Talk:20th century

photos

The article could use more photographs, and not just of wars.

why no discussion about religion?

Any major changes in religion? Jasonxu98 (talk) 00:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

external links

I would like to place an external link to an online history portal that I believe offers added-value to wikipedia's history enthusiasts. This portal, http://www.saecularis.com, offers a good selection of history books, DVDs and posters that can be purchased online. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anasl001 (talk • contribs) 15:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC) --Anasl001 (talk) 16:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Spammity spam, spammity spam... Groupthink (talk) 01:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Formatting

The formating in this article is significantly different than other similar articles, such as the 19th Century, 18th Century, etc. articles. I believe that this article should be re-formated to match the other similar articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragonsgames (talk • contribs) 05:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The other century articles have a lot less material than this one, and they mostly consist of lists. I don't think we should force all articles of a certain class to conform to a certain format in case it doesn't make practical sense.

That said, perhaps "Significant people" and "Introductions" could be added as sections. (The latter instead of "Inventions, discoveries, introductions", as in the other century articles, since inventions and discoveries are already taken care of in the section "Developments in brief".) Teemu Leisti (talk) 04:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Dates

I seriously believe that this century began in 1900, not 1901. In fact, as far as I know, it is widely believed that centuries/millenia start in the '00 year, not the '01 year. Feel free to agree/disagree with me on this. --66.94.154.5 (talk) 00:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. See Century#Start and End in the Gregorian Calendar. The rule is quite established. Teemu Leisti (talk) 10:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. 1st century 1 A.D. - 100 A.D. 2nd 101 A.D. - 200 A.D. See previous Source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.70.153 (talk) 21:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Just because people were ignorant many years ago is no reason to accept this now. This is a situation similar to the commonly-misused date format template; CCYYMMDD. This is the 21st century, so the CC portion = 21. However, many people think they are being more correct by specifying a template of CCYYMMDD, instead of the correct template, YYYYMMDD. Michael.Urban (talk) 18:09, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. Like it or not, there was no year zero. Groupthink (talk) 18:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree. The answer is simple: Since there was no year zero, the 1st Millenium only had 999 years instead of 1000. Plus, how exciting is to celebrate the turn of '00 to '01? zzzz... --66.167.11.88 (talk) 22:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Counting years is more difficult as it seems.87.208.3.170 (talk) 01:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the first poster. There actually WAS a year 0. Reasoning: the date commonly given for the birth of Jesus Christ (1 AD) is inaccurate. He was actually born sometime between 3 and 8 BCE. Lately, I believe it has been the work of liberal bloggers that have set the gospel that "there was no year zero." That there is no year zero is actually a poorly conceived Western model. Come on guys, it's just like believing the idea that Frankie Valli was born in 1937 is gospel without analyzing the situation and the facts first. Marcus2 (talk) 02:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Is "...it has been the work of liberal bloggers that have set the gospel that "there was no year zero."" a joke? Political leanings have nothing to do with the fact that the Gregorian calendar has no year zero. "That there is no year zero is actually a poorly conceived Western model." You know what? I actually agree that it would be nicer if there was a year zero, so that the third millennium and the 21st century would have started at the beginning of 2000. However, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and the task of its editors is not to vote on facts, but to describe them. Teemu Leisti (talk) 20:44, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The inaccuracy of the birth of Christ is inconsequential. THe calendar has named such years retrospectively and 1 AD (CE for the anally rentetive about political correctness) clearly follows 1 BC. The Romans certtainly had no zero, but it is intereestingly more of an Eastern than Western tradtion of aging things by the current year i.e. it (or someonw) is 10 if it is in its 10th year rather than in the west where it (or someone) is 10 until the end of the eleen th year when the twelve year starts. Dainamo (talk) 12:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. To say that the first millennium only had 999 years is going against the definition of "millennium", which is always equal to 1,000 years. If all are familiar with a "number line", then just draw one. With zero in the middle, there is +1 to the right and -1 to the left. The plus one (+1) represents the very end of the very first year, 0001. So on the very first day of the first year, right after the zero, comes January 1st, 0001. (Please remember that the number "0" has no value and is just a point on the number line that separates the year -0001 from the year +0001. There was not and cannot be a "year zero".)

Exactly ten years later we come to the number 10. That was the first "decade", and it came to an end on December 31, 0010. The second decade begins the very next day on January 1, 0011. This works the same way on up the number line. The first day of the third decade is January 1, 0021. The first day of the fourth decade is January 1, 0031, and so on.

We eventually come to number 100. All years to the left of the 100 were in the "first century". The very next number is 101, which is the end of the first year of the second century. The very first day of the 2nd century (right after the number 100 and between 100 and 101) is January 1, 0101. The first day of the 3rd century is January 1, 0201. The first day of the 4th century is January 1, 0301, and so on.

Then we reach the number 1000. All the years to the left of the 1000 were in the "first millennium". Between 1000 and the number 1001 are all the dates of the first year of the 2nd millennium. The very first day is January 1, 1001. The first day of the 3rd millennium is January 1, 2001. The first day of the 4th millennium is January 1, 3001, and so on.

Now when we focus on the date in question, we see that the end of the 2nd millennium is the number 2000 on the number line. All dates and years before the 2000 (back as far as the number 1000) were in the 2nd millennium. All dates after the 2000 (up to the number 3000) are in the 3rd millennium. All the dates between 2000 and 2001 represent the first year of the 3rd millennium. The very first day of that first year is January 1, 2001, which is the first day of the 2001st year, the 201st decade, the 21st century and the 3rd millennium.

Hope this helps!

 —  ^{.`</sup>^) Paine Ellsworth<sup>diss`cuss} (^^`.  20:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• PS. It's no large matter, of course, because people had a tremendous amount of fun on both Jan. 1, 2000 and Jan. 1, 2001. "Party on!"

Agree with the first poster. There was no year 0, but there was also no year 1 or 2 or ... "The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus". See Anno Domini. It's no use reasoning forward from what people would have done at the start of the first century if they had had our calendar, because they didn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.48.204.140 (talk) 22:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That's not what those of us disagreeing with the first post are saying. What we are saying is that when our calendar was established, no year zero was made. Therefore, the first century ran from year 1 to year 100 inclusive. Following forward, the twentieth century ran from 1901 to 2000 inclusive. The simple meanings of the words and the facts of the design of the calendar make any other interpretation erroneous. --Khajidha (talk) 15:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree. The year 1900 did begin the 20th century and the year 2000 did begin the 21st century/3rd millennium. Please read this article: http://www.mindspring.com/~jimvb/year2000.htm. It does a good job of explaining why the year 2000 was the first year of the third millennium and 21st century. I am posting more articles on my talk page in the future also explaining why 2000 was the first year of the 21st century/3rd millennium. Bjoh249 (talk) 07:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

That article is stupid because it argues that there was (not should have been) a year 0. Well, there wasn't, case closed. --91.10.48.101 (talk) 15:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Rewriting

I believe that this article has great potential. However, I believe a few major changes could and should be made to this article. For example, the "developments in brief" section should be eliminated and integrated into the newly-renamed "summary" section. I already took the liberty of moving the mini-summary already in the "general" section to the intro, where it is better suited, and increasing the amount of info in the "summary" section to include some critical missing points (such as the United Nations and conflict in the Middle East).

Eventually I think that even the current summary and major events sections could be integrated. Both are very well-written, but I don't think that there's ultimately a need to include two different sections that essentially cover the same things (just one in more detail and one in less detail) and especially not a third section (the current "developments in brief" section). I think if other people helped me out with this (I think I'm going to do as much work on this as I can) and help from people in finding references (my specialty is in writing prose, not finding references), we could even make this a featured article eventually. It's ambitious, but I think the basics are there for it...honestly the biggest problem is referencing. Anybody want to help out? Anybody have any thoughts? Additional suggestions? bob rulz (talk) 10:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I've done a fair amount of work on this article, and am still looking over it now and then. (I modified it a bit just now.) So, I'll be willing to contribute. Could you give an outline of what you think the structure should be, and what material should be moved or modified? (Personally, I think the section on WW2 is too long; detailed descriptions like that belong in their own articles.) Teemu Leisti (talk) 22:35, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

