# history "fixed" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 30, 1999, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005 "1999-11-30T13:59:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/1 "1999-11-30T13:59:00Z")
this is now, the rest is history! tell me, who decides what is history? some say history is what the victor wants it to be. if it isnt the true and accurate happening of things that is recorded for future generations to learn, how is that then history? sometime future generations learn that a certain part of history isnt true. how? perhaps some new evidence of the true happening is discovered, in whatever form possible. be it geological, historical or biological, whatever. anyway, the question i would like to ask is: if we discover new evidence which bring history to a new understanding, shouldnt we “update” history to that new understanding? the example i would like to give is our calendar. true enough that we know it isnt accurate, but we have no sure means of making it anything more than a bit more accurate. there is one thing that we could do, update the calendar to our way of counting. since we are counting the number of years passed since a certain event, shouldnt we at least start with the right number? the modern calendar starts with ‘1’ for crying out loud! reciting the history of that matter is a bit long, but ill provide you with a link to and explanation i made in another thread in this forum [The three 0’s](http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000685.html) so history was made wrong the first time, but it wouldnt be the first time history is “fixed”. although it might seem like a big change, who would notice the year ‘0’ inserted in between 1 bc and 1 ad? bj0rn - millennium 1999/2000 ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/2 "1999-11-30T14:23:00Z")
A calender is not History. It is a “tool” used by historians. You’re welcome to use whatever calender you like; just don’t expect the rest of us to start referring to the “Norman Conquest of 1065” just because you feel there should have been a year 0. Despite all the panic and excitement of recent years, I think most people couldn’t care less when the new millenium starts. It’s just a number, people! ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/3 "1999-11-30T15:38:00Z")
Or should that be the “Norman Conquest of 1067”! Don’t fix what aint broken. * * * Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/4 "1999-11-30T15:45:00Z")
No, no, no. Norman Conquest lived above me in my old apartment, in 1049. * * * “Come on, Phonics Monkey–drum!” ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/5 "1999-11-30T15:48:00Z")
Hey, I happen to own a 1987 Conquest. * * * **Dopeler effect:** The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/6 "1999-11-30T16:53:00Z")
point being that the year 0 happens before the year 1…so that wouldnt change one bit of the calander (what word should i use then?) we use to day? after all its a ‘0’ year, nothing happened ;o). it would be like the year sleeping beauty was asleep(i know that was 100 years, but you know what i mean). come on, every 4th year and every 4th century we “fix” our calendar by adding another day to it, next time lets just add a year…or say that we have already added it. bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/7 "1999-11-30T17:03:00Z")
I’m confused about what you are proposing, by0rn. Are you suggesting we add to the calender a year that did not in fact, ever exist? Leap days are actual real days. I can pretty much tell you what happened on Feb. 29, 1996. The same can’t be said for your phantom year 0. Maybe you wouldn’t feel so slighted if you changed your name to by1rn. * * * Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. ---
**Author:** ![putrid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e5b9ba/32.png) [@putrid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/putrid)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 1999, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/8 "1999-11-30T22:59:00Z")
AWB already explained the fallacy in your argument, Bj1rn. You’ll have to come up with a new horse to flog. ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/9 "1999-12-01T11:29:00Z")
AWB completely misunderstood my arguments for some reason. tell you this: “the first year of our lord jesus christ” should accually be the year 0-1. but just because some buggers didnt know what ‘0’ is, it isnt like that. we know what ‘0’ is, so why cant we correct their error? reason why it should be 0-1: the first year of your life was from the day you were born until the day you turned 1 years old. this is how we count the years, or darn i am one year older than i am(wish somebody would have told me that earlier, would have saved me a whole lots of troubles). > [@](#): > > I’m confused about what you are proposing, by0rn. Are you suggesting we add to the calender a year that did not in fact, ever exist? Leap days are actual real days. I can pretty much tell you what happened on Feb. 29, 1996. The same can’t be said for your phantom year 0. are you saying that you would notice if there was an extra year some 2000 years ago? come on, its history and history has been changed hundreds of times. our calendar isnt even accurate as it is, that year could have existed just as well as any other year. somebody 500 years after “the first year of our lord jesus christ” figured out that would be about an accurate assumption based on historic events, some calculations and his own decision. and to think of it that 1000 years later we invent something called ‘0’. besides, it wasnt until the 10th century they started using the calendar dionysius made. one interesting aspect of the calendar dionysius made and commented about in a letter he wrote: Dionysius didnt want to honour an emperor that harrassed christians by “giving him the time of day”(sort of ;)). he decided instead to (quoting from the letter): _"count the years from the birth of our lord jesus christ_ so essentially jesus was born 1 years old. bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/10 "1999-12-01T15:33:00Z")
