London -- When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, billions of people around the world will celebrate the dawn of a new millennium -- a year too early.
As the champagne flows and kisses mark the start of the new age, the revellers will actually be welcoming the last year of the present millennium, not the first year of the next.
The start of the new millennium is Jan. 1, 2001, and not the year 2000, according to researchers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge, England.
"The year 2000 AD will certainly be celebrated, as is natural for a year with such a round number. But, accurately speaking, we will be celebrating the 2,000th year or the last year of the millennium, not the start of the new millennium," they said in a statement.
The confusion dates back almost 250 years with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and arises from the transition from the years BC to AD by the Venerable Bede, a seventh-century the theologian and historian who adopted Anno Domini to mark the passing of the years from the birth of Christ.
"Unfortunately the sequence of years going back from BC to AD does not include a year 0. The sequence of years runs 3 BC, 2 BC, 1 BC, 1 AD, 2 AD. . . . This means that the first year of the first millennium was 1 AD," the researchers said.
"The one thousandth year was 1000 AD and the first day of the second millennium was 1001 AD. It is thus clear that the start of the new millennium will be 1 January 2001."
Dr. Margaret Penston said the observatory was so inundated with requests to explain the confusion over the millennium that they had felt compelled to issue the statement.
If nothing else it could be a good excuse for two celebrations to mark the millennium instead of just one -- music to the ears of organizers promoting gala international events.
"It's really immaterial when we celebrate, or whether we celebrate once or twice. People will just want to celebrate the change from 1 to 2," she said.
In addition to the doubts about when, a controversy is also brewing about where the new millennium will begin -- the exact spot on the globe where the dawn will rise on the next 1,000 years.
"There are people going crazy to know when the millennium will begin or whether it will start on the international dateline," added Penston.
One man who is quite certain is Norris McWhirter, a co-founder with his twin brother of the Guinness Book of Records. He left his lucrative publishing business recently and is hoping to corner the market on the first sighting.
As chairman of the Millennium Adventure Co. he has signed up a farmer who has the highest hill on Pitt Island, one of New Zealand's Catham Islands, which he says "will be the first terrestrial, accessible, and populated place to usher in the next 1,000 years."
From Ken Launauze's hill an array of television cameras will vie to catch the magic moment.
But according to Greenwich Observatory calculations, Balleny Island in Antarctica where the sun is below the horizon for less than one hour, will have the first sunrise in the year 2000.
Caroline Island, part of the Republic of Kiribati in the south Pacific, will be next with Pitt Island trailing behind in fourth position.
With the date and location of the millennium sorted out, Greenwich Observatory, determined not to leave any stone unturned, settled the only other remaining question about the year 2000. Will it be a leap year?
Yes, it is.
Reuter News Service (6 December 1996)
This article is copyright 1996 Reuters News Service.
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