“Lege feliciter!”¹

^{1 *}“Read happily!” From the epigraph to An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by The Venerable Bede, completed in 732. The book recorded events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar (55 B.C.) to the arrival in Kent of St. Augustine (597). Bede's practice of dating events from the time of Christ's birth (i.e., anno Domini or A.D.) caused that convention to come into general use. Unfortunately, the concept of zero was unknown at the time (Christ would have been age zero at birth, not age one), so Bede's dating system initially caused a great deal of mischief.