New Millennium-Just When Is It Anyway?

▪ 2000

      No sooner had people planning their 1999 New Year's Eve celebrations referred to Jan. 1, 2000, as ushering in the 3rd millennium than someone declaimed that the new millennium would not really begin until Jan. 1, 2001. The Gregorian calendar, put forth in 1582 and subsequently adopted by most countries, did not include a year 0 in the transition from BC (the years before Christ) to AD (those since his birth). Thus, the 1st millennium ran from year 1 through 1000, and the 2nd began in 1001 and would end on Dec. 31, 2000—not 1999. Those opting for 2000 as the beginning of the new millennium were not to be put off, however. For them, it was enough that the first digit in the year was changing and that the year was a multiple of 1,000. Computers facing problems caused by the use of a two-digit space for the year in their programs—and the possibility that when those two digits began again at 00 the computer might be unable to tell which century was being referred to—were said to be endangered by the Millennium Bug. The terms new millennium and next millennium in reference to the year 2000 were ubiquitous in the media.

      Whereas some people feared that this new millennium would bring apocalyptic upheaval and impending doom, others were planning extraordinary celebrations. In London the Millennium Dome—built in Greenwich on the prime meridian, where, because of the decision of the International Prime Meridian Conference in 1884, each new day officially begins—was considered the location where the millennium would start. It was poised to be host to elaborate exhibitions and celebrations beginning Dec. 31, 1999, although its site on the World Wide Web admitted that technically the new millennium would not start until Jan. 1, 2001. On the opposite side of the globe, cruise ships were to be positioned at the international date line and planes would fly over it so that their passengers could usher in the new millennium the instant calendar day January 1 began on local clocks. From a number of South Pacific locations came claims that they would be the first to see the dawn of the new millennium and that theirs were the celebrations that people should flock to.

      In actuality, however, the question of when the new millennium would start was probably moot; scholars had for some time placed Christ's birth date at 4 or 6 BC. As astronomy historian Marvin Bolt reiterated in a 1999 program at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, a 6th-century monk known as Dennis the Short (Dionysius Exiguus; also called Denis the Little), attempting to determine the exact year Christ was born, made a miscalculation that came to be reflected in the Christian calendar. It was likely that the actual new millennium had already begun.

Barbara Whitney

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