Feb. 29, the day of the leaplings and marriage proposal traditionally performed by women, a seemingly normal day filled with strange coincidences each time around. With a day that disappears and only reappears every four years comes with it  a lot of strange patterns.

Let’s start with the most recent leap years: 2020 and 2024. In 2020, the two teams that made it to the Super Bowl were the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, with the Chiefs claiming the trophy. In 2024, the same two teams competed against each other with the Chiefs taking home the trophy once again. For a political coincidence, in 2020 the two primary candidates in the presidential election were Donald Trump for the Republican Party and Joe Biden for the Democratic Party. Evidently, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, so will the pattern continue in 2024? In 2020, the world lost Kobe Bryant tragically, and though we have lost many beloved celebrities since, in 2024 we lost country music artist Toby Keith. On a scarier note, in 2020 the world was impacted by COVID-19. With all these patterns, one has to wonder what will impact us this year.

Going back two leap years revisits 2016. In that seemingly unlucky year, we lost David Bowie, Muhammad Ali and Prince, just to name a few major celebrities gone during a leap year, with it happening so much one may begin to think that leap years just bring bad luck in general. 2016 also marks the year of Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union, which also led to the resignation of the British Prime Minister David Cameron. Whether or not this was a good thing is up for debate, but either way it still occurred during a leap year and was generally unexpected. Separately, who could forget the crazy clown phase that year that gave a good portion of the population nightmares for quite some time? What is it with leap years that makes them bring all sorts of crazy into our lives?

These events occurring mainly during leap years definitely hold some interesting coincidences. Though there are many bad events that fill these special years, they are also full of good events that give hope for the next leap year. It’s easy to forget about leap years because a four-year gap is a decent amount of time in between them. Maybe these bad coincidences are punishment, for us forgetting the leap years, or maybe they are just plain bad luck but regardless with every leap year that comes, crazy follows. Let’s just hope this leap year brings more good than bad.