Everybody off - Cuckooland Central.

I love conspiracy theories, don't you? Here's a good one - the claim is that apparently back around the year 700 AD, the Holy Roman Emperor was one Otto III. He wished to have a special place in history, and decided that whoever was Emperor in the year 1000 would be remembered simply because of that fact. So the theory goes he approached the Pope of the day - Sylvester II - and somehow persuaded him to add 300 years to the date. This wouldn't in fact have been that difficult, because back then very few people knew what the year was anyway. Our history books certainly tell us that Otto III was Emperor at the time of the first millennium - but was he really? The conspiracy theorists further tell us that this explains why we know so little about the so-called Dark Ages - because they didn't in fact exist - they were these missing years! Of course if this is true, that means that this isn't the year 2009 at all, but 1712! Don't you just love it??