Every day of the week someone out there is predicting the end of the world, but the year 2000 has always been a favourite with doomsday predictors. It has particular significance for some Christian fundamentalists who are particularly keen on the Bible's Book of Revelations, which foretells the apocalypse in a manner which would put tripped-out poets like Byron or Coleridge to shame.
Using some complex mathematical calculations, more than a few die-hard fans of Revelations have worked out a precise date for the end - and that would be January 1st, 2000. Some Christian sects in the States are way ahead with their preparations. They believe God will induce the end, leaving the Anti-Christ to roam the earth freely, and life will become a chaotic hell of human dysfunction and natural disasters. (Not all that unlike the experience of people living in many parts of the world today.) Only those who have done a lot of soul-cleansing will be chosen by God for an infinite life of heavenly bliss.
If you aren't a Christian, the birth of Christ doesn't have quite the same significance. The Jewish calendar is well into its sixth millennium, in fact. Ironically, Chinese people - who have their own calendar system - are reported to be most keen on the "millennium baby" craze.
Under the rule of some dictatorships, you might wait centuries before you popped your cork. The Italian dictator Mussolini, who came to power in the 1920s, adopted the old Roman Imperial practice of dating certain public monuments according to the years of his reign. Mussolini is long since dead, but in Rome there are still lampposts advertising (in Latin) their creation in year "VII" or whatever. More recently, Pol Pot, the dictator responsible for the slaughter of countless Cambodians, declared his accession to power as "year zero". Fortunately, he is also dead.
It is, of course, possible that the planet will erupt on what Christians call January 1st, 2000. A passing meteorite might bump into us; nuclear warheads around the globe might explode. Both options might also happen tomorrow morning. It's hard to argue against the possibility of the end of the world, but getting the exact date right is tricky. A particularly impressive website posted in 1997 gives pages and pages of indisputable calculations all pointing to the fact that the world would end in 1998.
There is also quite a bit of dispute surrounding the precise day on which the new millennium starts. Our current calendar was devised under Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century, deciding once and for all that years begin on January 1st. But the calculation of what year it is dates further back, to Roman times, when the idea of zero was difficult to express (can you think of the Roman numeral for zero?). So, working retrospectively, the calendar-calculators had to jump straight from the year 1 BC to the year 1 AD. Think about it: since there was no "year zero", we won't actually complete 2,000 years since that cross-over point until the end of next year - New Year's 2001, to be precise. Meanwhile, historians have decided that not only are our calendars essentially a year off, but that the original calculation of Christ's birth was itself a few years out. Which would suggest that the millennium has been and gone, and not as much as a balloon to be seen. On the plus side, it doesn't seem to have brought Armegeddon in its wake.
