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Re: OT:CHAT: Millennium Celebration


John Jones writes:

> Well, NIST sez:
> When does the next millenium begin?
> Which begs the question: was the first year yr 0 or yr 1. In the
> from BC to AD was there a year zero? Did it belong to BC or AD. I am sure
> scholarly types somewhere have figured this out already, but it would
> from the NIST position that the first year was year 1. However I seem to
> remember refences to year 0 in various places.


There never was a year Zero. According to the calendar system in current
use, the day after December 31, 1 BC was January 1, 1 AD. Therefore, the
number of years between the present (1999 AD) and an event that happened BC
is one less than the sum of the two numbers (for example, Rome was founded
in 756 BC, which is 2,754 years ago).

Prior to the beginning of the present century, Britain's Astronomer Royal
decreed that 1900 was the 100th year of the 19th Century and that the 20th
Century began on January 1, 1901 (which is quite correct, technically
speaking). No one in this country paid much attention to him. I read in an
article earlier this year that his successor issued the same decree
regarding the millenium, but that no one, even in Britain, is paying much
attention this time around. Commonsense feels that there is a bigger
difference between 1999 and 2000 than there is between 2000 and 2001, and
in this case commonsense is going to prevail, even though its perception
does not accurately reflect the reality of the calendar.


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