Too Soon and Too Late
A bit of trivia: I'm going to spend some time considering the date change
from 1999->2000 in this class. This is often been called entering a new
millennium but in some sense it is too soon (the new millennium comes later)
and it other senses it is too late (the new millennium has already started).
But from a mathematical viewpoint numbers with alot of zeros are interesting
(so are checks with lots of zeros).
Answer by Shawn Havery
Well, you see, the way I look at it is that although there was no year
zero and the millenium really technically begins in 2001, you're gonna
miss the party of a lifetime if you ignore this year's (of course, that
may be a good thing...). However, it doesn't really matter anyhow,
since Christ (whose birth is the basis for the Gregorian calendar,
whether you believe in his divinity or not) has been calculated, though
dating various astronomical phenomena, to have actually been born
either 4 or 5 BC, which means that the millenium really REALLY occurred
in 1995 or 1996. Therefore, if the world were somehow predestined to
end exactly two millenia after the birth of Christ, it would have
already happened. Cheers!
And more
Biblical references as well as astronomical ones also imply that the birth of
Christ was around 4 BC. The idea of counting years since the birth of
Christ was due to Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the little) in 532 AD. Some
think his mistake was to think Augustus' reign began in 727 AUC but it
actually is dated from September 3, 723 AUC, the date of the battle of
Actium. (AUC counts years from 753BC, the traditional date for the
founding of Rome.)
Counting years from the Christian era was not taken up immediately
and only became widely used in Western Europe in the 11th Century. Most
Europeans were unaware of the 999->1000 date change. The Roman empire
did have a 1000 year celebration.
2000 years from 4BC is 1997 and not 1996 because there is no year 0.