Feb. 29 – On this day in Montana history (which only occurs every four years)  in 1871 the Helena Daily Herald had headlined “Leap Year and Its Privileges.” In those days, leap year meant that women could do the risqué act of asking men to marry them. The paper listed 33 of what it called “eligible old bachelors.”  After touting their bank accounts and social status, the editor said he would run a list of “Old Maids” in the next issue who might want to take advantage of leap year. Women’s rights or not, he didn’t run the list in the next issue, instead running a letter from an outraged single lady. “You have been purposely passed by these 10 to 30 years, for good reasons known to ourselves,” she wrote, then threatening to pull the editor’s hair out making it “as bare below the ‘timber line’ as above it!”