Talk:Jean Negulesco

Latest comment: 15 years ago by JackofOz in topic Date of birth

Date of birth edit

During his Hollywood career and in his 1984 autobiography, Negulesco claimed to have been born on 29 February 1900; he was apparently motivated to make this statement because birthdays on Leap Year Day are comparatively rare. In fact, 1900 was not a leap year, so there was no 29 February in 1900. Negulesco's autobiography (in which this claim appears) is appropriately titled Things I Did and Things I Think I Did.

Comment: He was born in Romania in 1900, which was still using the Julian calendar. In the Julian calendar, every 4th year, without exception, is a leap year - unlike the Gregorian, which has exceptions for centenary years that aren't divisible by 400 (1700, 1800, 1900, 2100 ...). I'm not saying that his claim to have been born on 29 February is necessarily correct, but I am saying that we can't use the "not a leap year" argument to support our view, since where he was born it was indeed a leap year in 1900. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)Reply