Isaac Asimov on the millennium: If we beguin counting with 1, then the tenth year is 10 and the years 1 thru 10 make up the first decade. It is the year 11 therefore that marks the beguinning of the second decade. It is the year 101 that marks the beguinning of the second century, and 1001 that marks the beguinning of the second millennium. That means that the year 2000 will be the last year of the twentieth century, and it will be on January 1, 2001 that the twenty-first century and the third millennium will beguin. But 2000 is just a number, it all depends on when you start counting. The Romans started counting from the year Rome was founded, which they placed in the year we call 753 B.C. They called that year 1 A.U.C. (Anno Uribis Conditae, "the year of the founding of the city"). If this system were still used today, the year 2000 would have ocuured in what we call 1247. Why not count from the beguinning of the world. The Jewish rabbis, after studying the Bible, decided the world began in 3760 B.C. Today we count from the year Jesus was born. In the year 535 a scholar named Dionysius Exiguus studied the Bible and decided that Jesus had been born 535 years earlier, in 753 A.U.C. The monarch Charlemagne decided to start counting from the year Jesus was born, so 753 A.U.C. became A.D. 1 (Anno Domini "in the year of the Lord") Unfortunately, Dionysisius Exiguus was wrong in his calculations. According to the Bible, Jesus was born when Herod I ruled over Judea, but Herod I, we are certain, from historical records of the time, died in 749 A.U.C. Jesus had to be born no later than that year, which is 4 B.C. He may have been born as early as 20 B.C. So no matter how you slice it, 4 years, 20 years; the year 2000 has really already come and pass. The Universe is believed to be 15 Billion years old. What's 2000 years in 15,000,000,000?