The Lost Year

 I can’t help thinking about this now and then because I’m a stickler for logic and details.  Our belief about the years that comprise decades, centuries and millenniums is actually inaccurate.  I know, most people would just think, “who cares”.  I never really did either until the change of a millennium took place which, of course, is something that the vast majority of human beings who ever lived, did not experience during their lifetimes.  The thing is, the world celebrated this event a year early.  New Year’s Eve 1999 was not in fact the eve of the beginning of the third common era millennium.  Why?  Because there was no year 0, so years 1-10 were the the first decade, years 1-100 were the first century and years 1-1000 were the first millennium.  The years 1001-2000 were the years of the second millennium.  The third common era millennium did not in fact begin until the first day of 2001.  On New Year’s Eve 1999, the world celebrated something that wasn’t actually happening and no one celebrated this event when it did actually happen.  What a rip off to the actual event.  We didn’t celebrate the true event. ☹️ I know, it just seems to make more sense and feel more natural, beyond the first decade, to consider decades, centuries and millenniums to be composed of years that begin with a year ending in zero and end with a year ending in nine.  In order to do this and think like this, though, a year had to be deducted at some point from the common era calculations.  This would be the case during the first of any time periods that were supposed to end with a year ending in zero.  The first decade, therefore, would have had only 9 years.  The first century would have had only 99 years, and the first millennium would have had only 999 years.  One has to accept this in order to regroup and change our beliefs about what years belong to each decade, century, millennium and etc.  The first millennium lost a year when we decided that the second millennium started with the year 1000 and ended with the year 1999.