According to one of my history books, when the calendar went from 999 AD to 1000 AD, the Chinese were totally unprepared for this, and every Abacus in China suddenly FROZE at 12 AM, local time, on January 1, 1000.
NONE of the beads on the strings would move at all, and engineers had to be summoned to re-boot every single (or married) Abacus in the entire country.
It took many months to do this, before every Abacus was functioning normally, once again.
Can you just imagine the financial and economic chaos that ensued, when every Abacus in China just stopped working?
I’m glad I wasn’t around to witness it…
August 30, 2008, 10:16 AM EDT