>Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 11:33:43 +0100
>From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Gl=F2ria?= <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [rtl] From Barcelona...
>
>Mery Chritsmas and Happy New Year 2000
>
>See you later at new Milenium.
Millennium??!!
If you still don't know that, here is your chance:
The measurement of a year is based on one revolution of the earth
around the sun and is called a seasonal, tropical, or solar year. A solar
year contains 365 days, 5 hr, 48 min, and 45.5 sec. Despite the fact
that the existance of the solar year has been known for quite a long
time, many ancient civilizations calculated a month as being the time
between two full moons. This measurement, called a synodic, or lunar
month, resulted in a lunar year of 354 days, which is 11¼ days shorter
than a solar year. In modern calendars, the length of the months is
approximately one-twelfth of a year (28 to 31 days) and is adjusted to
fit the 12 months into a solar year.
The earliest calendars based on lunar months eventually failed to agree
with the seasons. A month occasionally had to be intercalated (added)
to reconcile lunar months with the solar year. Calendars that made
periodic adjustments in order to compensate for this difference were
called lunisolar calendars. Such a calendar was the one used by the
ancient Babylonians, whereas the ancient Egyptians were the first to
replace the lunar calendar with a calendar based on the solar year.
In 45 BC Julius Caesar decided to use a purely solar calendar known as
the Julian calendar. It fixed the normal year at 365 days, and the leap
year, every fourth year, at 366 days, with the extra day in February. It
also established the order of the months and the days of the week as
they exist in present-day calendars. Later, in 1578, Pope Gregory XIII
abolished the Julian calendar and instituted the Gregorian calendar,
which provided that only century years divisible evenly by 400 should
be leap years with 29 days in February. Thus, 1600 was a leap year, but
1700 and 1800 were common years. The Gregorian calendar is used
today throughout most of the Western world and in parts of Asia.
The Gregorian calendar is also called the Christian calendar because it
uses the birth of Jesus Christ as a starting date. Dates of the Christian
era are often labeled AD (Anno Domini, latin for "in the year of our
Lord") and years before His birth were labeled BC (before Christ). Since
the years were represented by the Roman Numeric System, where for
example, the year 1999 is represented by MCMXCIX, and since there
was no Roman numeral for "zero", the year of the birth of Jesus Christ
was referred to as year I AD (1 AD). Similarly, the year before that was
referred to as I BC (1 BC).
As you can see, there has never been a year 0, and therefore, the first
decade (the first ten years) of the Christian Era was completed on
December 31st, 10 AD. In the same way, the first century (one hundred
years) didn't end until December 31st, 100AD and the first millennium
(one thousand years) on December 31st, 1000AD, and so on.
Now, if you want to go ahead and celebrate the millennium before it
actually begins, it's your problem. But consider yourself warned
otherwise. :-)
>--
>Glòria Hernández Ballester
>e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
-------------< G. N. DeSouza >-------------
---------< [EMAIL PROTECTED]>---------
--< http://rvl1.ecn.purdue.edu/~gnelson >--
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