What happened in the Forty-Fourth Century? Aluminum, aspirin, Atomic Theory, banks, brass buttons, bicycles, canned food, capacitors, Civil War with 30 million dead, cholera, clean water, communism, corporations, cotton, democracy, electric motors, factories, fossil fuel, hot water, ice, Jane Austin, Krakatoa west of Java, matches, Mars' moons, natural selection, paint, plastic, radio, railroads, rubber, sewing machines, soap, socialism, soda, steamships, steel, sulfuric acid, Susan B. Anthony, telegraph, telephone, typewriters, urbanization, vegetable oil, wall paper, Wall Street, whiskey, x-rays, yellow fever, Zionism, . .

It could be portending the last chapter of the bible.

I'm serious.

But, whatever. Bring it on.

It will be a mess no matter who's calender we use!

No problem with the calender Ming,but some of the items ante date the 44th century! For instance whiskey,telegraph, telephone and aluminum just to name a few go back farther! But you did not make clear whether you meant that these things were available, or were invented in the 44th! I for one am glad that this country does not use a 60 year century! I would be more than a century old, and that even sounds worse than 68!

Just to be sure that I have done the calculation correctly, I should say that the 44th century in the Chinese calendar is approximately the nineteenth century in the Gregorian calendar. Many of the items on the list are not unique to the nineteenth century. For example, hot water and clean water certainly existed before 1800; but during the nineteenth century, the use of fossil fuel made bathing in hot water possible for almost everybody; and knowledge about the nature of polluted water made safe drinking water possible. I recently read an article that said that during Roman times, people used urine to dry clean their clothes. The article said that sailors used urine for laundry as late as the nineteenth century. Herman Melville must have been unaware of that practice. I don't recall that he mentioned it in Moby d***.

In the usa it will only get better.

Some times it is not necessary to tell every thing!

I added whiskey as a 44th Century item because I read in a book about John Smith at Jamestown that the English colonists drank something called vital water which must have been brandy or distilled grape juice. Later colonial Englishmen drank rum or distilled molasses. According to Depew, whiskey (distilled corn juice?) replaced rum as the spirits of choice in the 44th Century.

The original name for whiskey is Celtic Uisebeaga,meaning water of life. The Scandinavians make a drink Akvavit ,which is a corrupt form of the Latin word Aquavita all with the same meaning !

Depew say that when alcohol is made from "maize or other grain, it is called grain-alcohol; from reindeer and Iceland moss, moss-alcohol; from potatoes and beets, root-alcohol; and from grapes, wine-alcohol." I'm guessing that must include the modern whiskey, vodka, and brandy, but moss alcohol, I had not heard of.

He says the Arabs discovered distillation, but he thinks it had been known in China before that. The Chinese are like the Russians. They think they invented everything.

He says that "Brandy was named the water of life," but he doesn't say who said so. Judging from the universal use of the term, it must have been early in the history of distillation.

He says that in the 1800's Americans mostly drank alcohol made from grain because it was less expensive that alcohol made from fruit, and alcohol made from molasses had a less acceptable flavor or maybe controlling the flavor was more difficult than with grain alcohol.