I was looking through a history book and it was going on about memorable events of ten years ago, but I had forgotten most of them. I have picked out some of the events of exactly ten years ago this month – January, in a word. So here are a few news items that you may or in all probability will not remember from January 2000.
Congress and the president have designated ten days as federal holidays. Being ‘federal’, these holidays technically only pertain to federal employees and inhabitants of the District of Columbia, although they are so widely observed that they can be thought of as national holidays.
Before their implementation of the Western solar calendar system, the Chinese almost exclusively followed their own lunar calendar for determining the times of planting and harvesting and festival days. Although people in China today use the Western calendar for almost all business, governmental and practical matters of daily life, the old method still serves as the basis for working out numerous recurring holidays. This coexistence of two calendar schemes has long been accepted by the people of China.