New Year I know about but Leap Second? From EarthSky:
Leap second to be added tonight
The U.S. Naval Observatory announced last July that a leap second will be added to official timekeeping on December 31, 2016. That means your day and year – and everyone’s day and year – will officially be one second longer.
Leap seconds have been added 26 times since 1972. They’re inserted at the end of the last day of either June or December. The leap second will be added to the world’s clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on December 31. This corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, when the extra second will be inserted at the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Master Clock Facility in Washington, DC.
The clocks that are synchronized to this will show the seconds as 57, 58, 59, 60, 00, 01 - last one was June 30, 2015. These are added to keep solar time and network time in sync - the Earth's rotation is slowing down perceptibly and now, our clocks are good enough to notice this. It used to be the domain of high technology and only a few places had clocks good enough to be bothered by this difference. Now they are available on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. I own two of them.
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