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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.
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.
I demand equal lifespans for all people.
Do you know why husbands die before their wives?
Because they want to.
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.
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.
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.