45 Emileigh Leap Day

I feel like I've been very loud lately. I think you're okay. I've been keeping mine right in the middle and I don't know like yours is a different brand so it might be a little different but that's just kind of how I've been keeping mine and I think that's worked out really well so okay um what was I doing besides absolutely losing my mind? I mean if you want to I like it it's only the second and tomorrow will be the 14th you'll get to it okay quiet jump yeah oh is jacaroni and cheese there okay all right welcome to illiquid history we're two best friends who are going to tell you I think I think it's because I didn't yawn before the episode let me do that real quick okay it apparently gets all the stupid out of me that's what it does my dumb ass brain okay welcome to illiquid history where two best friends who are not equipped to tell you about history do it anyway even though nobody told us we could and I'm joined that's right I am joined by my wonderful best friend Morgan hi how are you we guested on another podcast I think I died on the spot for a brief moment I screamed I literally screamed in my own house so they're wonderful yeah seriously is this a joke are you spamming us right now but no they they asked us to be on and we recorded now they do record way ahead in advance so this is going to be scheduled to come out in August sometime so we closer to time we will remind you but we couldn't hold it in anymore and here we are so we're honored that y'all brought two very ill-equipped women onto your podcast we loved it we love y'all thank you Pat and Matt and yay yes I do too they're wonderful I do too they're wonderful so um have anything fun happen this week nice yeah I love that I love that god we're in Tennessee six hours could be anywhere dang so it's at least somewhere with an indoor pool hopefully or you're gonna be freezing your ass off so uh I know it's got so many good health benefits but I can't imagine a least a less enjoyable way to start my morning I can't I the moment I'm cold I'm angry so I don't need to wake up like that I don't yeah and when I take a bath at night Nick complains because I steam up the entire bathroom and when I come out my skin is red the water is so hot it's like I'm boiling myself it's wonderful that's how it should be I shouldn't be able to breathe in that bathtub Nick's come in there before and he's like are you okay I'm like reading my Kindle that's hooked up on my Kindle holder so I don't have to actually hold it and I'm like yeah I'm good I'm sitting in the dark with one candle lit by myself reading fantasy romance novels I'm about to get a remote I don't want to touch it at all yeah hit it with my elbow like yeah that's right can I get some of those like vr headset glasses thingies how can I hook up a tv in the bathroom there's enough room I could do it genius I love it I love it so much I love your mom so much anyway um we should yeah get to this so let's do it I'm also very snotty so sorry if I sound like that more again now okay um I think I can but I'm just saying I'm snotty cool okay I feel another fucking yawn coming on it's September 7th it's September 2nd 1752 in Britain a husband and wife are at their farm talking about their plans for the following day over a cup of tea and a good book Thomas love what did you say we have to do tomorrow it's only the second day of the week and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do second and tomorrow will be the 14th have you gone mad did the horse kick you in the head did you mix beer in your tea instead of water again I remember nothing about this what was that that's what I thought why do we go through the trouble of creating leap years and what event what events have happened on the rarest day of the year you know looking back on that now that sentence doesn't really make a lot of sense I kind of do um how do we say this okay how about this so why did Britain change to the Gregorian calendar along with almost everyone else in the world and what does that have to do with leap years okay that ties it in that ties it in a lot better I wrote this like 45 minutes ago so it do be like that sometimes oh shit yeah okay so Morgan do you know what we're talking about today uh kind of I I had a really hard time writing a skit for this but we're gonna talk about leap years today and why because this episode is coming out on leap day this year what look at me so I know I was like well I can't not say anything about it so and I've always wondered like why how it came about and I couldn't think of a skit like how do I just say oh we're gonna add a day to the calendar now so I did pick an actual event that happened and you know in this time and it is relevant you'll see later not quite um it's every year divisible by four yeah okay yeah yeah I let's all give a round of applause to Morgan for all that math yeah look at you so what what is a leap year exactly um it it's a year that ends or it is a year comprised of 366 days instead of the typical 365 so this happened um this happens every four years in the Gregorian calendar which is used by the majority of the world and it is every year that is divisible by four like I said 2020 2024 2028 you know etc goes on except for years such as 1900 or 2000 if they end with two zeros it doesn't count it's not one don't ask me why I don't know a lot of math apparently