and getting two phone calls from her sister with hearty, very bad renditions of \u201cHappy Birthday to You\u201d on both days surrounding her not-birthday.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#DYK? <\/i>Leap Day happens because the Earth doesn\u2019t circle the sun in an even 365 days\u2014it\u2019s actually 365.242189 days. Over four years, we get four quarters of a day\u2014Leap Day!
\n<\/i>Source: <\/i>ThoughtCo<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A
McKusick’s birthday in 2008 with her logging crew.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It can get a little complicated\u2014for example, her 21<\/span>st<\/span> birthday didn\u2019t exist. On Feb. 28, she was too young to drink. Then it was <\/span>12:01 a.m. on March 1 and she’d been 21 for a whole day\u2014a day that didn’t happen. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy driver\u2019s license confused the bouncers at the local Flagstaff bars, and we had to explain to them that there was no 29th\u202fthis year and sometime between Feb. 28\u202fand March 1 was the closest that I was going to get to the 29th\u202fthat year,\u201d she said. \u201cThey all let me in, but there were some who gave us strange looks.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#DYK? <\/i>2000 was a leap year, but 1900 wasn\u2019t and 2100 won\u2019t be. They are divisible by four (a requirement Julius Caesar figured out with the Julian calendar), but turn-of-the-century years must also be divisible by 400 (a requirement Pope Gregory XIII figured out with the Gregorian calendar).
\nSource: <\/i>Forbes<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every Leap Year, she goes bigger. For her ninth birthday, in 2020, McKusick had a Mad Hatter murder mystery party with friends and family; it was noteworthy because only a few weeks later, everything shut down and socializing stopped because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the big 1-0 (double digits!), she and her friends are going to Kauai to soak up the sun, go scuba diving and enjoy Hawaii.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#DYK? <\/i>In 4 million years, Leap Days won\u2019t be necessary\u2014the Earth\u2019s rotation will have slowed enough to eliminate that extra six hours a year. Source: <\/i>Forbes<\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"NAU<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is NAU employee Afton McKusick\u2019s\u00a0 **checks notes** 10th birthday.\u00a0 Yup, you read that right. No, child labor laws aren\u2019t an issue. No, it isn\u2019t April Fools\u2019 Day. But it is Feb. 29.\u00a0 McKusick, a School of Forestry alum who now works for the Center for Service and Volunteerism, is a Leap Year baby\u2014one of…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":71495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}