Y2K and Universal Timeline
So you can, uh, plan ahead. Get OFFICIAL current time here.
Sources: Various
Cosmic times (expressed in scientific notation) from Scientific American Nov 1999 issue.
Version: 4.0 expanded and updated as of October 26, 1999. Now takes you from the big bang to the death of the universe.
10-51 years since big bang: space and time disentangle
10-44 years since big bang: cosmic inflation
10-18 years since big bang: electromagnetism emerges
10-5 years since big bang: atomic nuclei created
105 years since big bang: neutral stars form
106 years since big bang: first stars form
3 x 109 years since big bang: Sun is born
5 x 109 years since big bang: inflation of universe resumes, observable fraction of universe begins to decrease
ca. -2,400,000: Homo habilis, first member of genus Homo,of which we are a member, in East Africa.
ca. -2,000,000: Homo erectus exists now; responsible for all technical innovations to date.
ca. -90,000: Homo sapiens.
-4713: January 1: Noon on this day is the epoch for Julian Day (JD)
-4241: First exactly-dated year in human history, accourding to The Timetables of History (Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-24987-8)
-3760: First year of Jewish calendar.
-3372: First date in Mayan chronology.
-3114: August 10: Many archeologists, although not all, agree that this is the epoch for the Mayan long count calendar system
-2772: Egypt introduces calendar of 365 days without adjustments.
ca. -1450: First Egyptian water clocks (clepsydra) probably invented - earliest verified is from -1380.
-46: Adoption of Julian calendar of 365.25 days; leap year introduced
622: July 16: The Islam day of flight, the first day of the Islamic calendar, when Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina.
1582: October 4: Tomorrow will be Oct 15 by decree of Pope Gregory XIII as part of the Gregorian calendar reform. This takes effect in the Papal States, Spain, and Portugal. In December, France, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia switch over.
1601: January 1: Epoch of the 64-bit time in Win32. This is also day 1 of the COBOL epoch. All dates in COBOL can be converted to an integer number of days from this date. It was chosen because this day is a Monday. If you take the integer date mod 7 you get the day of the week (Monday=1).
1752: September 2: Great Britain adopts the Gregorian Calendar. Due to the British Calendar act of 1751, tomorrow will be Sep 14, 1752.
1858: November 17: On this day is the epoch for the Modified Julian Date (MJD)
1904: January 1: Old Macintosh computer longword seconds epoch
1960: COBOL, Common Business Oriented Language, is developed by a team drawn from the Pentagon and several computer manufacturers. To save valuable memory space, years are abbreviated to two digits i.e. 1960 is written as 60. Computer scientists, anticipating problems, urge companies to use the four-digit year.
1967: The National Bureau of Standards is mandated by the White House to resolve the double-digit issue. The bureau stays with the two-digit year under pressure from the Pentagon.
1970: January 1: The UNIX Epoch (Time 0 for UNIX systems is the Midnight before today GMT)
1979: One of the pioneers of COBOL, Robert Bemer, writing in the journal Interface Age, warns that the year 2000 bug would cause major problems. The reaction is tepid.
1989: September 19: 2^15 days after the first of January 1900, a Washington D.C. hospital computer crashes because its dates were kept in a 16 bit word relative to this epoch forcing a lengthy period of manual operation.
1993: The path-breaking Doomsday 2000 article is published in Computerworld by Canadian Peter de Jager.
1996: The first U.S. congressional hearing on the Y2K problem is held by the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology. The hearing focuses on how federal agencies will convert their systems. The cost to the U.S. government is estimated at $30 billion; the worldwide cost is estimated at up to $600 billion.
1997: May 18: At the end of today GMT the UNIX time clock will register 10,000 days since the UNIX epoch
1998
The White House appoints John Koskinen as its Y2K czar. He is charged with coordinating the U.S. government's efforts to ensure critical information technology systems operate smoothly through the year 2000.
February 8: 100 weeks to Jan 1, 2000. Some Y2K computer errors are caught
July 6: "9876" could be a signal (fake date with special meaning)
August 19: 500 days to January 1, 2000
November 27: 400 days to January 1, 2000
1999
January: On-year projections fail; insurance for Y2K-related losses and liabilities becomes popular
January 1: Last year of the 1900s; "99" might be a signal; transition to Euro currency in contiguous Europe begins
March: Securities Industry Assn simulates December 29, 1999, trading
March 7: 300 days to January 1, 2000
March 31: Deadline set by the Office of Management and Budget for all federal agencies to be Y2K-compliant. But at least three federal agencies -- the Transportation Department, Health and Human Services, and the Agency for International Development -- are unlikely to meet this deadline.
April 1: NY state fiscal year 2000 begins; start of Canadian and Japanese FYs
April 6: Start of UK FY 1999-2000
April 9: The "99" syndrome: this is the 99th day of the year, and there is some fear that it could be read by some computers and software programs as "9999." The "9999" could trigger a red flag in some computers, which may read it as the "end of input," causing processing errors. Also 99 days into 1999.
