Page:Book of record of the time capsule of cupaloy (New York World's fair, 1939).djvu/18

 The appointed year will be, according to our common way of reckoning time, the 6,939th year since the birth of Christ. According to the Jewish calendar it will be the year 10699; according to the Chinese, the 36th year of the 160th cycle; according to the Mohammedan, the 6,469th year since the birth of the Prophet; according to the Buddist, the 7,502d year since the birth of Buddha; according to the Shinto [Japanese], the 7,599th year since the birth of the first emperor, Jimmu Tenno.

If none of these ways of reckoning the years has survived, it still may be recognized by calculation from astronomical data. In the year 1939 there will be two eclipses of the moon, falling respectively on May 3d and October 28th. There will be two eclipses of the sun—an annular eclipse on April 19th, the path of annular eclipse grazing the North Pole of the earth, and a total eclipse on October 12th, the total path crossing near the South Pole.

The heliocentric longitudes of the planets on January 1st at zero-hours Greenwich [midnight] were The mean position of the North Star [Polaris or Alpha Ursæ Minoris] on January 1st will be Right Ascension, 1 hr. 41 min. 59 sec.; North Polar distance, 1° 1′ 33″.8.

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