2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematical Year.
Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tendency to group the years according to decimal values, as if non-existent year zero were counted. According to the Gregorian calendar, these distinctions fall to the year 2001, because the 1st century was retroactively said to start with the year AD 1. Since the Gregorian calendar does not have year zero, its first millennium spanned from years 1 to 1000 inclusively and its second millennium from years 1001 to 2000. (For further information, see century and millennium.)
The year 2000 is sometimes abbreviated as "Y2K" (the "Y" stands for "year", and the "K" stands for "kilo" which means "thousand"). The year 2000 was the subject of Y2K concerns, which were fears that computers would not shift from 1999 to 2000 correctly. However, by the end of 1999, many companies had already converted to new, or upgraded, existing software. Some even obtained "Y2K certification". As a result of massive effort, relatively few problems occurred.
January 6 – The last naturally-conceived Pyrenean ibex is found dead, apparently killed by a falling tree.
January 10 – America Online announces an agreement to purchase Time Warner for $162 billion (the largest-ever corporate merger).
January 14
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 11,722.98 (at the peak of the Dot-com bubble).
The United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years in prison for the 1993 killing of more than 100 Bosnian Muslims.
January 30 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes off the Ivory Coast into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169 people.
January 31 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashes off the California coast into the Pacific Ocean; all 88 passengers and crew are killed.
February 5 – Second Chechen War: Novye Aldi massacre – Russian forces summarily execute 56-60 civilians in a suburb of Grozny.
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1995 was designated as: United Nations Year for Tolerance World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government no longer providing public funding, marking the beginning of the Information Age. America Online and Prodigy offered access to the World Wide Web system for the first time this year, releasing browsers that made it easily accessible to the general public.
The year's most prominent event were the September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan after the Taliban government did not extradite Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Internal conflicts, political or otherwise, caused shifts in leadership in multiple countries, which included the assassination of Laurent-Désiré Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Second EDSA Revolution in the Philippines, the massacre of the royal family by the crown prince in Nepal, and civil unrest in Argentina.
January 1936 February 1936 January 20 – George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India, dies at his Sandringham Estate. The Prince of Wales succeeds to the throne of the United Kingdom as King Edward VIII. January 28 – State funeral of George V of the United Kingdom. After a procession through London, he is buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. February 4 – Radium E (bismuth-210) becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.