February 29 - Births

Births

A person who is born on February 29 may be called a "leapling" or a "leap year baby". In non-leap years, some leaplings celebrate their birthday on either February 28 or March 1, while others only observe birthdays on the authentic intercalary dates.

In the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, a person born on February 29 legally attains the age of 18 on March 1 in the relevant year.

In cases of New Zealand citizens, the Parliament has decreed that if a date of birth was February 29, in non-leap years the legal birth date shall be the preceding day, February 28. This is affirmed in §2(2) of the Land Transport Act 1999.

In the United States, a person legally attains a given age on the day before their corresponding birthday, i.e., the anniversary of his birth corresponding to that age. Accordingly, anyone born on a Leap Day legally turns 21 on February 28th, twenty-one years later.

In Taiwan (Republic of China) and in New Zealand, the legal birthday of a leapling is February 28 in common years:

"If a period fixed by weeks, months, and years does not commence from the beginning of a week, month, or year, it ends with the ending of the day which proceeds the day of the last week, month, or year which corresponds to that on which it began to commence. But if there is no corresponding day in the last month, the period ends with the ending of the last day of the last month."

Thus, in England and Wales or in Hong Kong, a person born on February 29, 1996, will have legally reached 18 years old on March 1, 2014. If he or she was born in the United States, Taiwan or New Zealand, he or she legally becomes 18 on February 28, 2014, a day earlier.

There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out to be based on counting their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance: As a child, Frederic was apprenticed to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday. Now, having passed his 21st year, he leaves the pirate band and falls in love. However, since he was born on February 29, that day will not arrive until he is in his eighties. As such, he must leave his fiancée and return to the pirates. It may be worked out from the opera's dialogue that Frederic's birthday is February 29, 1852 thus making the opera set in 1873. (This assumes that Frederic is aware that 1900 will not be a leap year. If not, the dates would be later by four years.) This plot point was also used in a Sherlock Holmes story based on the Basil Rathbone era, where a friend of Dr. Watson's is a baronet who is due to receive his inheritance on the New Year's Day of the year where his twenty-first birthday will be celebrated, only for the law to deprive him of the money as he was born on February 29; with the 84-year-old Baronet distraught at the news that 1900 is not a leap year, Holmes helps the Baronet fake his death long enough for his grandson- who is the appropriate age to receive the inheritance- to establish his claim and receive the money himself.

Other notable persons born on February 29:

