Happy Year 2000!
By a strange coincidence, not only is today (well, tonight starting at sundown, so technically tomorrow) Rosh Hashanah, but today (starting at midnight) is the new year in the Ethiopian calendar.
I heard about this late last night on the BBC world service, when they were covering the celebrations all over Addis Ababa. It seems that the Ethiopian Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church had a disagreement over when Christ was born. When the monk Dionysius Exiguus calculated when Christ was born, he arrived at a figure 7 years earlier than the then-accepted figure. While nearly every church in the world eventually went with Dionysius' figures, the Ethiopians did not, so their calendar is seven years -- actually almost eight years -- off from ours.
Today, September 12 (usually September 11, but it gets shifted a day later immediately before a Gregorian leap year), is the New Year in the Ethiopian calendar. So, happy year 2000 everybody! And you thought you'd only see it once in your lifetime...
I heard about this late last night on the BBC world service, when they were covering the celebrations all over Addis Ababa. It seems that the Ethiopian Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church had a disagreement over when Christ was born. When the monk Dionysius Exiguus calculated when Christ was born, he arrived at a figure 7 years earlier than the then-accepted figure. While nearly every church in the world eventually went with Dionysius' figures, the Ethiopians did not, so their calendar is seven years -- actually almost eight years -- off from ours.
Today, September 12 (usually September 11, but it gets shifted a day later immediately before a Gregorian leap year), is the New Year in the Ethiopian calendar. So, happy year 2000 everybody! And you thought you'd only see it once in your lifetime...