so the term leap comes from the days of the year from March on that leap forward an extra day I know we've all experienced that if you were in a country that has the Gregorian calendar so there are other calendars including the Hebrew calendar Islamic calendar Chinese and Ethiopian calendar that also have their own versions of leap years but they're not the same so they're not all on four years some occur different numbers it varies and some calendars have multiple leap days or even shortened leap months so sometimes they leap forward sometimes they leap back and yeah what do we do when we when the time changes spring forward or fall back yeah which is stupid I hate it so the Gregorian calendar also has a handful of leap seconds apparently um which have been sporadically added to certain years most recently it's been they've been added in 2012 2015 and 2016 so I don't think there's really a rhyme or reason but I don't know apparently the International Bureau of Weights and Measures the IBWM is the organization responsible for global time keeping not once in my life have I ever thought of an organization being responsible for keeping time that's never crossed my mind yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there's an entire bureau of people that just uh International Bureau of Weights and Measures I'm imagining remember like in I don't know the early to mid 1900s when accountants had those like green lamps and the visors and they're like ticking away that's what I'm imagining so how yeah and they're like how do you how do you know and we're like we look at the stars it's very yeah yeah like a purge yeah they've measured too stretchy pants are the devil to these people too many measurements everyone everyone is five five just yes I could never I'm pretty sure my left thigh is 120 pounds if you like could never okay so now that we know what a leap year is why why do we have them what how did this happen so so leap year well we're yes but we weren't there yet yes but I wasn't at the rewinding time part yet so I've I got I prematurely gotten to the time machine um okay so leap years exist because in a single year in the Gregorian calendar is slightly shorter than a solar or tropical year so a solar year is you know give or take those seconds 365.24 days long or specifically 365 days five hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds and if we don't account for the extra five hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds we would be off by you know our time wouldn't match the solar year so over time this would shift the seasons and we'd end up with like July heat in December in East Tennessee it wouldn't be good and and that would happen in only about 700 years which relative to time is not that that's not that much which relative to time is not that that's not that much so the solar system is not you know perfect and we gain around 44 extra minutes every four years or for one or a day every 129 years so to solve this problem we skip the leap years every centenary year except for those divisible by 400 so since we gain I know this is so confusing to like explain we gain 44 extra minutes every four years so so every hundred years except those divisible by 400 so in 1600 and in 2000 we did have leap years we skipped the leap year so in 1500 we skipped the leap year in 1400 we skipped the leap year but in 1600 we kept it so again math so much math and we're done with math so okay so now it's time to get into the time machine so let's go back to 45 CE no 45 BCE sorry 45 BCE Julius Caesar is in power and he instituted the Julian calendar which was made up of the same 365 days separated into 12 months that we have now with the exception of July and August being named Quintilis and Sextilis respectively and the Julian calendar had leap years every four years without exception and this synced up to earth seasons thanks to the quote final year of confusion which happened in 46 BCE which included a year that had 15 months in it it was 445 days long yes but it's the final year of confusion and they called it the final year of confusion because they had been using the Roman calendar before them and the Roman calendar was wonky as fuck it just it was based on the moon instead of the sun which in theory should be fine because you can track the phases of the moon there's there are cycles they are consistent how it worked is is like they would take the new moon to the full moon and then back again but the problem was is that the priests in Rome were responsible with keeping up with this calendar and they had to do like their priest things and also juggle all the other shifting calendar things and they also kind of changed it whenever they felt like it to observe like religious holidays on things and this and that and so in theory they could just tack a different calendar on top of it so in theory they could just tack additional days in the February every year to make the calendar dates like work but the priests then had to pay more attention and make it a priority which they weren't doing and Caesar's rise to power was very turbulent and problematic and the calendar just and the calendar just kind of slipped their minds because they were not worried about the calendar they were worried about political shit and then all of a sudden festivals weren't falling at the proper festival time like it wasn't working