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"When Julius Caesar authorized the Julian calendar in 46 B.C., he could have said there would be 356 1/4 days in each year. But, being a wise leader, he decided that would be messy. He left quarter-time to musicians and declared that a full day would be added to the calendar every four years, thus the 'leap year.'
That worked for a while until an Anglo-Saxon monk, Venerable Bede, discovered that the Julian calendar was 11 minutes, 14 seconds too long. That adds up to about one day every 128 years. Although Bede exposed the problem in 730 A.D., no one worried about it until 1582. By then there were 10 extra days, and Pope Gregory XIII solved it by declaring that the day after Oct. 4, 1582, would be Oct. 15. To prevent further accumulation, the pope also declared that leap year would not be observed in years ending in 00.
But, there was another small problem. Pope Gregory's first adjustment still left three extra days every 400 years. Thus, it was declared that years ending in 00 would be common years except those divisible by 400."
SOURCE: Ann Arbor News 2/29/1996