1468 – Pope Paul III (d. 1549)
1568 – Juan Bautista Comes, Spanish composer (d. 1643)
1692 – John Byrom, English poet (d. 1763)
1724 – Eva Marie Veigel, ballet dancer and wife of actor David Garrick (d. 1822)
1736 – Ann Lee, American founder of Shakers (d. 1784)
1792 – Gioachino Rossini, Italian composer (d. 1868)
1812 – Sir James Wilson, Premier of Tasmania (d. 1880)
1828 – Emmeline B. Wells, American women's rights advocate (d. 1921)
1836 – Dickey Pearce, American baseball player and manager (d. 1908)
1840 – John Philip Holland, Irish inventor (d. 1914)
1848 – Arthur Giry, French historian (d. 1899)
1852 – Frank Gavan Duffy, Australian judge (d. 1936)
1852 – George Maximilianovich, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg, Russian nobleman (d. 1912)
1860 – Herman Hollerith, American statistician (d. 1929)
1892 – Ed Appleton, American baseball player (d. 1932)
1892 – Augusta Savage, African-American sculptor (d. 1962)
1896 – Morarji Desai, Prime Minister of India (d. 1995)
1896 – Roy Parker, baseball player (d. 1954)
1896 – William A. Wellman, American film director (d. 1975)
1904 – Jimmy Dorsey, American bandleader (d. 1957)
1904 – Pepper Martin, baseball player (d. 1965)
1904 – Rukmini Devi Arundale, Indian dancer (d. 1986)
1908 – Balthus, French-Polish painter (d. 2001)
1908 – Dee Brown, American writer (d. 2002)
1908 – Alf Gover, English cricketer (d. 2001)
1916 – Dinah Shore, American singer and actress (d. 1994)
1920 – Arthur Franz, American actor (d. 2006)
1920 – James Mitchell, American actor (d. 2010)
1920 – Michèle Morgan, French actress
1920 – Howard Nemerov, American poet (d. 1991)
1920 – Ivan Ivanovich Petrov, Russian operatic bass (d. 2003)
1920 – Rolland W. Redlin, American politician (d. 2011)
1920 – Fyodor Abramov, Russian novelist (d. 1983)
1924 – Al Rosen, American baseball player
1924 – David Beattie, New Zealand Governor-General (d. 2001)
1924 – Carlos Humberto Romero, President of El Salvador
1928 – Joss Ackland, English actor
1928 – Vance Haynes, American archaeologist
1928 – Terry Lewis, Australian police commissioner
1928 – Seymour Papert, South African mathematician
1928 – Tempest Storm, American burlesque performer
1932 – Paul Giel, American baseball player (d. 2002)
1932 – Gene Golub, American mathematician (d. 2007)
1932 – Masten Gregory, American F1 Driver (d. 1985)
1932 – Reri Grist, African-American coloratura soprano
1932 – Jaguar, Brazilian cartoonist
1936 – Jack Lousma, American astronaut
1936 – Henri Richard, Canadian ice hockey player
1936 – Alex Rocco, American actor
1940 – Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople
1940 – Gopichand Hinduja, President, Hinduja Group of Companies
1940 – William H. Turner, Jr. American horse trainer
1944 – Ene Ergma, Estonian politician
1944 – Dennis Farina, American actor
1944 – Nicholas Frayling, Dean of Chichester Cathedral
1944 – Phyllis Frelich, American actress
1944 – Steve Mingori, American baseball player (d. 2008)
1944 – Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, Italian illustrator
1948 – Jirō Akagawa, Japanese novelist
1948 – Gérard Darmon, French movie actor and singer
1948 – Ken Foree, American actor
1948 – Hermione Lee, President of Wolfson College, Oxford
1952 – Al Autry, American baseball player
1952 – Sharon Dahlonega Raiford Bush, American TV personality
1952 – Tim Powers, American writer
1952 – Raisa Smetanina, Russian cross-country skier
1952 – Bart Stupak, American congressman
1956 – Jonathan Coleman, Anglo-Australian entertainer
1956 – Jerry Fry, American baseball player
1956 – Bob Speller, Canadian politician
1956 – J. Randy Taraborrelli, American celebrity journalist
1956 – Aileen Wuornos, American serial killer (d. 2002)
1960 – Khaled, Algerian raï musician
1960 – Bill Long, American baseball player
1960 – Tony Robbins, American motivational speaker
1964 – Lyndon Byers, Canadian hockey player and radio personality
1964 – Mervyn Warren, American film & TV composer and musician (Take 6)
1968 – Suanne Braun, South African actress
1968 – Chucky Brown, American basketball player
1968 – Pete Fenson, American curler
1968 – Naoko Iijima, Japanese actress
1968 – Gonzalo Lira, Chilean-American novelist
1968 – Howard Tayler, American cartoonist & author
1968 – Bryce Paup, American football player
1968 – Wendi Peters, British actress
1968 – Eugene Volokh, American law professor
1968 – Frank Woodley, Australian comedian
1972 – Antonio Sabàto, Jr., Italian-born actor
1972 – Dave Williams, American singer (Drowning Pool) (d. 2002)
1972 – Saul Williams, American rapper, poet, and actor
1972 – Mike Pollitt, English footballer
1972 – Pedro Zamora, Cuban-born American activist (d. 1994)
1972 – Iván García, Cuban athlete
1976 – Katalin Kovács, Hungarian sprint canoer
1976 – Ja Rule, American rapper and actor
1976 – Terrence Long, American baseball player
1976 – Zoë Baker, New Zealand swimmer
1980 – Simon Gagné, Canadian ice hockey player
1980 – Patrick Côté, Canadian mixed martial artist
1980 – Taylor Twellman, American soccer player
1980 – Clinton Toopi, New Zealand rugby league footballer
1980 – Chris Conley, American musician (Saves the Day and Two Tongues)
1980 – Rubén Plaza, Spanish cyclist
1980 – Michail Mouroutsos, Greek Olympic taekwondo gold medalist
1984 – Darren Ambrose, English footballer
1984 – Cullen Jones, American swimmer
1984 – Nuria Martinez, Spanish basketball player
1984 – Adam Sinclair, Indian field hockey player
1984 – Dennis Walger, German rugby player
1984 – Cam Ward, Canadian ice hockey player
1984 – Mark Foster, American musician (Foster the People)
1988 – Scott Golbourne, English footballer
1988 – Benedikt Höwedes, German footballer
1988 – Bobby Sanguinetti, American ice hockey player
1992 – Perry Kitchen, American soccer player
1992 – Sean Abbott, Australian cricketer
1992 – Caitlin EJ Meyer, American actress