so people um let's see so yeah calendars just weren't a fixed thing back then and apparently from what this source said an ancient calendar was more like a schedule subject to change and revision which is not a good way to like try to keep a country on the same time so they switched to the Julian calendar and to get in sync with the the solar year they had to like have one long ass year to get right and then after that they thought it was working perfectly and for centuries it was it was working great but then the astronomers noticed that the seasons were starting around 10 days earlier than expected and important holidays were no longer lining up with the equinoxes which they should have been so so to remedy this Pope Gregory the 8th introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582 so the Julian calendar ran from 45 BCE to 1582 it's pretty long run that's a long time so for centuries the Gregorian calendar was only used by Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain and it was eventually adopted by Protestant countries because why not and this is like Great Britain and this at the time other places like that at the time and because of the discrepancy between the calendars um countries that switched later on ended up having to skip days to sync up with the rest of the world and this is where we see our skit today Britain actually had to skip the 3rd through the 13th of September to get on sync with the rest of the world yeah it does it does now that you say it out loud but you're like what how are you skipping how are you skipping 10 days time's an illusion honestly that's what I've learned from COVID is that doesn't exist so do you do you ever feel like um that you don't feel your age like in my in my brain I'm 23 yeah yeah no listen I went to mom's work the other day and I'm totally taking this as a compliment my mom got a new job so I I got my hair cut there like down the road so I was like I'll pop in and say hi she works in assisted living she's the director there now so like I walked in and she's giving me a tour and introducing me to staff and residents and stuff and they kept asking how old I was like they like four or five people asked how old I was and they were genuinely shocked when I said 30 and I don't know maybe I I guess I look young for my age but like one woman asked where I went to school at and I was like I'm I'm married with kids ma'am like but I'm going to take this in stride because I guess I don't look 30. yeah no yeah no yeah I've had to show my license before like here's my birthday yeah yeah it is I know in my in one of my pictures now on my license um I was hold I took this picture so long ago that I was holding my son who was like eight months old at the time I was holding him below the camera so I have like a double chin because I'm like holding my son yeah a hefty eight month old below the camera and I didn't have my bangs then so I look like a completely different person on my license it's awesome it's great so uh I feel like this is probably going to be a shorter episode today but that's okay that's fine we need a little break after um what was last week's episode I forgot Wilma Rudolph that's right we need a little bit of a break after the hard-hitting one last week so yes okay so I thought because I can't talk for an entire episode about just leap days what what big historical events have happened on leap days because the chances of them happening are very slim because it's the rarest day of the year so we're starting off with a bang in 1504 Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus I cannot talk tricked some native people boo I know another reason to hate this guy but so on his fourth and final voyage to North America in 1502 he he started off with four ships he lost two of them to the sea and the other two were infested with shipworms and were barely seaworthy which ship shipworms are not actually worms turns out they're more of like a crustacean that eats at the like kind of like a barnacle type of thing I don't know why they call them shipworms but so they were forced to land on the northern coast of Jamaica where they stayed where they stayed for quite a while and him and his crew traded with the native Jamaicans there until eventually the Jamaicans kind of got tired of what he had also half his crew mutinied and would frequently cheat and rob the natives so that's rude so the natives were like disrespectfully fuck off you know we're not gonna do business with you no more we've been nice but you haven't so he had with him some astronomical tables and the almanac you and an almanac by a German astronomer that predicted the total like lunar eclipses and there was to be one on February 29th of 1504 and it gave an estimated time and duration and so his plan was to tell the chiefs that God's mad at them and that God told him that that he was going to turn the moon red inflamed with wrath is what he said he was going to basically turn the moon red or the yeah the moon red and um if they didn't continue to trade with them so that's what he did he brought the chiefs in told them the whole spiel lied his ass off and then the chiefs were like ha ha very funny k bye but then later that night the moon turned red because of the lunar eclipse and the chiefs came back and they said I I'm sorry can you please tell God that like we're cool we'll we'll keep trading with you if you please just like appease him so he he went to the cabin of this boat and just chilled there for 48 minutes because that's how like he knew how long it was going to last so he came out right before it was gonna stop and then said I spoke with God he said that like we're cool if you keep trading with us and so they did I know I know I mean if you just I don't know maybe not been a shitty guy to them they would continue to trade maybe if you say maybe if you say hey I know we're kind of just like stranded here I'll work for some food I'll do I'll help you out a little bit but no let's lie I hate that you're gonna hate the next one too sorry sorry so in 1692 the first warrants were issued for the arrest of three women in the Salem witch trials yep Sarah Good Sarah Osborne and Tituba were accused of witchcraft after three girls in their town fell ill and were tormented by spirits y'all if you don't know they lied they just straight up lied and then it caused mass hysteria I think yeah yeah it was either 19 hanged or 19 put to death total one of those um Good was Sarah Good was hanged for refusing to confess on July 19th and she had been a beggar in town and was looked down on society Osborne actually died in prison on May the 10th and she had been involved in a dispute with her children over their dead father's estate and was reviled for an affair with an indentured servant so and then Tituba was a slave so these are three women that society looked down on and then they got blamed and their warrant for nothing and their warrant was served on a leap day yeah yeah in 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt named a commission to oversee the construction of a canal through the isthmus of Panama so I feel like we all know where this is going so this canal was built to make the trade route from the Pacific to Atlantic and back back wow from the Pacific and Atlantic and vice versa faster by cutting out um having to go all the way around South America and the I didn't know this but the French had actually tried and it was the same builders who built the Suez Canal they had actually tried to build a canal there as well but thanks to malaria and yellow fever they went bankrupt and like 20,000 people died yeah and that was in 1880 and in 1901 the Hay Ponce Fonte Treaty um licensed the United States to build and manage its own canal and honestly this sounds like it could be an entire episode so I don't want to go into too much detail but I feel like a lot of people already know kind of the the ins and outs of the Panama Canal because it's such a staple honestly and it's a big story and malaria and yellow fever are still a big player and it was it was a mess I'm sure it helped commerce but it was a mess absolutely and um so the canal was finished in 1914 and you know how they all go together right in the middle of freaking world war one great love that for the world you know boo this one's uh this one's kind of funny so in 1908 a Dutch scientist Huyck Kimmerling owns announced he discovered solid helium but he but it but he didn't he I don't think solid helium exists honestly yeah probably yeah he said he announced he had discovered solid helium but he was again slightly mistaken he had been experimenting with temperature and tried to condense the gas in glass tubes and during this process the helium appeared to solidify and weeks later it was realized that the phenomenon was caused only because of the presence of hydrogen in the tubes so I guess the hydrogen solidified or I I don't do science so the presence of hydrogen messed it up for him the presence of hydrogen messed it up for him I don't listen listen Nick and I and the kids were watching a like it's a very kid forward science show very cute very goofy but like it is still very educational way and this guy is explaining hydraulics tell me tell me why I am a 30 year old woman and my son and I are sitting on the couch learning the same shit I had no idea how hydraulics worked I was like and also my husband said that's how it works and he's like you didn't know it's like ah nope I didn't know neon signs had a little gas in it I didn't know didn't even associate that with that I just I feel like it's no I it probably is yeah neon any chemical element listen listen you know how like I took the ACT twice and I don't care if the world knows this I made a 19 twice do you want to know why science brought me down every single time I did excellent on the other ones and then it was science I don't I'm good at math I'm good at I'm good at math I'm good at English I you you put the periodic table of elements in front of me and I think I will go I don't know into a panic I cannot I cannot I'm just I want to be like I want to have them the world is magic that's just that's the only explanation I need I don't know how it works I don't even know how computers work I just know to hit the button and it does the thing it does the thing okay we have to move on so 1920 um this one's just a fun little tidbit the newly created democracy of Czechoslovakia which had been a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I adopted a constitution for the first time yeah and in 1936 the Soviet government renamed the first Leningrad Medical Institute the Pavlov Institute only two days after Ivan Pavlov's death that's the one yes yes um and he in 1904 he had received