Another question remains: Where on Earth should the celebration begin? You may have seen on TV on New Year's Eve the earlier celebration of the new year in other time zones. The most common answer is Greenwich, England, on the prime meridian, the starting place of all time zones. Indeed, a plaque on the Greenwich Old Royal Observatory announces "The Millennium starts here." But that is not the final word.

The year 2001, heralding the third millennium, will arrive earlier in England than in America, but it will arrive still earlier farther east in Moscow, still earlier in Japan (that is why it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun") and so on until you hit the International Date Line and drop back to the previous day. In fact, Fiji is right up against the 180-degree meridian of longitude. But that is not the final word either.

The dateline has long had an eastward bulge beyond the 180-degree line, including the South Pacific island of Tonga, situated in a later time zone. But Kiribati, a wide-spread island nation split by the date line, with a different date in each half, has announced a spectacular relocation of the date line eastward around their boundary. Now Kiribati's Christmas Island will see the new millennium an hour before Tonga.

Personally I hope to go to bed early and find a new millennium waiting for me when I awake.

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