HOW was 7 January 1998 for you? Did you have a party? Or did the new year
begin with just the slight frisson of being that much closer to the millennium?
Thought not. Because, for most people, the early days of last year slipped by
with not a firework in sight. There is a tiny minority of calendar-watchers,
however, who believe that the millennium began last January: the devotees of the
Gregorian version. Even odder, followers of the Julian calendar have to wait
until the end of 2000 to crack open the Bollinger.
As E. G. Richards reminds us in Mapping Time: the Calendar and its
History (Oxford University Press, 拢20, ISBN 0198504136), the date 1
January 2000 鈥渋s only 1999 years from the start of the Christian era, which
began on 1 January of the year AD 1鈥攖here being no year 0鈥�. And depending
on when Jesus was born (perhaps 4 BC or earlier) and which calendar is used,
Richards reckons that the millennium 鈥渨orks out as 7 January 1998 in our
Gregorian calendar鈥�.
This is a work of enthusiastic research: Richards is an amateur of calendars
in the best sense of the word. He is a biophysicist who became interested in the
subject when he developed computer programs for converting dates from one
calendar to another. From the subject鈥檚 roots in astronomy, through the history
of calendars, to an 鈥淎lgorithm for Easter Sunday by the Dionysian canon鈥�,
Richards makes even the most arcane complications arising from the accident of
Earth鈥檚 spin and orbit seem fascinating.
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