Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 12:29:46 -0500 (EST) From: jack <jack@germanium.xtalwind.net> To: David Greenman <dg@root.com> Cc: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org>, "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: So, what do we call the 00's? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.9912041159420.21855-100000@germanium.xtalwind.net> In-Reply-To: <199912040737.XAA08969@implode.root.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Dec 3 David Greenman wrote:
> I've heard this argument before (about years starting at 1), but I think
> it is wrong.
The US Naval Observatory and the Royal Observatory Greenwich
don's share your view. :)
From www.usno.navy.mil/millennium/whenis.html
mil*len*ni*um \ \ n, pl -nia or -niums: a period of 1000 years
The end of the second millennium and the beginning of the third
will be reached on January 1, 2001. This date is based on the now
globally recognized Gregorian calendar, the initial epoch of
which was established by the sixth-century scholar Dionysius
Exiguus, who was compiling a table of dates of Easter. Rather
than starting with the year zero, years in this calendar begin
with the date January 1, 1 Anno Domini (AD). Consequently, the
next millennium does not begin until January 1, 2001 AD.
From www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/new_mill.html
3. When do the 3rd Millennium and the 21st Century start?
A millennium is an interval of 1000 years and a century is an
interval of 100 years. In the Gregorian Calendar, which we use,
there is no year zero and
the sequence of years near the start runs as follows;
..., 3BC, 2BC, 1BC, 1AD, 2AD, ...
Because there is no year zero, the first year of the calendar
ends at the end of the year named 1AD. By a similar argument 100
years will only have elapsed at the end of the year 100AD. Since
2000AD is the 2,000th year of the Christian calendar, two
millenia will have elapsed at midnight on 31 December 2000. So
the 3rd Millennium and the 21st Century will begin at the same
moment, namely zero hours UTC (commonly known as GMT) on January
1st 2001.
3.1 The Origin of the Christian Era.
Early in the 6th century AD, Dionysius Exiguus (Denys the
Little), a monk and astronomer from Scythia now SW Russia,
compiled a table of dates for Easter in terms of the Diocletion
calendar. He decided to reset the system of counting years to
honour the birth of Christ so that the year 248 Anno Diocletiani
became the year 532 Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, known as 532
AD for short. In his scheme he believed that Christ was born on
the 25th of December of the year preceding the start of the year
1 AD. From our modern point of view, Dionysius Exiguus made two
errors. Firstly and quite understandably, he left out the year
zero, because the number zero had not yet been `discovered' in
the West. His second error was in thinking that Christ was born
at the end of the year 1BC. Modern research indicates that Christ
was probably born in 6BC and certainly by 4BC when Herod died.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack O'Neill Systems Administrator / Systems Analyst
jack@germanium.xtalwind.net Crystal Wind Communications, Inc.
Finger jack@germanium.xtalwind.net for my PGP key.
PGP Key fingerprint = F6 C4 E6 D4 2F 15 A7 67 FD 09 E9 3C 5F CC EB CD
enriched, vcard, HTML messages > /dev/null
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.21.9912041159420.21855-100000>