April 20: 255 Days left to year 2000
June: More kindergarten notices to go out to centenarians
June 15: 200 days to January 1, 2000
June 30: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says its air traffic control system will be Y2K-compliant by this date.
July: Six-month projections fail
July 1: FY 2000 begins in 46 US states
August 22: GPS rolls over from week 1024 to 0001 (only early systems?)
Sept 9: FY 2000 begins in TX; 9/9/99 default "nonsense" date
Sept 23: 100 days to January 1, 2000
October: Three-month projections fail
October 1: FY 2000 starts in Alabama and Michigan; US Fed Govt FY 2000 starts
October 3: 90-day projections fail
December: One-month projections fail; 12/99 might have special meaning; electrical generators sell out; hoarding begins
December 2: 30-day projections fail
December 31: Sometimes used as "Never Expires" date (IBM tapes are marked 99365-all could expire today); Blue Friday; Largest one-day sell-off in stock-market history; long line at ATMs; support for much software might cease after today; 1999/99/99: a really nonsense date
2000
January 1: Computer passwords expire, locking admins out of systems; noncompliant systems (fire alarms, HVAC systems, power grids, telephone routing and billing, medical care, military, air traffic, Internet and financial exchanges) fail; incorrect bills are sent out; manual paperwork begins; unemployment drops; supply chains begin disruption; first casualties occur; litigation begins. Still twentieth century and second millenium.
January 3: (Monday) First business day of 2000 in US.
January 4: (Tuesday) First business day of 2000 in UK.
January 6: (Thursday) If your computer thought it was 1900 then it would be a Saturday and a weekend instead of a Thursday and normal operations
January 8: (Saturday) First "we survived" party is held
January 10: First 9 character date.
February 1: Second "we survived" party is held
February 29: (Tuesday) Some major software packages do not think this date exists. Some say that some PDP-11 computers will not boot after this date.
March 1: Some leap-year errors might not have appeared yesterday.
2001
January 1: Third millenium and twenty-first century start.
February 29: Will not exist
2002
Transition to Euro is completed within contiguous Europe
January 1: Burroughs Unisys A Series system date fails?
All dates after 2002
2005: Some really old versions of Unix (e.g. 16-bit BSD) die this year?
2009: Early claims were that this was the date that FAA would finish Y2K preparations
2020: January 1: Systems still using 1920 as pivot date fail; Macintoshes running System 6.0.4 or earlier - correct date can no longer be set in Date & Time Control Panel
2023: December 23 (Sunday): End of the world, according to the Mayan calendar
2030: January 1: Systems still using 1930 as pivot date fail.
2036: January 1: Burroughs Unisys A Series system date fails?
2036: February 6: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1900.
2037: January 1: Rollover date for NTP systems
2038: January 19: Unix: 2^31 seconds from Jan 1, 1970
2040: February 6: At 06:28:16, old Macs' longword seconds from Jan 1, 1904 overflow.
2042: September 17: IBM 370 TOD clock overflows. One source lists this as the 18th (?)
2044: January 1: MS-DOS: 2^6 years from 1980, setting the most significant bit (MSB). Signed variables using this get a negative date.
2046: January 1: Amiga system date failure
2046: June 8: Some Unix password aging fails; 62^2 weeks from 1970.
2049: December 31: Microsoft Project 95 limit.
2078: December 31: MS Excel 7.0 - the last day
2079: June 6: 2^16 days from January 1, 1900
2080: January 1: MS-DOS file dates, displayed with two-digit years, become ambiguous.
2100: Y2.1K; most current PC BIOSes run out of dates; MS-DOS <DIR> renders the file-date years 2100 through 2107 as 99.
2100: February 28: last day of February - NOT a leap year
2106: February 7: Unix: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1970; time overflows at 06:28:16.
2108: January 1: MS-DOS 2^7 years from 1980; file date overflows
2738: November 28: Approximate day of A.D. 1 million (days)
4338: November 28: COBOL-85 integer day 1,000,000 (10^6) exceeds six-digit field
9999: HTTP caching fails.
10000: January 1: Y10K!! Four-digit years fail. More time will elapse between the time this document was written and this date than has elapsed from the beginning of modern human civilization until now.
29602: January 1: MS Windows NT File Systems (NTFS) fails.
29940: New Macs' signed 64-bit time fails (has been OK since 30,081 B.C.!!)
31086: July 31: Internal DEC VMS time fails at 02:48:05.47
60056: Win32 64-bit time fails (started from Jan 1, 1601)
1.5 x 1010 years since big bang: Sun dies
7 x 1110 years since big bang: universe cools to Gibbons-Hawking temperature
5 x 1012 years since big bang: galaxies beyond local cluster become invisible
1014 years since big bang: star formation ceases
1015 years since big bang: planets wander from stars
1030 years since big bang: black holes consume galaxies
1037 years since big bang: galactic fuel exhausted at current rate of consumption
1065 years since big bang: quantum tunneling liquefies matter
1085 years since big bang: electrons and positrons bind into new form of matter
1098 years since big bang: galactic black holes evaporate