“so essentially jesus was born 1 years old.” NO! Jesus was born in the first (1st, Year 1, etc.) year of our lord! I don’t know about you, but I was born in the first year of my lifespan. By your reasoning, “A” is the 0th letter of the alphabet, Neil Armstrong was the 0th man on the Moon, and you are the 0th person to try to argue for such an illogical, complicated, and totally unnecessary adjustment of the Gregorian calendar. I feel like Bud Abbott trying to explain that Joe Who is the first baseman! * * * Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/11 "1999-12-01T15:50:00Z")
The reason we don’t change the calendar is that everyone already knows how to use the one we’ve got, they know what the dates mean, and so forth. The facts that there’s no Year Zero, and that Jesus was born no later than 4 ‘B.C.’, create no problem whatsoever for historians, and don’t change history one iota. Elmer’s right: it ain’t broke; don’t mess with it. Think trying to switch to metric got people’s hackles up - that would be nothing compared to messing with the calendar. And at least switching to metric accomplishes something useful. ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/12 "1999-12-01T16:37:00Z")
> [@](#): > > By your reasoning, “A” is the 0th letter of the alphabet, Neil Armstrong was the 0th man on the Moon, and you are the 0th person to try to argue for such an illogical, complicated, and totally unnecessary adjustment of the Gregorian calendar. NO! darn it. sorry…i will start again. by my reasoning: before neil armstrong came to the moon 0 persons had been there, so AFTER he came there 1 person had been to the moon, not 2. and: i am the 1st to argue “such an illogical, complicated, and totally unnecessary adjustment of the Gregorian calendar”, because before me ‘0’ persons had done that. one more question elmer j fudd: do you understand what i am saying, or are you totally going to ignore (AGAIN!) what i just said? RTFirefly: it is broken, and has been from the day it was created. granted of course that the creators of the calendar did not know any better. answer me this though: you buy a book. when you get home you find out that the first page is missing. what do you do? another question: same scenario as above, but the last page is missing and that book has a sequel. what do you do? yet another question, but with an answer: why does it matter that the book has a sequel? because it isnt really the last page that is missing, its just a page between books that is missing. it would be like this: the first book ends on page 1999, but the next book starts on page 2001. would you know which book the page is missing from? the same thing should be valid if you subtract 2000 from theese numbers. then you get “-1 and 1”. where is the ‘0’? really, the problem does not lie in the way we count the years “since the birth of our lord jesus christ”(darn i hate saying this), but in the way we define the years before he was born. mathematicians already define the year 1 bc as ‘0’ and the year 2 bc as -1. just to make calculations easier. come on now, they have got it right, why cant we? bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/13 "1999-12-01T17:17:00Z")
> [@](#): > > you buy a book. when you get home you find out that the first page is missing. what do you do? Atrocious analogy, Bjorn. No pages are missing here; a _label_ - 0 - is missing from the sequence of labels given to the pages. Again, everybody knows it, and it causes nobody any problems. (Except you, I guess.) > [@](#): > > mathematicians already define the year 1 bc as ‘0’ and the year 2 bc as -1. just to make calculations easier. They _do??_ I’ve got my union card as a mathematician, but it’s the first I’d heard of it. _Some_ mathematicians, is what you mean. The rest of us just automatically subtract a year when doing BC-AD arithmetic in our nonmathematical pursuits, which is the only time it would ever come up. * * * “From some other planet, I get this funky high on yellow sun” – Matchbox 20 ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/14 "1999-12-01T17:35:00Z")
> [@](#): > > They do?? I’ve got my union card as a mathematician, but it’s the first I’d heard of it. quoted from the almanak of university of iceland, translation later. > [@](#): > > Við ýmiss konar tímatalsreikninga getur verið hentugt að tákna árið 1 f.Kr. með “0”, árið 2 f.Kr. með “-1” (mínus eitt) o.s.frv. Þetta hafa stjörnufræðingar gert frá því á 18. öld. Það merkir þó ekki að stjörnufræðingar hafni hinu hefðbundna tímatali sagnfræðinnar; þetta er einungis aðferð til að auðvelda vissa útreikninga. translation: yadayadayada stjörnufræðingar = astronomists. sorry about that RTFirefly. i guess i was thinking a bit to much about math to remember that. it says there that they have been symbolizing the year 1 bc as ‘0’ and 2 bc as -1 and have been doing that since 17th century(we do the century thing differently here in iceland, confuses me sometimes). bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/15 "1999-12-02T06:02:00Z")
