I have this nagging feeling we're all about to make a big mistake. Forget about the Y2K problem. I'm worried that when the bell tolls midnight on the last day of 1999, virtually everyone in the world will be turning the 20th century into the shortest century on record, one that lasted only 99 years.
And, if our great-grandchildren turn out to be as smart as our great-grandparents seem to have been, the 21st century will be the longest on record, 101 years.I've been researching the subject, and I just can't find a lot of evidence that the 21st century actually begins in 2000. It won't start until 2001. If that's true, the overwhelming majority of the planet's inhabitants are about to make historic fools of themselves as they plan gigantic end-of-the-millenium parties and do silly things like book flights over the international dateline at midnight.
Don't try to figure this out mathematically. The numbers will spin out of control in your head.
A few weeks ago, syndicated columnist Walter Williams gave it a try. "Pretend I owe you $3,000," he wrote. "When have I finished counting out the second thousand dollars and begin on the next -- third -- thousand dollars?" The answer, of course, is with 2001. But the problem is, in my mind the third thousand could just as easily begin if he counted out one penny over $2,000. That penny could represent the second after midnight at the start of the year 2000, right?
Well, the argument misses the point, which is that humans started counting wrong in the first place. We can blame that on Dionysius Exiguus, who introduced the anno Domini, or "year of our Lord" dating system. He decided Christ was born in 1 AD, not zero. The concept of zero didn't exist at the time. Therefore, the new century begins on Jan. 1, 2001. End of argument.
While you're reaching for the aspirin, you ought to know this: Our great grandparents didn't seem confused at all on the subject. In fact, the people who worked at the Deseret News on the day 1900 first dawned had a downright arrogant attitude toward the idiots who thought a new century had begun.
On Jan. 1, 1900, the News contained only one mention of a new century, and that was in a tiny story out of Berlin that started: "Emperor William at the New Year's parade today addressed the officers of the garrison as follows: 'The first day of the new century sees our army, in other words, our people, in arms . . . ' "
The headline, a study in sardonic wit, was simply, "He is a year off." Forget the emperor's message, the editors seemed to be saying. He's a dolt for not knowing what century it is.
But the next year, Jan. 1, 1901, the News was stuffed with stories about the dawning of a new century. The main headline on the front page was, "Ushering in the 20th century." Nearby was a drawing of a young child with the caption, "Good morning to all -- I'm the twentieth century!"
Inside was a description of what happened in Salt Lake City, "when the clock in the city and county building chimed the midnight hour." Guns and rockets went off, "and the greeting that passed cheerily around was 'Wish you many happy returns of the century.' "
And that's my worry. When the clock in the City-County Building strikes midnight next New Year's Eve, people will be saying the same thing. Only it will be just 99 years since the last time.
Are we really so anxious to end a century that, despite being the bloodiest in history, also has fulfilled all "the mighty achievements that (the revelers') imaginations had marked out for the new century" back in 1901?
Or is it just that, in our modern-day haste and our love of nice, even numbers, we have become stupider than our ancestors?
I haven't yet decided whether to don a sandwich board and walk around the streets of downtown next Dec. 31, handing out leaflets telling people to stop their premature celebrations. It's hard to buck popular opinion.
But a feature in that Jan. 1, 1901, paper headlined, "The twentieth century's debt to the nineteenth" gave me pause. It began: "In a swift review of what has been accomplished in the century now coming to its end one is most forcibly impressed with the fact that all knowledge, progress, civilization, is cumulative and continuous."
Ninety-nine years later we may add, "except when it comes to the ability to count."