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How to Use Your Knuckles to Remember the Number of Days in Each Month. Our ancestors just
dragged them along the ground, but you can put your knuckles to good use with this neat
trick. You will need One or two hands and one or two feet (optional). Step 1. Ball your
hands into fists and hold them front of you. Step 2. Count the months on your knuckles
and the grooves in between, starting with January on your leftmost knuckle, which is
your left pinky. Step 3. Don't count your thumb's knuckles or any space between your
hands. Each of the seven months that land on a knuckle will be months with 31 days.
The five months that fall on the grooves all have 30 days. Step 4. Remember the one exception
– February – that falls on a groove. It has 28 days, or 29 in a leap year. This trick
works just as well using your feet instead of your hands. Step 5. Try this trick with
one hand, too. When you get to the last knuckle, loop around and continue counting on the first
knuckle. Did you know Julius Caesar, on the advice of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes,
invented the leap year in the year 46 B.C.E.