The Romans originally had a 355-day calendar.  To keep up with the seasons, an extra 22 or 23-day month was inserted every second year.  For reasons unknown, this extra month was only observed now and then.  By Julius Caesar’s time, the seasons no longer occurred at the same calendar periods as history had shown.  To correct this, Caesar eliminated the extra month and added one or two extra days to the end of various months (his month included, which was Quintilis, later renamed Julius we know it as July).  This extended the calendar to 365 days.  Also intended was an extra calendar day every fourth year (following the 28th day of Februarius).  However, after Caesar’s death in 44 B.C., the calendars were written with an extra day every 3 years instead of every 4 until corrected in 8 A.D.  So again, the calendar drifted away from the seasons.  By 1582, Pope Gregory XIII recognized that Easter would eventually become closer and closer to Christmas.  The calendar was reformed so that a leap day would occur in any year that is divisible by 4 but not divisible by 100 except when the year is divisible by 400.  Thus 1600 and 2000, although century marks, have a Leap Day. 

The calendar we use today, known as the Gregorian calendar, makes our year 365.2425 days only off from our solar year by .00031, which amounts to only one day’s error after 4,000 years.

And here's the fun stuff...

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,234 groups with 4,421,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer. Membership is free.

If you're creating a video or short film, don't waste time in pre-production creating your storyboard templates by hand. Print free storyboards online in ratios formatted for television and film.

Save yourself money and a trip to the store! Print graph paper free from your computer. This site is perfect for science and math homework, craft projects and other graph paper needs. All 8 styles of graph paper files are optimized PDF documents requiring Adobe Reader for viewing.

Make your own kind of music! Save time and money by printing staff paper online. This site is great for people who casually write music, those perfecting an inspired music composition, or anyone else who needs staff paper when a melody strikes.

Have you finished today's newspaper Sudoku and crave more? Get your game fix online! Generate and print free Sudoku puzzles online, in Easy, Challenging and Difficult skill levels.

Each page has two Sudoku puzzles for you to print and play in PDF format and requires Adobe Reader for viewing.

Find a Massage Partner exsists to provide you with access to tens of thousands of other massage enthusiasts who are looking for massage partners to trade massage therapy with. They have many massage professionals within their membership but everyone is welcome regardless of qualifications or experience.

Print free country flags for presentations or to showcase your pride and patriotism. Print on regular printer paper, or make canvas flags, stickers, temporary tattoos or overheads with specialty papers. Print one large flag, or use your printer settings to print many smaller flags all on one page.

There are tons of free calendars online. If you want to simply to get dates, holidays, and moon phases for years past, present, and future timeanddate.com is for you.

To print your own calendar in different languages you'll want PDF Pad . You can add your own pictures and events before you print. You must have Acrobat 7.0 or above to use this calendar.

Choose from several free designs on About.com. Select a month or check out the options for printing the entire year on one page. Print one or all and have fun!

Printablecalendar.ca provides customizable printable calendars formatted for Microsoft Word ®.

The Free Site strives to offer the best free product samples roundup on the Web. The offers are all totally free, with no postage and no shipping and handling charges. They try to keep these links up-to-date, but sample offers come and go quickly on the Web (mainly because the sample providers underestimate demand and find themselves swamped with requests).

When you fill out forms to request freebies, you may be placed on mailing lists and get unwanted E-mail. Therefore, it's a good idea to not use your primary E-mail address when requesting freebies. We suggest that you sign up for a free Web-based E-mail account and use that address when requesting freebies.

On FreeRice you'll play a multiple choice word game and for each correct answer a donation of 20 grains of rice will be made through the United Nations to help world hunger.

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Protonic.com is an online community that provides technical support to computer users around the world for absolutely nothing. We prefer to call our users "Clients" because we have the philosophy that, despite our service being free, you should still receive the highest quality technical support

A free home swapping service catering exclusively to travelers within the Continental United States, its Territories, Canada, Hawaii, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Our user-friendly exchangehomesoia.com website is quickly developing a database of homes, apartments, and condos in attractive locations, such as California, British Columbia, Oahu, and Florida.

Through Only In America Home Exchange, travelers may arrange both short and long-term home swaps: weekend getaways, weeklong vacations, several weeks or longer. Travelers with a second home or with access to temporary accommodations need notswap homes on the same dates.

BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. They let you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. There is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

Barilla has asked 5 of America's favorite celebrities, one of the world's leading Italian chefs and the most prominent party planner in the U.S. to help celebrate the Italian Table -- 6 different ways. Stanley Tucci, Marisa Tomei, Debra Messing, Natalie Portman and Chris Daughtry shared their favorite pasta dishes with us.  Mario Batali recreated these dishes and developed a special menu for each party while David Tutera developed creative and stunning table designs to make each experience special.

You can download this full color cookbook free, and with each download, Barilla will make a $1.00 donation, up to $100,000, to America's Second Harvest.

In honor of getting a Free Day this Month (Leap day; February 29th) I'm devoting the next several entries on Freebies. Don't get me wrong - NOTHING is FREE; but some things are close enough to be worth the price. Or at least worth a more uncommon price.

Leap day, for example, is an free (extra) day every fourth year. Not entirely free, those on salary don't get extra pay, and we all still get a day older but yet we still get an extra day this year. A day to celebrate as unusual or less common and it runs deep with tradition. You see leap day is the day that women are traditionally allowed to propose to men.

It is believed this tradition was started in 5th century Ireland when St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick about women having to wait for so long for a man to propose. According to legend, St. Patrick said the yearning females could propose on this one day in February during the leap year. In the United States, some people have referred to this date as Sadie Hawkins Day with women being given the right to run after unmarried men to propose.

But take care; there is a Greek superstition that claims couples have bad luck if they marry during a leap year. Apparently one in five engaged couples in Greece will avoid planning their wedding during a leap year.