If you are celebrating a birthday on February 29th this year – or you know someone who is – then get in touch with local food & drink discovery app Wriggle – they want to help you mark the occasion properly! They’re asking ‘leaplings’ (people born on February 29th) to get in touch, so that their team of local food fanatics can deliver a birthday cake on this quadrennial occurrence.
Wriggle recently learned the real emotional significance that leaplings attach to the simple but rare treat of receiving cake on their real birthday (the 29th). Their Brighton manager Amanda, who is a leap year baby, explained that in a non-leap year, the day leaplings celebrate their ‘fake’ birthday is typically dictated by whatever date they are given a birthday cake. By making a proper fuss of leap year babies on the 29th February this year, Wriggle wants to spread a bit of old-fashioned fun, and help beat the winter blues.
Speaking about the campaign, Wriggle founder Rob Hall said:
“We want to make sure that leaplings are treated in style this year, and we’re going to make that happen in the way we know best: food. Everyone deserves to eat a delicious cake on their birthday – and leap year babies only get the chance once in a blue moon!”
Leap Years as we know them today, with an extra day added every four years, were instigated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, as part of the Gregorian calendar, as a way to try and sync calendars with the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun. This followed centuries of botched attempts to balance out the calendar, including Julius Caesar’s 455-day-long ‘Year of Confusion’ in 46 B.C. Today, the odds of being born on the 29th February are very slim, with most sources putting the chances at one in 1,461 (for reference, the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime are one in 3,000). There are an estimated five million leaplings around the world, so get in touch! Wriggle want to hear from you.
The Wriggle team will be delivering birthday cakes to anyone:
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Born on the 29th February, in any year, and can prove it with a scan of a passport, birth certificate or driver’s licence.
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Living in Brighton, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham or Cardiff, and can verify that with a proof of address.
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Who sends proof of both of the above via email to hello@getawriggleon.com before Monday 24th February.