LEAP YEAR BIRTHDAYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22356, 29 February 1936, Page 12

LEAP YEAR BIRTHDAYS

FIVE AUCKLAND RESIDENTS LUNCHEON CELEBRATION Birthday presents are rare gifts in the experience of several residents of Auckland, who to-day will have the privilege of celebrating birthdays which have been denied them siiice 1932. Through having been born on February 29 in a leap year, Messrs. E. W. Alison, Walter Pavitt, John Jones, J. I. Turnbull and L. J. Minogue have all had fewer thau onequarter the number of birthdays that any other person has had. For most of their lives both Mr. Alison and Mr. - Pavitt have experienced birthdays only once every four years, but for one period of eight years, between 1896 and 1904. they had no birthday. The rules of leap year state that every year whose number is divisible by four without a remainder is a leap year, excepting the full centuries, * which to be leap year must be divisible by 400 without a remainder. If not so divisible they are common years, so that 1900 was not a leap year. Mr. John Jones, of Church Street, Penrose, and Mr. J. I. Turnbull, who lives in Parnell Road, have also had to do without a birthday for eight' years. Mr. Turnbull is 84 years age to-day by ordinary reckoning, but, judged by leap year standards. f / he has only reached his majority- &"• Jones will celebrate his 22nd birthday —but he will be 88 years of a £ e- . Mr. Alison will be 84 y<jars of sff® _ to-day, and Mr. Pavitt will celebrate his 17th birthday. With Mr. _\lißOg l,e they will mark the occasion of thenrare birthdays by lunching together*