Millennium & Happy New Year

[martin_olsen]

Hello all Disney mailing list members.

Being late with Christmas wishes I wish all of you the very best for the
last year of this millennium.

For the record: This week's issue of Anders And & Co. (#52, 1999) has a nice
explanation of why the first year of the next millennium (and of course the
next century as well) has to be 2001. The explanation is based on the quite
obvious fact that counting starts at 1, not at 0. So I guess some Danish
school teachers will have a bit of trouble with the kids in January... ;-)

Another fact that may interest some of you:
In the latest issue of Universitetsavisen, a bi-weekly paper published by
the University of Copenhagen, C.M.Taisbak gives a very precise explanation
of the historic and numerologic background for the position in time of the
"Year 1 A.D.":
The historic reason is of course based on Quirinius and King Herodes.
The numerologic reason is new to me but quite obvious once it is told: The
position of Easter Sunday in the calendar is computed using a number cycle
of length 19, so when the A.D. calculation was initiated, the number of the
year would most conveniently be fixed as a multiple of 19, and in addition
the year in question was a leap year, so the number ought to be divisible by
4. The number chosen was 532 which is indeed divisible by both 19 and 4.
As I see it, it is a stroke of luck that both the historic and the
numerologic conditions can be met at once. The numerologic condition gives
an interval of 76 years, but the historic conditions narrow it down to
something less than about 15-20 years.

BTW Taisbak is a scholar of a rather unusual kind, being a classical
philologist and teaching at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

And BTW Taisbak also mentions that the birthday of Jesus was established
almost 350 years later by agreement between a pope and a Roman emperor. As
we all know the birthday was set at the birthday of the Sun, i.e. at Winter
Solstice.
Astronomical facts about the possible true nature of the star of Bethlehem
have been used to pinpoint the birthday, but I'm not sure how much one can
conclude from these speculations.

- Martin