What does 2011 hold in store? It may well start with a flashback. Remember the Y2K bug, when the world’s computers were expected to shut down because they couldn’t handle the “00” in 2000? There’s another one expected this year. It’s known as the Y1C problem, and although equally serious, it’s confined to the island of Taiwan, which uses a calendar that dates year 1 from the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. For many computers in Taiwan, 2011 is the year 100, and with the “00,” chaos may ensue.
f you’re writing that down, make sure your marker is honeysuckle, which Pantone has designated the color of 2011. The year has also already been proclaimed the year of forests and the year of chemistry by the United Nations. You’ll be able to book tickets to two places you’ve never been able to visit before: a massive new Legoland in Dubai and the abandoned city of Chernobyl, which opens to tourists this year. If you’re Canadian, you’ll be able to pay for these using Canada’s new plastic money, set to be released in the second half of this year.
What’s that? You didn’t have any of that on your calendar?
When looking forward to a new year, all too often we focus on the big and the obvious: elections, royal weddings, Harry Potter movies. But a year is much more than that: It’s one enormous landscape of exciting events you had absolutely no idea were about to occur. What follows is the Ideas guide to the year in the obscure and unexpected.
January Chernobyl begins to offer official tours for the first time since April 26, 1986, when the worst nuclear reactor explosion in history devastated the region and made the Ukrainian city a byword for techno-dystopian disaster. Tourists can see both the nuclear plant and the abandoned nearby towns. It’s reachable as a day trip from Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
January Van Halen is expected to begin recording an album with, for the first time in more than 25 years, original singer David Lee Roth.
January 9 The world will gain a new nation if voters in Southern Sudan choose independence in a referendum that begins today. The youngest countries in the world currently are Curacao and the Republic of Kosovo.
January 11 The Dali Museum opens in St. Petersburg, Fla. It will be home to more works of Salvador Dali than any other museum in the world. Costing $36 million, it will house 2,140 pieces of art and is designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane.
January 12 A new $1 coin debuts in Plymouth, Mass., depicting the hands of Governor John Carver and Supreme Sachem Ousamequin Massasoit exchanging a peace pipe. It joins more than 1 billion dollar coins already minted. Though most Americans rarely see them in circulation, they are very popular in Ecuador, which began using the US dollar as its currency in 2000.
(source:boston.com)
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