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These numbers resulted from complex calculations that were done to ensure that, over the long term, our calendar years would stay as close as possible to the actual time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. This includes somewhat arbitrary additions/subtractions of an extra day to certain years. Generally speaking, leap years occur every 4 years, and they are the years divisible by 4 (2000, 2004, 2008, etc.). However, for three out of four years divisible by 100, the leap year thing is skipped; only those years divisible by 100 that are also divisible by 400 remain leap years (so: 1600 was a leap year, while 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not; 2000 was a leap year, while 2100, 2200, and 2300 will not be).