Fw: End nears for the 99-year century (Y2K)

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> >End nears for the 99-year century (Y2K)

> >

> >Agence France-Press, Friday, October 22, 1999

> >

> >Paris, Oct 21 (AFP) - Hundreds of millions of people all

> >over the world will be celebrating the start of the third

> >millennium on January 1, 2000. And they all will be

> >wrong. That's official. Officials at Britain's Greenwich

> >Observatory, guardians of the line of zero longitude, and

> >at its American counterpart the US Naval Observatory, are

> >categorical: the end of the second millennium and the

> >beginning of the third will be reached on January 1,

> >2001.

> >

> >In a century of 100 years, century's end logically comes

> >at the end of the 100th year, and as a result the

> >millennium festivities commencing in just over 10 weeks

> >time will be exactly a year early.

> >

> >The reason for this is that there was no year zero in the

> >AD (Anno Domini, "in the year of our Lord") calendar

> >created by the sixth-century monk Dionysius Exiguus

> >(Dennis the Short), and the millennium started out with

> >the year 1 AD.

> >

> >However logic will take second place to the popular

> >feeling that a year designated by such a round figure as

> >2000 is a more suitable starting point for a new

> >millennium, not to mention the commercial imperative to

> >cash in.

> >

> >The money-making opportunites provided by the date-change

> >have been such as to prompt Lord Falconer, Britain's

> >minister in charge of the Millennium Dome -- the huge

> >dome under construction east of London -- to observe

> >earlier this year that the British would be "proper

> >Charlies" if they waited till 2001 to mark the

> >millennium.

> >

> >It was very different 100 years ago. Virtually every

> >important public celebration heralding the 20th century

> >was held on or just before January 1, 1901.

> >

> >Daily newspapers and weekly and monthly periodicals ran

> >their first numbers of the century in the first days of

> >1901, and the previous year had been firmly earmarked as

> >the closing chapter of the old era rather than the

> >opening chapter of the new.

> >

> >The lead headline of the New York Times on January 1,

> >1901 read: "Twentieth Century's Triumphant Entry".

> >

> >There had been prominent advocates, Sigmund Freud and

> >Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm among them, for starting the new

> >century a year earlier in line with popular sentiment,

> >but they made little headway against the consensus that

> >then prevailed among decision-makers.

> >

> >The result has been that the 20th century, about to be

> >declared dead by popular command, has lasted only 99

> >years.

> >

> >Disputes over when to mark the end of the century have a

> >history going back at least 300 years.

> >

> >Historian Hillel Schwartz, in his book "Century's End",

> >traces the first major hassles to the period 1699-1701,

> >while in the late 1790s the letters pages in newspapers

> >in the English-speaking world conducted a lively debate

> >on the subject.

> >

> >But it was in the 1890s that the controversy reached its

> >peak. Science writer Stephen Jay Gould notes in

> >"Questioning the Millennium" that the schism between the

> >"high culture" view -- that the new century begins when

> >the double-zero year is over -- and the "popular view"

> >favouring a round-number year emerged most clearly at

> >this time.

> >

> >January 1, 1900 was the popular choice for the start of

> >the 20th century, as evidenced by a typical letter to the

> >press cited by Schwartz: "I defy the most bigoted

> >precisian to work up an enthusiasm over the year 1901,

> >when we will already have had twelve months' experience

> >of the 1900s."

> >

> >A century on, the "bigoted precisians" have been

> >relegated to the margins in the stampede to herald the

> >new millennium at the earliest possible date.

> >

> >But Gould notes that the "century-end" date dispute is an

> >arbitrary problem in any case, to which an arbitrary

> >solution is perfectly appropriate.

> >

> >And adds that for the purist both sides are wrong.

> >

> >Dennis the Short almost certainly miscalculated in

> >establishing his benchmark, since there is objective

> >evidence that Christ was born at least four years before

> >the start of the calendar which bears his name.

> >

> >This means that the second millennium of his birth

> >happened some time around 1995, and the upcoming

> >celebrations are somewhat late.