Time is a lot of things; a bitch, money, something that punishes according to Hootie and the Blowfish, but one thing that time certainly is, is documented. Ever since the pendulum clock was invented to keep track of 18 hour shifts during the Industrial Revolution, time has been incredibly well-documented. Nowadays, our phones and computers track our every move down to the millisecond. Fun!
As a quasi-historian, time frames my thinking. I am constantly using it to reference how long ago things were. Have you ever done that with your friends or family? Seriously, without the aid of proper documentation, over the years it can be hard to remember exactly when something happened. The older you get, the more the years start to blend together. I have a hard time differentiating what happened in summer of 2014 vs the summer of 2015 to this day. Time can get confusing. Minutes and hours are like the only unit on earth that's measured 0-60. Days are 24 of those hours. Weeks are a collection of seven days. Months vary like crazy. Years only have the same amount of days 75% of the time according to calendars. People have been making jokes about the 90's feeling like they were only 10 years ago for so long that graphics like this exist. 
The difficulty of year-math varies with the year. 2020 was objectively awful, but one thing it had going for it was how much easier it was to calculate how many years ago something was. Now in 2021 that extra digit can really throw you off. So part of me wants to let one of the two remaining living Beatles, Ringo Starr, especially at his age (80), slide for not remembering when what many people consider to one of the most important moments in the history of music; the Beatles American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964 (which lit the fuse of Beatlemania TNT) took place.
One of the most remarkable things about the Beatles is the amount of success and cultural impact they had in such a short amount of time. They really only toured for like four years and were famous in the U.S. for about seven before they split. They were essentially the Terrell Davis of music. While there is a lot to remember, there aren't a lot of specific years to recall.
Drummers are usually great at keeping time, but according to Ringo, the Beatles made their Ed Sullivan Show debut 50 years ago. Only problem is 50 years ago is now considered 1971. It doesn't seem possible, but is somehow true. By 1971 the Beatles were already broken up. You'd think the drummer in quite possibly the most famous band of all-time would remember that, but according to Ringo nine minutes after he sent the tweet, he was simply too excited to remember specifics of quite possibly the most monumental moment in music history.
I blogged about Marty Shottenheimer's passing from Alzheimer's like 10 hours ago, so I know at Ringo's age that could be a possibility, but assuming he's alright and just bad at math and recalling history...this is just an insane mistake to make to me. Imagine if on February 1st, 2061 Justin Timberlake tweeted "Wow 50 years ago today I exposed Janet Jackson's nipple ring at Halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII"?
Promise me, if I'm ever so old that I can't remember what year I started DOL that you'll put me out of my misery. Maybe since Ringo hasn't been getting any fan mail the last dozen years he simply doesn't know what year it is? Anyways, peace and love peace and love.
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