The pomp and ceremony of last week’s 250th anniversary celebration of the birth of the United States is just one example of how fixated people are with numbers that end in zero. Is the 250th anniversary of America’s beginning really any more impactful than the 247th was, or the 264th will be?
It’s not just mathematicians who are fascinated with numbers ending in zero. Ordinary folks eagerly anticipate social gatherings celebrating the 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, or 50th year after some shared experience, like a high school or college graduation. Similar events, like reunions of fraternities, sororities, military units, or particularly memorable athletic teams, generally take place after some number of years that’s divisible by ten. The same goes for celebrations of impactful historical occurrences.
With each passing year most happily married couples justifiably do something special to mark the exact date on which they were wedded. But a numbered anniversary ending with a zero is generally seen as far more significant than the previous nine were. According to happy-anniversary.com, the traditional gift for a 20th anniversary is China. Couples married for 30 years are traditionally given gifts made from pearl. Fortieth anniversary presents come from ruby, 50th are made out of gold, 60th are crafted from diamond, and a 70th anniversary calls for gifts made of platinum. But why are multiples of ten so valued? Shouldn’t other annual celebrations matter just as much? It doesn’t seem right that virtually nobody knows what the traditional gift for a 14th anniversary is, or for the 37th, for that matter.
The only figures people obsess over more than numbers ending in zero are ones concluding with two zeroes. It’s a virtual certainty that next May media outlets on the internet, broadcast and cable TV, and still-extant print newspapers will be chock full of retrospectives trumpeting the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, which took place on May 20th and 21st, 1927. But if Lindbergh’s feat was so important, why isn’t it celebrated every year? Are 99th anniversary t-shirts, key chains, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets commemorating the Lindbergh flight really that much less marketable than the 100th-anniversary-themed schlock that will undoubtedly be available for purchase a year from now?
There aren’t any ceremonies in the immediate future likely to cause any undue level of temporary national obsession because they happen to commemorate something that happened 100, 200, or 300 years ago, but be prepared for 2029. That will be the centennial year of, among other things, Martin Luther King Jr’s birth, the stock market crash, and the initial Academy Awards.
Given the fervor involving centennials, bicentennials, and the recent national sestercentennial, one can only imagine the excitement that would accompany the numerical anniversary of some event that ended with three zeroes. But history gets a little sketchy with the passage of a few centuries. That’s particularly true on the Atlantic Ocean’s western shores, since European “settlers” pretty much wiped out every pre-existing civilization, and in the process destroyed all previously-recorded historical archives shortly after arriving in what latter- day chroniclers of history routinely and somewhat arrogantly referred to as “The New World.” Because of that it’s hard imagining much hoopla in North America when the millennial anniversary of the Battle of Hastings arrives in 2066.
Exactly why people get so fired up because something of significance happened a number-that’s-evenly-divisible-by-ten years ago is hard to comprehend
Thankfully some things are still knowable. Like, for example, traditional 14th wedding anniversary presents should be made of ivory. And 23 years after that, gifts of alabaster are most appropriate for a 37th anniversary, according to happy-anniversary.com.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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