It's a Leap Year!
2012 is a Leap Year!
A Leap Year consists of 366 days, as opposed to a common year which has 365 days.
Why do we need Leap Years?
Leap Years are needed to keep or calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approxiamtely 365.242199 days (a tropical year) to circle once around the sun.
Who invented Leap Years?
Julius Caesar introduced Leap years in the Roman Empire over 2000 years ago, but the Julian Calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by 4 would be a leap year. This lead to way too many leap years, but didn't get corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar more than 1500 years later.