The present century will not terminate till January 1, 1801, unless it can be made out that 99 are 100. We have uniformly rejected all letters, and declined all discussion upon the question of when the present century ends? as it is one of the most absurd that can engage the public attention, and we are astonished to find it has been the subject of so much dispute, since it appears to be perfectly plain. Freitag called "Battle of the Centuries." There appears to have been quite a hubbub on the Continent over the matter in the late 1600s, and the British joined in on the next round: This topic has proven to be vexatious especially at the turns of centuries, starting at the end of the 17th one, according to a Library of Congress article by Ruth S. But there is a long history of people insisting that this is flat-out wrong for mathematical reasons: a century is by definition 100 years in length, and the first century started on January 1, 1, which means that when December 31, 99 rolled around only 99 years had passed therefore, the first century of the current millennium didn't actually end until December 31, 100, and the second century didn't begin until January 1, 101. Some people think the 22nd century will start Januand end December 31, 2199, with the 23rd century beginning on January 1, 2200. *But back to those implications we mentioned above: will the years of the 22nd century really all start with 21? It depends on who you ask. CE can mean "Common Era" or "Christian Era" BCE can mean "before the Christian Era" or "before the Common Era." AD is contrasted with BC (also styled B.C.), meaning "before Christ." CE and BCE (both also sometimes styled with periods) are also used for AD and BC, respectively, because they allow for a secular gloss. It wasn't until the second century, aka the 2nd century, that the years had a digit in the hundreds column: the year 150 was a century and a half into the new era, putting it smack-dab in the middle of the 2nd century.ĪD (also styled A.D.), by the way, stands for " anno Domini," which is Medieval Latin for "in the year of our Lord." It's used to indicate that a year, century, etc., falls within the Christian era-that is, the period dating from the birth of Christ. The first century of the current era (aka the 1st century CE or AD) didn't start with 100 it started with 1 (more on the implications of that below). The thing to remember is that the number in the name of the century (the 16th century, for example) is always one higher than the number that starts the century's years: the years of the 16th century start with 15. We also sometimes see people confuse the "hundreds" form with the "century" one, referring to a date like 1528 as occurring in the "1600s." To be clear, 1528 is a card-carrying member of the 1500s and the 16th century. It can be hard to remember this, especially when you go back a few hundred years, which is why we sometimes see people use, say, 16th century (which should refer to years that begin with 15) when they really mean 1600s, which clearly refers to years that begin with 16.
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