Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

If you don’t know your history, you would probably ask:  Why is the Confederate flag displayed at the Minnesota State Capitol?

Well, it isn’t displayed anymore for security reasons, but it is in Minnesota’s position under lock and key.

Here’s the story. The Confederate battle flag was captured at the Battle of Gettysburg by Private Marshall Sherman of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment, and remained in Sherman’s possession in Minnesota after being inventoried by the United States War Department in 1867. A 1905 congressional resolution that flags from the American Civil War should be returned to their places of origin did not lead to the return of the flag to Virginia, nor did requests by Virginia or groups therein for its return in 1961, 1998, 2000, and 2003; a request by the governor of Virginia to “borrow the flag” in 2013 was also declined.

The flag is now stored in a drawer at the Minnesota Historical Society, with its exact location undisclosed for security reasons. There are several holes in the flag, and the middle eyelet is torn; however, it is mostly intact with less than one percent of its fabric missing.

The 1st Minnesota participated in the battles of First Bull Run, Antietam and the Battle of Gettysburg. The regiment’s most famous action occurred on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg when Major General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered the 1st Minnesota to charge into a brigade of 1,200 Confederate soldiers. This action blunted the Confederate attack and helped preserve the Union’s precarious position on Cemetery Ridge.

                * * * *

As long as we are talking history, most of us know that we get an extra day in February this year (Feb. 20).  It’s what’s known as Leap Year.

But why do we have a Leap Year?

The New York Times recently did a story on the story behind Leap Year.  The math is mind-boggling in a layperson sort of way and down to fractions of days and minutes. There’s even a leap second occasionally, but there’s no hullabaloo when that happens.

The thing to know is that leap year exists, in large part, to keep the months in sync with annual events, including equinoxes and solstices, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

It’s a correction to counter the fact that Earth’s orbit isn’t precisely 365 days a year. The trip takes about six hours longer than that, NASA says.

Contrary to what some might believe, however, not every four years is a leaper. Adding a leap day every four years would make the calendar longer by more than 44 minutes, according to the National Air & Space Museum.

So, it was decreed that years divisible by 100 not follow the four-year leap day rule unless they are also divisible by 400, the JPL notes. In the past 500 years, there was no leap day in 1700, 1800 and 1900, but 2000 had one. In the next 500 years, if the practice is followed, there will be no leap day in 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500.

Without the leap years, after a few hundred years there would be summer in November.