Sometimes I fret too much about years. Calendar years, that is. My favourite moment of the year is the liminal space between 11:59pm on New Year’s Eve and 12:00am on New Year’s Day. I feel a thrill when the world flips over to a new decade, even though I know it’s silly and “a new decade” is entirely a construct of the human mind. So let’s throw that all for a loop and do something completely irresponsible.

The ab urbe condita (AUC) calendar reckons years from the founding of the city of Rome (in 753 BC). The current year is 2775 AUC. That’s three quarters of the way through the 28th century AUC, so let’s look back at what’s happened so far.

Europe is in tatters after World War II (2692-’98) but the US has endless sprawling suburbia. Television enters the home. 2704 brings I Love Lucy. It’s ’07, and here’s rock and roll. When the Soviets launch a satellite in 2710, the Space Race is on. Doo-wop and girl groups rule the airwaves. Kennedy’s life cut short by a bullet out of the Texas School Book Depository in ’16, and Johnson marches us off to Vietnam. The Summer of Love 2720. Moon people in 2722. Classic rock, lonesome gas stations. Watergate scandal topples a president in ’27. Stagflation, bell-bottoms. The early ’30s, the heyday of Disco, four-on-the-floor sweat. First MTV broadcast, 2734. The world awash in pastels. “Thriller” music video in ’37. Bigger is better. Hip hop enters a golden era in the ’40s. The Berlin Wall falls in ’42, the Soviet Union in ’44, and the US gets a saxophone-playing president in ’46. The Information Superhighway! Titanic graces the silver screen in 2750 and I am born. Boy bands! Are you On Line? The Twin Towers fall in 2754. Infamous Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake Super Bowl moment in ’57, wasn’t ’50s celebrity culture the worst? The iPhone, 2760. If we had a black president, they said pigs would fly, and whaddaya know, it’s 2762. Electropop club craze in a Great Recession and an Arab Spring ’63-65, and now social media is ruining everything! After the divisive election of 2769, the ’70s are marked by explosive social tension, dank memes, and the COVID-72 pandemic.