Decayed wisdom

Your article “Millions marvel at decade’s last solar eclipse” is wrong. There will be a solar eclipse on 14 December 2020. It will be a close thing, but it will definitely be before the end of this decade.

Lest any reader dispute the date and the beginning and end of the decade, I would draw their attention to my letters to The Scotsman as the end of the last century approached. Many people –

and this included the American President, I seem to recall – laboured under the mistaken belief that the century (and the millennium) ended on 31 December 1999. The same mistake applies to those who think that the second decade of the 21st century ends on 31 December 2019. It does not.

The reason why the 20th century did not end on 31 December 1999 was that the first year of the Christian era (AD, or Anno Domini, “Year of Our Lord”) is that the calculation of the Christian calendar from the date of Christ’s birth, which is rather apt at Christmastime, was first calculated by Dionysius Exiguus and, later, by the Venerable Bede. Dionysius was born in c470 and Bede in around 672.

Neither in the time of Dionysius, nor in the time of Bede, was the concept of zero known. In fact, when it started to filter into Europe, several centuries after Bede, it was described as “Saracen magic” by William of Malmesbury in the 1100s. Thus, the first year of the Christian era was 1AD. There was no 0AD. As a consequence, the end of the first decade was 31 December 10AD and the end of this decade is 31 December 2020.

ANDREW HN GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh