In 2002, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated the centenary of the revival of Catholicism in Central Asia.

In October 2003, events were held in Samarkand to celebrate the centenary of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

December saw the Evangelical Lutheran community of Uzbekistan celebrate its centenary as the only Lutheran Church in Central Asia.

We should make clear the significance of socialism with Chinese characteristics as it enters a new era, the far reaching influence of the change of the society s principal contradiction, and the Two Centenary Goals.

This spring marks the centenary of the birth of two all round intellectuals, those ideological avatars of the Cold War era, Raymond Aron and Jean Paul Sartre. Aron was born on March 14, 1905, Sartre on June 21.

The Smithsonian Institution Press, based in New York City, established a project to produce a bilingual, illustrated version of Ciudad de las Columnas, to be launched in 2004 to mark the centenary of Cervantes Prize winning Cuban author Alejo Carpentier.

I could not figure out how to approach this seemingly intractable problem until I recently visited Stockholm to commemorate the centenary of Raoul Wallenberg s birth. This reawakened my memories of World War II the calamity that eventually gave birth to the EU.

STOCKHOLM This year marks the centenary of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, his masterwork describing gravity as the curvature of space and time. Yet, as is often true in science, Einstein's insights have provided physicists with as many questions as they have answered.

Special event on The spirit of the United Nations Markings for the Future , on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations and the centenary of the birth of Dag Hammarskjöld (organized by several organizations, in cooperation with the Department of Public Information)

ISTANBUL This month nbsp the centenary of the outbreak of World War I is an opportune time to reflect on big risks. As Michael Spence recently warned, the international order s widening security deficit, reflecting the weakening of whatever global governance we have, is fast becoming the biggest risk facing the world economy.

This year marks the centenary of the Russo Japanese War of 1905, and on August 15 many countries will commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the end of WWII in the Pacific. Of course, Japan s military dominance in East Asia which began with the Russo Japanese War and led to WWII is no more.

This year also marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide, about which successive Turkish governments have maintained an indefensible denial. But at least the fate of the more than one million Turkish Armenians killed outright or death marched into the Syrian desert in 1915 for their wartime disloyalty remains the subject of immense international scrutiny, research, and advocacy.

But, though historical amnesia about the Great War is pervasive across India, the centenary is finally forcing a rethink. The British have been flocking to an exhibition showcasing Indian troops role the French are making a film about the brown skinned and turbaned men who fought to save their land from the Germans and, in India, curiosity has overcome the fading colonial era resentment of British exploitation.

Next year will also mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. From that moment until the present, Europe has both endured the worst and enjoyed the best of its history. We should bear in mind the enormous symbolism of this date in order to understand how much Europe has changed and, at the same time, to recognize the need to defend those changes.

NEW DELHI As the West begins to gear up for the centenary of the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Middle East is being convulsed as never before by the legacy of the Ottoman Empire s breakup. Look no farther than Syria, where one part of that legacy the Sykes Picot Agreement, which divided the Levant into British and French spheres of influence even while the Great War still raged is coming to a brutally violent end.