if the 20th century began in the 1900s, why doesn't it start w/the digits 2000?
Doesn't make sense. 21st century...2100
Consider the history of our calendar.
We date it from the supposed year that Jesus was born, so that would be year 1 A.D. (or C.E.) When he was 30 years old, the year was 30 A.D. Jesus lived in the first century.
The year 101 A.D. marked the 100th anniversary of Jesus birth and the start of the second century. All of the dates from 101 to 200 were in the second century.
We are now living in the 21st century after Jesus's birth.
I hope this clears it up for you.
What does "a.d." or c.e. mean?
I googled Timeline of Christinaity before I posted the first time and it further confused me because I think Paul Harvey had compiled some of it and I read that Jesus learned "magic" and had appointed himself "God". It was odd to read, but thank you for your explanation.
AD stands for Anno Domini, which is Latin for "in the year of our Lord."
CE stands for Common Era, which is a non-Christian way to refer to the "AD" time period.
Thanks...I didn't know that...(latin terminology)
You're very welcome. Differentiating all the world cultures' ways to denote time is interesting, I think. Depends on when a culture decides to count, I guess!
=)
The counting system we use for centuries starts with the number 1. The 1st century represents the years 1-100, the 2nd century represents the years 101-200, and so on. Similarly, the 20th century represents the years 1901-2000, not 2001-2100.
This is because there was no "year zero" in the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar system commonly used today. The calendar goes directly from 1 BC (before Christ) to 1 AD (anno Domini) without a year zero in between.
Therefore, when counting centuries, we start with the year 1 and end with the year 100 for the 1st century, the year 101 to 200 for the 2nd century, and so on. The 20th century spans from 1901 to 2000, and the 21st century spans from 2001 to 2100.
So, while it may seem counterintuitive at first, the 20th century does not start with the year 2000 because our counting system assigns the number 1 to the first century.