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Comment by fibo | Hacker News Reader

Often happens that after an hard proof there are less t'han 10 People that can understand it. Also happened for Fermat Conjecture proved in 1997, after 5k years! Also with shorter proofs can be tricky. I studied at University a proof of Stoker Theorem by Poincaré that fits in one page, but, trust me that it is really diabolic.

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You probably mean 5C=D years but the logic is the same... :-)

What are C=D years?

C and D are the Roman numerals corresponding to 100 and 500 respectively. Hence, 5C = D.

But, the larger point was that took 500 (5C) rather than 5000 (5K) years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.

  I =    1
  V =    5
  X =   10
  L =   50
  C =  100
  D =  500
  M = 1000

  => D = 5C or, equivalently, 5C=D

It's more like 8L years ago, though.

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