a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his research on digestion so really important guy uh the more I look into the experiments on the dogs I just get kind of sad for the dogs um yeah um so we accidentally like created a study of condition yeah yeah some of the most interesting things have been found out on accident I think it's really interesting oh my god so in 1936 president president Franklin Roosevelt signed the second neutrality act to keep America from getting involved in overseas conflict and this forbid the sale of raw materials and making of loans and the making of loans to warring nations so basically we won't meddle correct but don't we do that or am I crazy yeah true yeah right right I mean if we're in it yeah that's true okay so in 1940 actress Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an academy award and she won best supporting actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind and she had been in several other movies before that and she also became the first African-American to attend the academy awards as a guest and not a servant I know and I know look at her I forgot that I had pictures I'm glad you were looking at those so she was known also known to let black actors and actresses stay in her house when they couldn't find a place to stay she just seemed so sweet and I want to hug her but unfortunately she was attacked by the NAACP during her career for appearing in negative stereotyped you know serving roles yeah but Hattie strongly and and I'm quoting this from the from the site because it was beautifully written Hattie strongly and proudly stated that she did the best she could she went on to state that she worked not only for herself but thought she was working for future generations of African-Americans as well and she always hoped people would come around and understand what she had to go through in Hollywood and was extremely hurt at the way she had been was being treated by the NAACP mm-hmm yeah yep yep and she was a woman heavier set woman and she was black so I can only imagine that all the doors that got closed in her face and it breaks my heart it makes me want to go watch gone with the wind I've only I've only seen the first half because way back in the dinosaur ages when you got Netflix mailed to you um Corey and I got net uh gone with the wind and it was so long that it was on two DVDs and the second DVD was scratched all the hell so we couldn't watch the second half of the movie I know we got to the the part where she's like I don't know nothing about birth and no babies and then that was about it so in 1944 this one was very interesting the future Pope John Paul II was nearly killed on a leap day in his 20s it was not while he was Pope but in his 20s a German army truck hit him and left him for dead on the side of the road yeah the driver of a lumber truck picked him up and took him to the hospital where he remained unconscious for nine hours but eventually survived obviously because he became the Pope when I'm like a ghost Pope um and it's you never know honestly and it said that the incident inspired him to switch to a spiritual career path yeah get hit by a damn truck seriously though yeah so in 1952 the American figure skaters competed in an unprecedented sweep at the world men's figure skating championship in Paris um Dick Button um Dick Button Button's a great last name what it is cute won his fifth straight world title ahead of U.S. teammates James Grogan and Hayes Allen Jenkins and then he went on that year to win a gold medal in the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo so he was like killing it that year but fifth fifth championship in a row he won on a leap day and this one's really funny it took 13 overtime periods for two high school basketball teams Boone Trail High School and Angier High School they're both in North Carolina took them 13 overtime periods for someone to win and it is the longest high school basketball game in U.S. history yeah the two teams played only their five starting players with no substitutes and yeah for the whole game they only they didn't sub anybody out and it yeah fit in the the final score was 56 to 54 my legs would be noodles noodles all they're doing is running basketball's so much running yeah yeah you have to well the foul is when you have to throw it in from outside the court right yeah that's what I meant yeah oh yeah from the line yeah I don't know but 13 overtime innings over time periods can you imagine we just this is the um this is the first time I've ever been in a game and I've never been in a game 13 overtime innings over time periods can you imagine we just this is the um week after the Super Bowl guys so could you imagine if they had like 13 overtime periods yeah I probably I don't even want to think about it but how much oh my god wow no that's that's like four grand more than what I bought my jeep for yeah oh yeah so who says oh my god I'm just imagining Elmo reading that and then like after a hard-ass day he's got like a five o'clock shadow he's like smoking a cigarette and he's like yeah I know I fucking am life isn't easy man okay good anyway I also watch a this woman and I don't know why this thing you made me think of this but she reviews those really bad recipes like on TikTok and stuff and every time that there's cheese she yells it ain't gonna go down easy if it ain't cheesy