10 catastrophic events that have happened in Jamaican leap years

Among Jamaicans, there is a widely held notion that leap years are cursed.

According to Jamaican superstitions, misfortunes are ripe in leap years, manifesting in incidents such as a spike in crime or, for couples who wed in a leap year, divorce or infertility.

However, is it just superstition?

Well, maybe not. It turns out that, historically, Jamaicans have not had very good luck in leap years.

Did you know that it was in the leap year 1504 that Christopher Columbus tricked Jamaica’s first inhabitants, the Tainos?

There have been 126 leap years since then, here are some of the biggest catastrophic events that have happened in Jamaica since 1504:

1.1692 – A massive earthquake struck Port Royal - then one of the busiest and wealthiest ports in the West Indies, popular among pirates. The earthquake caused most of the city to sink below sea level and killed approximately 3,000 people.

2.1912 – Jamaica was struck by the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic that year

3.1940 - Jamaica's first national hero, Marcus Garvey, dies.

4.1969 - Riots and civil disturbances broke out in Kingston in October 1968. The Rodney Riots were in response to the then Hugh Shearer-administration’s barring of Guyanese university lecturer and black activist Dr Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at UWI.

5.1976 - Then Prime Minister, Michael Manley declared Jamaica’s second ever state of emergency due to increased violence.

6.1976- There was an assassination attempt on the life of reggae legend Bob Marley. On December 3 1976, armed men entered Marley’s Kingston residence and shot the musician. Marley escaped with minor wounds while his wife Rita and manager Don Taylor were seriously injured, but survived.

7.1980 - The 1980 general election was the bloodiest in the island’s history. The year saw over 800 people murdered as a result of election violence.

8.1988- Hurricane Gilbert has been described as the 'costliest Atlantic hurricane of all time' with initial damage totalling over US$10 billion. The then Prime Minister Edward Seaga noted to one of the country's newspapers that, “the hardest hit areas where Gilbert made landfall looked like Hiroshima after the atom bomb."

9. The crash of the Financial Sector occurred in 1996 – As a result the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) Limited was established January 1997.

10. 2004- Hurricane Ivan has been named the 10th most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. For Jamaica, Hurricane Ivan was among the worst from a tropical cyclone in the island's recorded history. Overall, 17 people were killed in Jamaica and 18,000 people were left homeless as a result of the flood waters and high winds.