> [@](#): > > ## quote: ---------------------------------------------you buy a book. when you get home you find out that the first page is missing. what do you do? > > Atrocious analogy, Bjorn. No pages are missing here; a label - 0 - is missing from the sequence of labels given to the pages. Again, everybody knows it, and it causes nobody any problems. (Except you, I guess.) YES A PAGE IS MISSING!!! you open the book and the page - 1 - is missing! bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![putrid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e5b9ba/32.png) [@putrid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/putrid)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/16 "1999-12-01T19:44:00Z")
I erred in suggesting that Bj1rn only had one fallacy in his argument. Our calendar’s creators did not _skip_ the year zero out of ignorance. They \*_chose_ to have no year zero. The reason we now are not going along with B’s scheme to change the ancient year numbering by one is not because we are stubborn and lazy. It is because we do not look at counting the way B does. At least now I know how to beat a speeding ticket in Iceland, the next time I’m over there. “But officer, 1s = 0s so you see I was not actually speeding at all.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bj0rn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@bj0rn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bj0rn)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 1999, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/17 "1999-12-01T21:42:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Our calendar’s creators did not skip the year zero out of ignorance. They chose to have no year zero. that is wrong, like i have previously pointed out. > [@](#): > > “But officer, 1s = 0s so you see I was not actually speeding at all.” 1s does not equal to 0s. its there, plain and simple! if you are on the other hand referring to the fact that we begin counting on ‘0’, but you belive we start counting on ‘1’ you are still wrong. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! does that compute? if we were to start counting on ‘1’, the world record for 100m dash would be 10.74 (something like that, you know what i mean) but not 9.74! its the same for counting years for crying out loud. you start with ‘zero’ and next you say ‘one’. dont tell me i have to teach you how to count eh? bj0rn ---
**Author:** ![putrid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e5b9ba/32.png) [@putrid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/putrid)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/18 "1999-12-02T00:42:00Z")
Bj0rn: “like i have previously pointed out.” No – as you previously _claimed_ and told nice stories about but you haven’t demonstrated any reason for us to buy your version of history. The 1st of January was probably considered the beginning of the year back then? Balogna. It was **not**. And you continue to ignore the fact that ordinal and cardinal numbers are **not** the same. This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of my town’s fireman’s ball. It was the 51st fireman’s ball. Clocks and calendars are not the same thing. **If** instead of calling today the 1st of December, 1999, we called it 1998:12:01 and thought of 1998 as existing only for the instant of New Year’s, **then** we would have had a year zero. But we do **not**. We think of 1999 as lasting the full year. If we called the current hour the 18th of today and thought of 6 o’clock as lasting one whole hour, instead of just an instant, then we would start counting hours with one. But it ain’t done that way. Two different set-ups for dealing with time. That’s the way it goes. If you want to push for something, why not try to convince us to change either the way we deal with dates or the way we deal with short-term time, but you’ll never convince me that the two are the same. If we’re supposed to _update history_ by changing our numbering because of the invention of the zero, and this board would be very different if there was no zero, when are Icelanders going to update their alphabet by dumping the runes? Sure, it was cute back in the Viking days, but we are only thirteen months from the new millennium. We’ve cut you some slack for years because of your good-looking women but get your heads out of your geysers. Nobody’s gonna take you lot seriously until you replace the thorns. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/19 "1999-12-02T01:00:00Z")
Andros UncleBeer ColdFire Rousseau All fell before the mighty Björn. Now, RTF, Fudd, and Putrid have been sucked in. Welcome to Björn’s world, folks. We have a space in the 12-step “Björn logic” recovery program waiting for you when you finally lose your minds. -andros- ---
**Author:** ![putrid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e5b9ba/32.png) [@putrid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/putrid)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 1999, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005/20 "1999-12-02T01:05:00Z")
It’s funny you say that. That’s exactly what I was thinking myself. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-fixed/17005.md?page=2)