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The Last Known Person Born in the 19th Century Dies in Japan at 117 (kottke.org)
Jason Kottke: As of 2015, only two women born in the 1800s and two others born in 1900 (the last year of the 19th century) were still alive. In the next two years, three of those women passed away, including Jamaican Violet Brown, the last living subject of Queen Victoria, who reigned over the British Empire starting in 1837. Last week Nabi Tajima, the last known survivor of the 19th century, died in Japan at age 117.
Wrong, mr. russian goat hole. 1900 was the last year of the 19th century. The first century went from 1 to 100 A.D., and so the 19th goes from 1801 to 1900.
19th century didn't happen, totally fake news by the Fake News Media and overpaid WRONG government scientists. so sad.
Table-ized A.I.
Great. With them gone we will be free to repeat the mistake of history with abandon.
Great Depression 2.0 is already underway, a good dose of nationalism is bedding itself into many countries, and sweeping waves of technological change are on the way. I guess we don't have the monarchy anymore so that's a plus.
There's no such thing as year zero. The first year is year 1.
Correct. In the same way that there is no day zero or month zero, there is no year zero. The first year was 1, and exactly 2000 years later was 1/1/2001.
Thus 1900 was the last year of the 19th century, with 1/1/1901 being exactly 1900 years after the start of the calendar.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's actually a flaw in the way the system works when someone dies. You can get a funeral and intern their ashes at your family grave site without the national government necessarily getting wind of it. It's an "easy" crime because it only requires the child to do nothing, to make no effort to inform the government of their parent's death.
I forget what changes they made to stop it happening now, but checks were put in place.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I've noticed a disturbing bit of a trend, I think it indicates a global conspiracy: Someone is killing off the world's oldest people. Watch, I bet this will happen. They will identify who the next oldest person in the world is and shortly after that, that person will die. And they all seem to be dying of "natural causes" a statistical improbability. Someone is out there killing off the oldest people in the world. Mark my words.
No lifespans over 120 (two significant digits) years.
Still holding for 2500+ years of history.
Genesis 6:3
I demand equal lifespans for all people.
Do you know why husbands die before their wives?
Because they want to.
First day of April = April 2
Second day of April = April 3
Third day of April = April 4
Fourth day of April = April 5
Fifth day of April = April 6
Sixth day of April = April 7
Seventh day of April = April 7
Eighth day of April = April 8
Ninth day of April = April 9
Tenth day of April = April 10
Finally, the Y1900 problem solved itself!
Why can there be no year zero?
Because the "AD/BC" numbering system was established in the sixth century, when Europe still used Roman numbers. Although Latin has a word ("nulla") for nothing, it wasn't a mathematical concept, nor were negative numbers. So the "AD" years and "BC" years were both given positive sequences with no "year zero" in between.
Arabic numbers and mathematical zeros were not commonly used until the 1200s. They were popularized by Fibonacci, who is more famous for his sequences.
But does it matter? Year 1 on the calendar wasn't determined until 5 centuries later by Dionysius Exiguus. Since they didn't start talking about decades and a meaningful way until modern journalism and history probably in the later half of the last century, it's not like we are tracking 200+ decades of information.
The whole point is to classify and organize things for telling stories. But largely, referring to the 80's, you are providing generalities (ie, cultural trends, politics, generational changes, etc) about a significant chunk of time. If that's the case, does it really matter to say 'we must begin at year 1, and include the next year that ends in a 0 in each decade. Because if I'm talking about the 1980s, I'm talking about the 10 years that begin 198, meaning 1980-1989. 1990 is not a year where the 3rd digit is 8 and the last three digits are in the 80s mathematically.
So on a decade level, it's much easier and more convenient to refer to decades as short hand by 80's instead of being pedantic and forcing everybody to say 1981-1990 since I will protest as loud as you if somebody demands including 1990 in the decade referred to as the 80's.
And if we are going to talk about decades and centuries, which is done primarily by historians and journalists, I don't mind them using a little short hand and making a slightly inaccurate convention that says decades are a period that have first 3 digits of the years the same, and centuries are all the years that have first two digits the same. It's convenient, and who cares if the first decade and century are short by one year. Nobody really discusses the first century and worries about whether year 100 was first century or second.
So, give it a rest, let the historians and journalists do their job, and don't worry, because there is no rule that says decades or centuries must start with year 1 or a probe will be thrown off course because of poor measurement, and we don't need everything counted like we are measuring something like an engineer or scientist. The whole point is classifying the messiness that is human existence and interaction, and who cares if the classification of decades and centuries if off by 1?
Just to add to this, you can refer to the period from 1900 - 1999 as "the 1900's" if you want to group them like that, just like 1990 - 1999 is referred to as "the 90's." However, the grouping of "1901 - 2000" is referred to as "the 20th Century."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why can there be no year zero?
For the same reason, that ancient programming languages like Fortran have arrays that start with 1. Zero was a reasonably new concept that far back having only been invented around 4-5th century BC in India and using it would probably have confused most people.
This poor woman was still hanging on waiting to see The Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm)
Children collecting pension checks dont report the death of the pensioners for years.
You are only looking at half of the problem. When parents die in Japan, the children often inherit worthless plots of land in distant rural villages. There is no way to legally abandon these plots or forfeit ownership, and no one wants to buy them, yet taxes are due on the land every year.
So the kid cashes Mom's pension check from the government, and then sends the money back to the government to pay a stupid and unavoidable tax. Unsurprisingly, many Japanese people don't see that as "wrong".
It is impossible to reform this system, because political power in Japan is actually directly tied to these stupid little worthless plots. Even if your family has lived in Tokyo for three generations, political apportionment of the Diet is still based on the fiction that your "real" home is the plot of land in the countryside. So the representatives from these nearly empty rural districts have huge political power and can block any reform.