When he was a boy, John Camilleri would flip through the calendar each year in search for his birthday but he rarely found it.

“Don’t I have a birthday this year,” he would ask his mother.

“How come there is a February 28 but not a February 29? Every other month has a ‘29’ except mine.”

It was because his birthday was special, his mother would explain: so special, that it only occurred once every four years.

John is a leapling – he was born on February 29, 1944 and he turns 80 today.

But, technically, he’s only celebrating his 20th birthday because that’s how many times he was able to mark his birth on its actual day. Today is the first time since 2020 that he has celebrated his actual birthday but he is planning a low key day, with his family.

When he was a child, he would celebrate his birthday on March 1 on years without a leap day but his brother was not too happy about it. He was born on March 29 and insisted March was his month and John should stick to his own month. So, John’s birthday became February 28.

John says he is not bothered by it, although it does have its downsides. He has had a lot of explaining to do over the years, especially when giving out his birth date in government offices and departments.

“I would see the clerk look at me baffled before asking: ‘Are you sure this is your birthday? Are you sure you don’t have a mistake?’ Even my schoolteachers would sometimes take a moment to process it.”

Don’t I have a birthday this year, I would ask my mother. How come there is a February 28 but not a February 29? Every other month has a ‘29’ except mine- John Camilleri

Some children would tease him about it, thinking that, unlike them, he could only get birthday presents once every four years. He retorted that, instead, he had two birthdays a year – one on February 28 and one on March 1.

John grew up to lead a successful career as a production supervisor in the manufacturing industry but he recalls a tough childhood.

“We weren’t well off, so much so that birthday gifts were simply a few chocolates,” he said.

“I still prefer that over today’s average childhood, though. At least we played creatively and ran freely in the streets and on the church parvis. Children nowadays are confined to one object – their phone. It might be a wealthier life but what life is that?”

The probability of babies being born on a leap day is one in around 1,500, and there are an estimated five million leaplings in the world today.

Among other famed or notorious leaplings are Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, US rap star Ja Rule and serial killer Aileen Wuornos, incarnated by Charlize Theron in her Oscar-winning performance for Monster.

John’s unlikely story found itself in a recently published book detailing the experiences of Maltese people who have very unlikely or almost unbelievable stories.

The book – Bilkemm Jitwemmnu (Hardly believable) – was compiled by university lecturer Dr George Cremona. It includes the story of a family who spent years living in a Catholic chapel, a woman who is still corresponding with her 36 penfriends, a chef who loves to cook and eat jellyfish and crocodiles, a man who managed to bind an entire bible the size of a matchbox and the woman for whom the Maltese classic song Xemx was written.

Why the extra day?

While the calendar says there are 365 days in a year, it takes the Earth 365 days and around six hours to revolve around the sun.

For three years the calendar ignores those extra hours, but on the fourth year a whole day will have accumulated, and that is when it is added to February.

Leap days regulate things – without them civilisations would fall out of sync with the seasons, causing havoc for farmers and their crops as well as school holidays.

Jesuit scholars in the 16th century realised, however, that the extra six hours per year are not exactly six hours – they are a little less – meaning that when the calendar adds a leap day, it is overcorrecting the issue.

To make up for that, a few years aren’t made into leap years, even though people might expect it.  This is why 1900, 1800 and 1700 were not leap years, even though it was their turn to be a leap year.

It turns out that system creates an overcorrection in the opposite direction, meaning that once every 400 years a leap day that should have been removed is added nonetheless.This is why the year 2000 was a leap year.

Superstitions and computer glitches

The calendar quirk of February 29 has also spawned a host of rituals and superstitions, not to mention computer glitches.   

In Ireland, for example February 29 is known as Bachelor’s Day or Ladies Privilege, when, tradition has it, women can propose to men rather than waiting to be wooed.

The existence of an extra day around twice a decade has also created its fair share of online mayhem, never more so than in 2000.

The prediction from doomsayers that January 1 would see a total information shutdown never came to pass, but on February 29 an alarming succession of system errors took place across the globe.

This included Japan’s meteorological service sending out faulty weather reports and Montreal’s tax service shutting down.