now every time I see cheese I'm like it ain't gonna go down easy cheesy okay so in 1968 the Beatles groundbreaking album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band won a Grammy award for album of the year and the first rock LP to accomplish that feat I do too I have a picture of the album cover and it's I don't think I realized how eclectic I love that yeah I get that Marilyn Monroe's back there I love that yeah yeah anyway you're gonna love this Morgan never even thought that this was like a possibility you're gonna love this Morgan never even thought that this was like a possibility so in 1968 the last of the Henriksen siblings were born in 1960 Heidi Henriksen was born on February 29th on February 29th again on 1964 Olaf Henriksen was born and on February 29th of 1968 Leif Martin Henriksen was born three children and I have a picture of the family three children all born on the same day all four years apart and they had a specific day that they liked to fuck I don't know how else to get around that I mean yeah yeah she thrives on a schedule so they they actually got into the Guinness Book of World Records for most babies born on a on a leaf day like in one family until 2012 when the Estes family from Utah tied them so Xavier Estes was born in 2004 Remington Estes was born in 2008 and Jade Estes was born in 2012 so two families with three kids who were all born on leaf days I know someone who was born on the leaf day and he's my age so he's only like eight years old now so in 1972 Hank Aaron became the highest paid baseball player in the league he signed a three-year contract with the Atlanta Braves for about two hundred thousand dollars a year and in 1972 that was a lot making him the highest player at that time so good for him in 1976 Richard Petty beat Daryl Waltrop in the Carolina 500 and it was the only Winston Cup ever contested we talked about that race in our NASCAR episode so if you want to hear more about that I'm plugging our own podcast go listen to the NASCAR episode and this is the last one and it's so bittersweet in 1980 Buddy Hawley's glasses were found 20 years after he died in a plane crash so the singer died in a plane crash near Clear Lake Iowa in 1959 and his glasses were retrieved from the plane crash I do have a picture because they're very distinctive I know it's a weird thing to like talk about but it's very distinctive and the glasses were kind of just buried in the wreckage in the rubble and turned into the county sheriff's office you know like a year after the crash and in night 20 years about 20 years later on February 29th the glasses had been just forgotten and County Sheriff Jerry Allen just came across them and returned him returned the glasses to Hawley's wife to Buddy Hawley's wife and this is it's it's just so sad because I did the math he was only like 23 when he died and they have the most incredible love story they were only married they were only married six months before he died and apparently he walked into like the record store wherever that he was where she was working I'm going to read this quote from her one day this guy comes in through the door of Pierre Southern Music where I was working as a receptionist and I acted very reserved can I help you and he was with the crickets I guess that was his band then and said oh we're not in a hurry and then turned to them his band members and said you know what I'm going to marry that girl and then proposed to her five hours after they met and they were married I mean just just maybe like a month later or and I know it was so sad she said it was said that she was so distraught after he died she couldn't even attend the funeral yeah yeah yeah and she did um she did go on and um she had control of his estate because she was his his wife and she went on and married and again and had kids and stuff like that but was still very involved I think um opened something in his honor I do have a link to to some other things down in there if you want to look more into it but it's the sweetest episode and now I kind of want to do an episode on Buddy Holly because why not he's a very cute guy and if you scroll down one you'll see them together so cute so cute so uh that's what I have about leap days and leap years and events that happened neat oh it's that's a miracle in itself oh man I should have found more events something should kind of overlap no this is no this is okay I'm very excited about next week y'all I don't know what it is yet but she's been hyping me up so hard yeah I love that I can't wait yeah okay so let's give them our socials and then let's go let's go record that and make them wait ha ha ha okay so you can find us at on Facebook Instagram TikTok Gmail Patreon and also don't forget if you have a question feel free to post your question on our Facebook or email it to us if you have any suggestions or I don't know just want to tell us how good we're doing but also don't forget to like and share and comment and all those things it costs nothing but a couple seconds of your time and it really does help us get out there and find new listeners who like to hear weirdos like us absolutely do it do it yeah we're totally bros uh so you know don't forget today's leap day tomorrow is not September the 14th I promise I promise it's not no no we're not leaping forward that many days so uh have fun on your leap day and okay bye