There's definitely the potential of a great article here; what is here is generally of pretty high quality. The World War II section is definitely much too long. I think we could slowly combine the various sections. The "developments in brief" section could be wrapped into the rest of the article fairly easily. It's essentially just a summary of a summary of the article. Eventually everything can be pared down into just one description divided into the separate sections needed, such as cultural and societal trends, major events, technological and scientific developments, etc. 1970s would be a good template for how to organize the article, although it has the potential to be a very good article if we work at it. bob rulz (talk) 06:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I've not done anything about this yet, but on reading the new talk subsection "Length", I think they're right. This is getting too long, and should be broken into subarticles. Teemu Leisti (talk) 00:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I changed the end of "The age of dictatorships";the Jews killed by Hitler were not all Ashkenazi (for example the Sephardi community of Salonica) so I opted for European Jews as a more accurate term, and the Great Purge (or Great Stalinian Terror) occurred no later in the 20th century, but in the 1930s, and affected many nationalities of the Soviet Union, not just the Russians Drepanopulos (talk)Drepanopulos (talk) 12:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Length

Per WP:SS, this article is just too long. A WP article doesn't need to have a "summary" (aside from the intro); it should be a summary. Also, the "major events" section in this article seems to be a conglomeration of information that can be found in other articles (such as Vietnam War). So, per WP:SS (and WP:BB), I'm thinking of cutting out all the text from this section, and simply leaving it with wikilinks to relevant articles. These links, along with the sections currently named "summary" and "developments in brief," should be enough for a decent, succinct article. Any thoughts? Cosmic Latte (talk) 00:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your premise. An alternative solution would be to create "X in the 20th century" sub-articles, e.g., "War in the 20th century", "Technological developments in the 20th century", etc. Either would be fine with me. Groupthink (talk) 06:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess you guys are right. Teemu Leisti (talk) 00:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I would like to suggest that the summary be limited to a certain number of words as a way of challenging editors (ourselves) to be succinct. It seems to me that extraordinary brevity is whole point of a page like this: give the reader a broad over view of the century and a lot of links to take them to articles about other interesting stuff. Personally, I like the number 100. One hundred words look like three paragraphs and fills up about half my screen. I also think the lists of events and people should be limited to 100, there are other pages with longer lists. On this page, I think less is more. -ErinHowarth (talk) 07:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's too long. It's true that it's much larger than most other articles, but the subject is so enormous that it might be difficult to trim without leaving out important details. At the very least, we should trim every topic equally. 195.241.69.171 (talk) 16:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Literature

I see no mention of 20th Century literature. Hemingway, Kerouac, Steinbeck, et cetera. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.176.249.232 (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Miles-davis-in-a-silent-way.jpg

The image Image:Miles-davis-in-a-silent-way.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --07:17, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Illustrations

This article has a number of images but, without exception, they all deal with the western world. It would be good to have at least one or two pictures representing events / significant people from Asia, Africa, Oceania and/or Latin America. The 20th century was a time of tremendous change in all those regions. Perhaps we can have a little brainstorming and select the most appropriate images. My first idea was to include an image of a prominent 20th century independence leader, to illustrate the section on decolonisation. Aridd (talk) 12:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Post-WWI German Government

"yet it had to accept a liberal democratic government imposed on it by the victors after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm."

This is wrong - the Weimar Republic was in no way imposed. Anyone disagree? StevenWT (talk) 21:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Help us choose the best images for the 20th century montages

Please participate in the following discussion pages and help us choose the best images for montages in the decade articles of the 20th century.

Global Warming?

Why is global warming featured here? It is not a proven theory, and most scientists agree the world has been cooling for the past 15 years.--Collingwood26 (talk) 07:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• Talk:1900s (decade)#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1910s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1920s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1930s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1940s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1950s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1960s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1970s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1980s#The selection of notable events in the montage
• Talk:1990s#The selection of notable events in the montage

TheCuriousGnome (talk) 20:19, 25 March 2010 (UTC)