Ah … not sure what you’re saying here … just seeing the clocks and calenders move from 1999 to 2000 was a BIG DEAL socially, psychologically and sociographically … it was really cool to watch. That we had to wait another year for the beginning of the new century was only important to the few purist, everyone else partied both times !!!
Here’s a really weird coincidence :
At the time of the 2001 US election the headquarters of the company that then owned Millennium dot com was sited about half a mile from the Florida polling station that was involved in the final saga of the dispute about who had won.
The first day of the month is day 1. The first month of the year is month 1. Why wouldn’t the first year of the century be year 1?
Dec 31, 1991. Either that, or Sep 11, 2001.
The twentieth began on Jul 28, 1914.
The fifth began in 376, not sure about the exact date.
Yes, you’re right: No one wants to bring me along to the calendar store anymore.
Those who keep track of time say the 21st century began on January 1, 2001.
Those who care about when the first digit changed from a “1” to a “2” for the first time in a thousand years say the 21st century began on January 1, 2000.
Take your pick. Either one is valid depending on whether your criteria are technical or symbolic. Most millennial celebrations were held in 2000 on the basis of symbolism. And IT techs all over the world had to stay sober because they were all on call in case the Y2K bug caused The End of Civilization As We Know It – try telling them when the century really changed! 
What election was that? The election that happened in November 2001 to elect the congressional class of 2002 (which is generally called the “2002 election”)?
I’d guess that you meant the 2000 presidential election, which polled in November 1999.
Because there is no zeroth day of the month.
And there’s no zeroth day of the 2nd millennium or the 21st century. It goes from 1-1,000 and 1-100, just like a month starts at Day 1.
I only have a 12 month calendar, or at most an 18 month calender.
I’ve never seen anyone with a 3 millennium calender hanging in their house.
I’ve heard arguments both ways on this, too.
I thought those who say the 21st century began in 2001 were right in some ways but wrong in a fundamental way.
They tend to argue that there never was a year zero. Maybe in older calendars but really we have been using the Gregorian calendar or the Western/Christian calendar and there ARE year zeros in it, DESPITE saying there is no year 0 in our calendar.
Why do we have a year zero then, why does the year 2000 exist, why not 1999 then 2001 or with decades 1979 followed by 1981? We have years that begin with zero. To say the year 2000 was part of the 20th century is just wrong, does not feel right. Odd there were no year zero, but we have years that end with zero.
I remember in the Economist Magazine, a woman at the end of 2009 argued in a letter to the comment section that the new decade would start in 2011, not 2010. Get outta here! Now even if 2000 was the end of the 20th century as many argue, it is still the beginning of the 2000’s decade. it was not part of the nineties as 1990 was not part of the eighties.
In a cultural sense 2000 was the beginning. I suspect 85 years from now people will ring in the new millennium at midnight Jan 1, 2100.
So I will leave by posing this question: why do we have years that end with zero if there “never was a year zero”?
No, that’s the ninth decade.
1901–1910: first
1911–1920: second
1921–1930: third
1931–1940: fourth
1941–1950: fifth
1951–1960: sixth
1961–1970: seventh
1971–1980: eighth
1981–1990: ninth
1991–2000: tenth
Equally there is no zeroth year of the century. There is a first year, a second year, and so on up to the hundredth year.
Which is your zero toe?
If you don’t have a zero toe, how can you have 10 of them?
Of course there are years with zeros in them, like 1900, or 1980. But that is beside the point. The point is that the calendar (the Gregorian calendar!) didn’t start witha year zero in it. By your logic, if there were no years with zeros in them (1979 followed immediately by 1980), we’d lose a year every “decade”, and that would sum up:
The calendar would start with the year 1, followed by years 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Then year 11 would follow, and the first decade (in the sense of a set of ten years) would be over. So the second decade would start with year 12, followed by 13 through 22, finishing the second decade. Then the third decade would follow, beginning in 23. The fourth decade would begin in 34, the fifth in 45, the sixth in 56, the seventh in 67, the eighth in 78 and the ninth in 89, running until 99. This year 99 would be followed by the year 101, in which the tenth decade would start - rather than the eleventh (the first decade of the second century), as should be. In your system, you’d lose a decade per “century” of counting.
The reason why the 21st century started in 2001 is simply because the first century started in the year 1, not the year zero. Since each century lasts, by definition, 100 years, the 21st century must start exactly 20 centuries, i.e. 2,000 years, later. That gives you the 2001. Postulating that the 21st century started in 2000 implies that there was a century with 99 rather than 100 years, violating the definition of “century”. It may be a small price to pay if you like the magic of the big round number 2000, but the logic would still be flawed.
That is correct, but that’s because the system of counting decades as “eighties”, “nineties” etc. simply looks at the first digits of the number. That differs from the ordinal of the decade (first, second, etc. decade of a century). The first decade of the new century ran from 2001 until 31 December 2010, meaning that 2010 was part of the first decade, but it’s already one of the “tenner” years. The “naught” years ended on 31 December 2009. Or to put it differently: By your logic, we’d have to be in the 20th century, since the year numbers start with 20. We are not, however; the century is the 21st, and the 20th century was when years started with 19.
Surely not. They might erroneously ring in a new century, but for a new millennium there’s quite a long way still to go.
The 21st century will start when the numbers roll over to 21. January 1st, 2100.
And don’t give me any of the guff about “there was no year zero”. There was also no year 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 … the old calendar didn’t even start until 525 AD, or, as I like to say, the 5th century.
So which century is the current one?
That may becorrect (with the exception that it is surely not correct to call the century in which the year 525 AD occurred the “5th century” - it was the 6th), but that doesn’t stop us from using the same system even for years before the current calendar started to be developed or even commonly used. There surely were years 1, 2, 3 etc., even though they were not called 1, 2, 3 etc. by contemporaries. The “year zero”, however, did not even exist in this sense; the day before what we call 1 January of the year 1 was 31 December of the year 1 BC (or BCE, if you prefer that). The “year zero” was, therefore, nonexistent, whereas the year 1 was very much real, even though people did not call it that at the time.
And yet, looking back, we have no trouble saying that the Boudiccan revolt took place in AD 61 or the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79 even though the years were not so numbered. We can even date certain historical events to AD 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5… but the year 0 AD doesn’t exist even in retrospect.
Also, of course, if there was no Year 1, 2, 3 etc because the calendar was not adopted until AD 525, then by the same logic AD 525 was in the first century, not the 5th… and all centuries run from x25 up to (x+1)24. Assuming you want your viewpoint to be internally consistent, that is.
The 2002 Congressional Elections were in November 2002. The elected Congresspersons started their terms in 2003. The 2000 Presidential Election was in November 2000.