Ah yes, today is that day that occurs just in a Leap Year and those who are born today are, it is said, leaplings. Among their ranks was Sir James Milne Wilson, sometime Premier of Tasmania. Sir James added to his rare birthday the unlikely additional note that he also died on February 29th. This seems a vanishingly small probability for a human being.
A vanishingly small probability for a human being until you do the maths. Dying on your birthday may be a miserable thought but the chances are generally about 1 in 365. Your birthday being February 29th and dying on in later years is about 1 in 2.1 million. Not likely then, but hardly unimaginable odds.
In fact it is almost exactly the same as the odds that your ticket will win £100,000 in the UK Lottery. Rather grimly we are a thousand times more likely to have a fatal slip in a bath or shower, and ten thousand times more likely to have our identity stolen . . .
As I pointed out in a talk I gave yesterday, the really big odds thing is what Jesus did. By taking back his life from the dead ('it was impossible for death to hold him') he produced a unique day. Which is why millions of Christians worship each week on that day, Sunday. In the human story it has become more singular and more significant than this weirdest of calendar days.
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