Leap year babies put a smile on mothers’ faces

IF the proud mums of babies delivered yesterday wanted to know just how special a club their children had entered by virtue of being born on February 29, they only had to look at the glitz and glamour of last night’s Oscar ceremony in Hollywood.

William A Wellman, the man whose film Wings won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture in 1928, was a leap year baby.

So too were the French painter Balthus, the Italian composer Rossini, and Pope Paul III, the pontiff who excommunicated King Henry VIII of England in 1538 when Henry divorced his wife Catherine of Aragon.