Big and Bizarre Headlines From a Bonus News Day (Published 2024) – The New York Times

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Times Insider
A leap year brings 366 days — and daily newspapers. Times Insider scoured the archives to find the most significant or silliest New York Times headlines published on Feb. 29.
By Maria Newman and Megan DiTrolio
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Most years have 365 days and accordingly, 365 daily editions of The New York Times. But it takes Earth slightly longer than 365 days to fully orbit the sun — about a quarter of a day longer per year. Over time, without adjusting for the difference, our calendar would drift further away from astrological time and our seasons. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII implemented the Gregorian calendar, and with it, a bonus day roughly every four years on Feb. 29
In honor of today’s leap day, Times Insider went back in time to find some of the quirkiest, or most noteworthy, articles published in those bonus Feb. 29 editions of The Times.
THE BRIDE WAS NOT THERE. (1884)
The wedding of a couple in “fashionable society” might have made front-page news in any circumstance, but it secured its Page One spot after the bride “mysteriously disappeared” before the nuptials, The Times reported. The article described the bride and groom, Miss Lizzie Glenn and Col. Miller, as “among our most respected citizens.” But with Miss Glenn a no-show, “the disappointed lover was compelled to return home without his bride.” Brutal.
WIFE MAY PICK YOUR POCKETS (1912)
Of course, not all couples who make it to the altar live happily. A magistrate in Philadelphia “decided that a wife has a perfect right to rifle the pockets of her husband, take his last cent, and the husband has no redress,” The Times reported. The decision was made after a man was arrested “on a charge of non-support, brought by his wife.” His bail was set at $300 — we’re going to guess his wife didn’t visit the jail with her purse.
RAILROADS GO BACK TOMORROW, WILSON SIGNS THE BILL (1920)
President Woodrow Wilson announced the government would return the nation’s railroads back to private ownership. He had nationalized them in 1917, when they were buckling under labor issues and couldn’t keep up with wartime needs. President Wilson said the previous network of competing or overlapping systems should be coordinated to make it more efficient. The president, who had long demonstrated “sympathy with the working man,” also directed the unions to cooperate with a bipartisan board created by Congress to work out wages that would be “just and reasonable.”
WANTS LEAP YEAR ALTERED. (1924)
“Today will be the last time the extra day in leap year turns up on Feb. 29, if the International Fixed Calendar League has its way,” The Times reported. The league proposed an “improved calendar” of four-week months that would move leap day to June 29. Of course, the league did not get its way.
TIMES SQUARE GAZES AT MAN RIDING CLOCK HAND IN SKY (1928)
“A man who was in a new position every minute held the attention of thousands in Times Square,” The Times reported. The man was changing the electric bulbs on the clock on the east side of the Paramount Building. To do so, he was astride the clock’s minute hand and holding on to a rope. The “big hand traveled persistently as the man toiled” more than 400 feet above the ground. Fortunately, “the job was finished before 2:30.”
CARNIVAL IN HAVANA (1964)
The Carnival celebration in Fidel Castro’s Cuba was just as festive as before he seized power in 1959. But there was a socialist tinge that year, The Times reported. Mabel Sanchez Domenech, a 21-year-old model, was named by a jury as the queen of the celebration among 43 candidates who represented unions, youth organizations and state enterprises, some of the pillars of Mr. Castro’s new world order. After she was crowned, the new queen, a mother of two, sang the revolution’s praises: “My greatest dream is for my sons to grow up into good men and serve our invincible Socialist revolution.”
PRESIDENT HOME AFTER CHINA TRIP; REASSURES ALLIES (1972)
President Richard Nixon returned to Washington from a trip to China that ended 25 years of isolation between the two countries. He told a crowd he had established “the basis of a structure for peace” that didn’t sacrifice America’s promise to its allies, The Times reported. President Nixon, who was the first U.S. president to visit mainland China while in office, added that “there were no secret deals of any kind.” The trip set the foundation for diplomatic ties between the two countries seven years later.
A DAY FOR LEAPING, LOAFING OR LOOKING FOR A MATE (1992)
It takes the earth 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to circle the sun, The Times reported on that year’s leap day. “It took a Caesar (Julius) and a Pope (Gregory XIII) to order up plans by which those dangling hours would be lumped into one day every fourth year and jammed between the end of February and the first of March,” according to The Times. With the extra day in mind, “there has been overwhelming unconcern with celebrating or even making special use of that valuable time.” The Times polled people on how they would spend their bonus day. One person joked to The Times that they would take advantage of a tradition that women can propose marriage during leap years.
A SURE VOTE-GETTER: BANISH LEAP DAY (1996)
In a letter to the editor, Christopher H. Stephens of New York offered an idea: “If any of the Presidential candidates are seeking a new idea to campaign on, try this one: Give the American worker an extra Sunday every four years and eliminate leap day, Feb. 29.” Though President Bill Clinton, who was re-elected that year, didn’t seem to heed the advice, we must admit: An extra Sunday every once in a while would be nice.
HOW WILL YOU SPEND YOUR EXTRA 24 HOURS? (2012)
“Today is a special day,” wrote The Times’s Andy Newman. “It is a bonus, a gift from the masters of time and space.” Like Times Insider, he also turned to the archives to commemorate leap day, sharing newspaper clippings that reported how people once enjoyed the extra day: For example, in 1892, women at a formal dance in Orange, N.J., “used their leap-year privileges with charming freedom.” On Feb. 29, 1956, Usher L. Burdick, Republican of North Dakota, spent his day complaining about the extra nickel he was charged for bread at the House restaurant, saying such a charge wouldn’t “encourage people to eat up the wheat surplus." In 1964, the Kansas City Athletics (now the Oakland Athletics) began moving their equipment back into their stadium following lease negotiations.
Mr. Newman asked readers: “How will you spend this extra day? Will you do something you’d never dare try on the other 365? Squander it? Close your eyes and wait for it to end?”
Reader, today we pose the same questions.
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