Today we enter a year that is a calendric anomaly: Every 101 years, for the past 12 centuries, the year is written in consecutive numbers. This year is 2021; the last time this happened was 1920. 

This stuff is for geeks only. There is absolutely no significance to this peculiarity. But we are a species hardwired to find significance where there is none. I am fairly certain that 13 months from now, there will be predictions for the end of the world on Feb. 22. Why? Because it will be written in the shorthand as 2/22/22. That hasn’t happened since Jan. 11, 1911. 

So, we may ask, will anything significant occur in 2021, other than the misdating of checks for a month or two? In 1920, there were several significant events. Prohibition began in the U.S. In Germany the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or German Worker’s Party, changed its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or National Socialist German Worker’s Party, a rather long and clumsy name soon shortened to Nazi. More meaningful to us now, perhaps: The Spanish Flu Pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people, officially ended. 

Also of significance, upside and downside: The 19th Amendment gives women the right to vote; and hydrocodone is first synthesized. Of no significance at all: the East Bengal Football Club was established in Kolkata, India. 

Going back a century and a year, in 1819, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia; Alabama admitted as the 22nd U.S. state; and Princess Alexandrina Victoria was born. In 1837, she becomes Queen Victoria and gives her name to the rest of the century. A less significant event, but perhaps related to Queen Victoria: In 1819, the erotic and explicit wall paintings discovered in Pompeii were barred from view to the public. 

Another lurch backward and A.D. 1718 was the year of Blackbeard the pirate, who in May attempted to blockade the harbor at Charleston, S.C. and who was killed in November at Ocracoke, N.C. by the Royal Navy, when he is hit by five musket balls and sliced with 20 sword wounds. 

The abbreviation A.D., or Anno Domini, is traditionally printed ahead of the date, as opposed to B.C., or “before Christ,” which comes after the date, although this nicety is often abused in practice. And now, it is replaced with C.E. and B.C.E. (Common Era and Before Common Era) which, while less Christian-centric, sound rather more bureaucratic. Perhaps the formality of “A.D.” could be reduced if we used a more modern translation from the Latin and rendered it not as “Year of Our Lord,” but instead as “Year of the Boss.” Tradition lends sanctity to the old Jacobean translations with their “thee” and “thou.” For instance, what sounds important and holy as the Ark of the Covenant sounds reverential if we call it simply “the box with the contract in it.” 

Anyway, this game of sequential numbers really only begins with A.D. 910. Before that, zeros get in the way: 809 doesn’t quite work. We could print it as 0809, but no one does. So, the anomaly starts with 910, the year Alfred the Great’s son, King Edward defeated the raiding vikings at the Battle of Tettenhall in the West Midlands of England. But do they teach that in New Jersey grade schools? No. 

The year 1011, or MXI in the Julian Calendar, Danish King Thorkell the Tall and his army laid siege to the city of Canterbury, taking hostage the archbishop, Ælfheah; Godwine, Bishop of Rochester; and Leofrun, Abbess of St. Mildrith’s. The archbishop was then murdered by being “pelted with the bones of cattle” and then struck with “the butt of an ax.” In other worlds, “Going Medieval” on him. 

In 1112, Otto the Rich is appointed Duke of Saxony by Emperor Henry V. Also Garcia the Restorer of Navarre and Henry the Blind of Luxembourg are born and Vasil the Robber of Armenia dies. In other news, Duke Boleslaw III of Poland has his half-brother Zbigniew blinded and thrown into a dungeon, so, we’re still in the Middle Ages. 

Pope Innocent III called for the Fifth Crusade in 1213. Not so innocent, he had also caused the Fourth Crusade, which razed Constantinople and killed thousands and included the rape of nuns by the crusader army. If that weren’t enough, Innocent also instituted the Albigensian Crusade, in which papal forces massacred about 20,000 men, women and children, heretical Cathar and orthodox Catholic alike (his general said, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”)

Which brings us to 1314, when Jacques de Molay, 23rd Grand Master of the Knights of Templar is burned at the stake in Paris. The phrase “nasty, brutish and short” comes to mind for all these centuries. Also, Robert the Bruce defeats Edward II of England at the Battle of Bannockburn. 

A theme is developing. In 1415, the Council of Constance tries Jan Hus for heresy and then sentences him to be burned at the stake. And, at the Battle of Agincourt Henry V of England defeats the larger French forces on St. Crispin’s Day. St. Crispin is patron saint of cobblers, curriers, tanners and leather workers and was beheaded in the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian. 

In 1516, Thomas More published Utopia, a book describing the perfect society, probably because the real world wasn’t. It was a busy year: In addition, the first national postal service was created by Henry VIII in England, the world’s first ghetto was created in Venice, and — little known or celebrated —  Christopher Columbus had a cousin, Rafael Perestrello, who actually did sail to China and trade with merchants at Guangzhou. 

In 1617, Johannes Kepler begins publishing his theory of elliptical planetary orbits; and John Napier invents Napier’s Bones, the first multiplying computer; and Henry Briggs publishes his book describing logarithms. Science is beginning to win over superstition, except that in Sweden at least seven women are burned to death as witches at the Finspang Witch Trial. 

Which takes us by a commodius vicus of recirculation, back to 1718 and the settlement of New Orleans in New France and the introduction of the white potato to New England. Everything seemed new, including the potatoes. 

And the Panic of 1819, the first major peacetime financial crisis in the U.S., which some historians call the “First Great Depression.” 

And 1920 and the first great Red Scare, when a terrorist exploded a bomb on Wall Street (very like Nashville), and the Palmer Raids arrested more than 4,000 suspected communists and anarchists and held them without trial (as at Guantanamo) and the New York State Assembly refused to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested. Also: The oldest existing movie footage of a professional wrestling match. America becomes America.

And now, 20 and 21. Already momentous: The UK leaves the EU as ethnic nationalism once again begins to show its ugly face around the globe. And the Covid pandemic has caused us to replay much of 2020: the 2020 Summer Olympics are planned for this year, and also the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest. The U.N. has declared 2021 as the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development — and they say the U.N. is too bureaucratic. It is also the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables.

Also expected in XXMMI is Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla. And in the U.S. the largest brood of 17-year locusts, called Brood X, will emerge for the first time since 2004. Something to look forward to.