Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year marker, began yesterday, and Ramadan, the muslim month of fasting, begins tonight.
I'm not at all a religious person, but I don't see any particular meaning to any particular decision where years begin or end, so I guess this is as good a time as any. There's also the Chinese new year, which is, I think, usually sometime in February. Wikipedia has a nice article about the various New Year. Apparently our start to the year is related to the politics of ancient Rome, courtesy of Julius Caesar.
Also, from Wikipedia, I learned that Caesarian sections, the surgical means by which I was born (I was a big baby!), was only connected by myth to Caesar, was originally used primarily when the mother was dead and was practically always fatal at other times, and that in the year 2000, some amazing Mexican woman, Ines Ramirez, performed the operation on herself, successfully giving birth to a live child and surviving(!). That's pretty amazing.
