Calendars of the World

According to the Christian calendar, the new millennium arrived on January 1^st, 2001. However, this calendar is not the only one used in the world. In many areas of the world, this day had no particular significance.

In Israel, it was Tevet 6 in the year 5761. In Buddhist Sri Lanka, the year was 2545. In Delhi the Indian calendar indicated the date of 6 Paush, 1922. The date according to the Muslim calendar was 5 Shawwal in the year 1421. Also, according to the world's astronomers, January 1^st, 2001 corresponded to Julian 2,451,910.

The Christian Calendar

In the sixth century A.D., the monk Dionysius Exiguus (also known as Dennis the Humble), a Greek monk who lived in Constantinople, created a calendar that started with the birth of Christ. Unfortunately, he made a small miscalculation as to what year that was. Jesus was probably born around the year that Exiguus called 6 B.C., not 1 A.D. Since this error is perpetuated to this day, the new millennium should perhaps have been celebrated somewhere between 1995 and 1997.

Other Calendars

During the reign of King Solomon in the tenth century B.C., Jewish scholars started to count the days from what they calculated the date of the creation to be. The starting point for the Buddhist calendar is the year of Buddha's death, generally believed to have occurred in 544 B.C. The Indian calendar (which was only adopted in 1957) uses a starting point of 78 A.D., the first year of the reign of the semilegendary king Kaniska, who ruled over much of modern-day India. Muslims date their calendar from the Hegira - the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina on Friday, July 16^th, 622. Muslim years are based on twelve lunar months, so the 1,379 years between that year and 2001 correspond to 1,421 Muslim years.

The Julian Calendar

In the 16^th century, Joseph Justus Scaliger, a scholar and physician, suggested that astronomers should use a cycle of 7,980 years. This number is the smallest number that is divisible by the numbers 15, 19, and 28. This fact is significant because 15-, 19-, and 28-year periods are often used in calculations of solar and lunar movements. (One use of the 19-year period) Scaliger took the start of one such cycle to be January 1^st, 4713 B.C., when the celestial bodies were conveniently placed. It is believed he called this date "Julian" in order to commemorate his own father, Julius Caesar Scaliger.