The Run-up to 2014

I have just read an interesting article which warns about the hazards of years ending in '4'. Consider the following. 2014 marks:

1. The centenary of the start of the Great War (July 28, 1914).
2. The 20th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan Genocide (April 6, 1994).
3. The bicentenary of Napoleon’s exile to Elba (April 20, 1814).
4. The 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid in South Africa (April 27, 1994).
5. The 25th anniversary of Tiananmen massacre (June 4, 1989).
6. The 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in which the heroic Scots prevailed over the numerically stronger British (June 23-24, 1314).
7. The 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave carte blanch for Lyndon Johnson in his conduct of the Vietnam war (August 2, 1964).
8. The bicentenary of the British sacking of Washington and the crafting of the Star Spangled Banner (August 24, 1814) [Dot and I have been to Fort McHenry where the defenders fought off a subsequent British attempt to sack Baltimore - leading to the writing of the Star Spangled Banner]
9. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989).
10. The 25th anniversary of the US invasion of Panama (December 20, 1989).
11. The 50th anniversary of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
12. The 70th anniversary of Anne Frank’s arrest by the Gestapo.
13. The 75th anniversary of the start of World War II.
14. The 650th anniversary of the founding of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland) where I'm likely to present a paper to a conference next August.

Many of these events were not very nice, so perhaps you should take to your beds for the next 365 days.  On the other hand items 4 and 14 were quite inspiring so perhaps things will not be so bad after all in 2014. I'll leave the decision up to you. I tend to be an optimist, so the number 4 won't faze me, but it does the Chinese because 4 in their language - si - is homophonous to the word death.

Have a careful New Year!

AS