...an obscure monk named Dionysius Exiguus, aka Denys the Diminutive, penned the Gregorian calendar. Back in the sixth century, the Romans were clueless at to the concept of zero, considering it a mark of the devil. It is well documented that Denys numbered the first year 1.

"It's the principle," argues Don Carr, chief of command information at Virginia's Fort Belvoir, who's galled by the erroneous rush to the future. "We wouldn't accept anything totally wrong in any other endeavor."

"It's so simple to establish in your own mind," says Juli Kopit, a retiree in Silver Spring, MD, who's convinced that profits and parties are to blame more than ignorance. "People don't want to pass up a big to-do."

The man who penned "2001: A Space Odyssey" has tried to set the record straight, albeit with little success. In a statement this year, Arthur C. Clarke concluded, "Some people have great difficulty grasping this."

The Naval Observatory, keeper of the master clock of the United States, will celebrate twice. The current sign at its Massachusetts Avenue entrance in Washington announces the time left as the "countdown to 2000." On January 1, it will be replaced with another sign marking the "countdown to the millennium."

There's no doubt, if you accept the Gregorian calendar, it's totally unambiguous," said observatory astronomer-historian Steven J. Dick. "The millennium starts in 2001."

I fully expect 90% or more of the false millennium promoters and followers (the millemmingums) to defect to the true millennium camp along about January 2nd.

But don't feel bad. A fascinating Library of Congress publication makes clear just how persistent the issue has been. The first entry, which senior science specialist Ruth S. Freitag found in the Journal des scavans, dates to March 4, 1697. "When the encyclopedia of human folly comes to be written, a page must be reserved for the minor imbecility of the battle of the centuries - the clamorous dispute as to when a century ends."