AILEEN Carol "Lee" WUORNOS (d: 2002); born Aileen Carol Pittman on this date; Wuornos was an American serial killer and sex worker who murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990 by shooting them at point-blank range. Wuornos asserted that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was servicing them, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was convicted and sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

The theatrical film Monster (2003), starred Charlize Theron as Wuornos. It chronicles Wuornos' story from childhood until her first murder conviction. The film earned Theron an Academy Award for Best Actress.

PEDRO ZAMORA, was a Cuban-American AIDS activist born on this date (d. 1994); Zamora was an out gay Cuban-American, HIV-positive AIDS educator who became famous for his activism, testimony before Congress, and his appearance on MTV's The Real World: San Francisco.  U.S. President Bill Clinton credited Zamora with personalizing and humanizing those with the disease.

JEROME LAWRENCE (b: 1915) was an American playwright and author who died on this date. After graduating from  Ohio State University  in 1937 and the University of California, Los Angeles in 1939, Lawrence partnered with Robert Edwin Lee to help create Armed Forces Radio. The two built a partnership over their lifetimes, and continued to collaborate on screenplays and musicals until Lee's death in 1994.

Lawrence and Lee won acclaim for the 1955 play Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes Trial. Lawrence described the couple's plays as "shar[ing] the theme of the dignity of every individual mind, and that mind's life-long battle against limitation and censorship". The two deliberately avoided Broadway later in their careers. 

Inherit the Wind remains among the most-produced plays in the American theatre. They also collaborated on the plays Auntie Mame, The Incomparable Max, and First Monday in October, among others. In 1965, they founded the American Playwrights' Theatre, a plan to bypass the commercialism of the Broadway stage, which foreshadowed the professional regional theatre movement. Their wildly successful play, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, was produced through the American Playwrights Theatre, and premiered at Lawrence's alma mater, Ohio State, which also commissioned their play on the life and times of James Thurber's, Jabberwock (1972).

In all, they collaborated on 39 works, including a 1956 musical adaptation of James Hilton's Lost Horizon, entitled Shangri-La, with the author himself. They also adapted Auntie Mame into the hit musical Mame with composer Jerry Herman, which won a Tony Award for its star, Angela Lansbury. Less successful was the Lawrence and Lee collaboration with Herman, also starring Lansbury, Dear World, a musical adaptation of Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot.

Lawrence and Lee's plays draw on events from United States history to speak to contemporary issues. addressing intellectual freedom, and McCarthyism among them. Lawrence taught playwriting at the Imversity of Southern California.

Lawrence's one Tony Award nomination was for Best Book of a Musical for Mame.

Lawrence died in Malibu on February 29, 2004, from complications of a stroke and  is survived by his companion of fifteen years Will Willoughby.

It’s February 29^th, which means, it’s Leap Year, the odd day of the quadrennial year, and by that very token, this is a Gay day, a “queer” day, an “in between” place. In between places and times are traditionally connected to same-sex/Gay people who, in numerous cultures are considered to be “not-male, not female” i.e. a third (and possibly fourth) gender; in between the sexes. The crossroads is a widely understood example of this “sacred space” traditionally held by same-sex people. The middle ground. The bridge. All are traditionally Gay archetypes.

Although the modern calendar counts a year as 365 days, a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, an extra twenty-four hours have accumulated, so one extra day is added to that calendar to keep the count coordinated with the sun's apparent position.

There was a tradition that women may make a proposal of marriage to men only in leap years, further restricted in some cases to only February 29. There is a tradition that in 1288 the Scottish Parliament under Queen Margaret legislated that any woman could propose in Leap Year; few parliament records of that time exist, and none concern February 29. Another component of this tradition was that if the man rejects the proposal, he should soften the blow by providing a kiss, one pound currency, and a pair of gloves (some later sources say a silk gown). There were similar notions in France and Switzerland.

A similar modern American tradition, Sadie Hawkins Day, honors "the homeliest gal in the hills" created by Al Capp in the cartoon strip Li'l Abner. In the famous story line, Sadie and every other woman in town were allowed on that day to pursue and catch the most eligible bachelors in Dogpatch. Although the comic strip placed Sadie Hawkins Day in November, today it has become almost synonymous with February 29.

A person who was born on February 29 may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they may celebrate their birthday on February 28 or March 1.