Word: offing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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The conference featured three Harvard professors arguing that the year 1000 was of little significance. Richard A. Landes '71, an associate professor at Boston University and co-founder of its Center for Millennial Studies, argued the other side.
Weinberg Professor of Architectural History Christine Smith spoke on the changes in architectural style in the 10th and 11th centuries, but noted there was very little such change between the years 980 and 1020.
And according to Professor of English and American Literature Daniel G. Donoghue, England might have missed the millennium. The king's scribes, he said, kept faulty records, and may have thought the date was 1049 or 1069, when it was actually 999. The error was not discovered until it was...
Lea Professor of Medieval History Thomas N. Bisson noted that relatively few people knew what the date was in 1000, and few people cared. The time of the new millennium was already a time of crisis, with a rapid increase in the numbers of castles and knights, Bisson said.
But Landes disagreed with their dismissal of first millennium tensions, and said that scribes manipulated the dates at the end of the millennium because they feared an apocalypse. They shifted their interpretation of the beginning of "A.D." to avoid the year 1000.