WThe millennium celebrations were a worldwide, coordinated series of events celebrating the end of 1999 and the start of the year 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. The celebrations were held as marking the end of the 2nd millennium and the 20th century, and the start of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century. Countries around the globe held official festivities in the weeks and months leading up to the date, such as those organised in the United States by the White House Millennium Council, and most major cities produced firework displays at midnight. Equally, many private venues, cultural and religious centres held events and a diverse range of memorabilia was created – such as souvenir postage stamps.
WThe 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China took place on 1 October 1999. A military parade was held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and various celebrations were conducted all over the country. China's paramount leader Jiang Zemin inspected the troops along Chang'an Avenue in Beijing. This parade was immediately followed by a civilian parade.
W2000 Today was an internationally broadcast television special commemorating the beginning of the Year 2000. This program included New Year's Eve celebrations, musical performances, and other features from participating nations.
W"Captive Nations" is a term sometimes used in the United States to describe nations under undemocratic regimes. During the Cold War, when the phraseology appeared and was more frequently used, it referred to nations under Communist administration, primarily Soviet rule.
WCaptive Nations Week is an annual official observance in the United States aimed at demonstrating solidarity with the "captive nations" under the control of authoritarian governments.
WFantasia 2000 is a 1999 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Produced by Roy E. Disney and Donald W. Ernst, it is the 38th Disney animated feature film and sequel to 1940's Fantasia. Like its predecessor, Fantasia 2000 consists of animated segments set to pieces of classical music. Celebrities including Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman, Quincy Jones, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller, and Angela Lansbury introduce each segment in live-action scenes directed by Don Hahn.
W"Fuck the Millennium", sometimes spelled "***K the Millennium", is a protest song by 2K—Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty—better known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and the KLF. The song was inspired musically by Jeremy Deller's "Acid Brass" project where a traditional brass band play acid house classics; these include the KLF's "What Time Is Love?", and topically by the then-forthcoming end of the second millennium and the plans to celebrate it.
WThe Great Jubilee in 2000 was a major event in the Roman Catholic Church, held from Christmas Eve 1999 to Epiphany 2001. Like other previous Jubilee years, it was a celebration of the mercy of God and forgiveness of sins. The major innovation in this Jubilee was the addition of many "particular Jubilees" for various groups of persons, and that it was simultaneously celebrated in Rome, Israel, and elsewhere in the world.
WTwenty-one Coptic Christians were the victims of a massacre in el-Kosheh village in Upper Egypt, located 450 kilometres south of Cairo, on Sunday, 2 January 2000. The Coptic Christians killed in this incident were considered martyrs of the Coptic Orthodox Church by Pope Shenouda III.
WOn or near January 1, 2000, a series of Islamist terrorist attacks linked to al-Qaeda were planned to occur in the context of millennium celebrations, including bombing plots against four tourist sites in Jordan, against the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and USS The Sullivans, and the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814. In Lebanon, dozens were killed in clashes in the Dinnieh district between radical Islamists with connections to the Jordan plots and the Lebanese Army. The plots in Jordan and against LAX were foiled by law enforcement agencies, while the attempted bombing of The Sullivans only failed because the boat filled with explosives sank before detonating. The revelation of the plot linked to the LAX "Millennium Bomber" Ahmed Ressam led to unprecedented investigations into possible other terrorist cells in the United States, dubbed Operation "Borderbom", and security measures around millennium celebrations. Other al-Qaeda-linked millennium attack plots may have been planned or foiled around the same time.
WThe Millennium Bell is the 20th record album by Mike Oldfield, released in 1999. The theme of the album is a reflection of different periods of human history. The album borrows its name from the dawning of the 3rd millennium and Oldfield's Tubular Bells series of albums. It was the main work performed at Oldfield's concert for Berlin's new year celebrations on 31 December 1999.
WThe Millennium Commission, a United Kingdom public body, was set up to celebrate the turn of the millennium. It used funding raised through the UK National Lottery to assist communities in marking the close of the second millennium and celebrating the start of the third. The body was wound up in 2006.
WThe Millennium Forest for Scotland project was an initiative created by the Millennium Commission and funded by the National Lottery of the United Kingdom to celebrate the turn of the New Millennium.
WMillennium Greens are areas of green space for the benefit of local communities. 245 were created in cities, towns and villages across England to celebrate the turn of the Millennium. Their creation was funded in part by the National Lottery via the Countryside Agency. Each one is different, as local people have had an input into the design of their green.
WMillennium Shock is a BBC Books original novel written by Justin Richards and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Fourth Doctor and Harry, and is a sequel to Richards' Virgin Missing Adventures novel System Shock.
WThe Millennium Summit was a meeting among many world leaders lasting three days from 6 September to 8 September 2000 at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Its purpose was to discuss the role of the United Nations at the turn of the 21st century. At this meeting, world leaders ratified the United Nations Millennium Declaration. This meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in history as of the year 2000. It was followed by the World Summit five years later, which took place from 14 to 16 September 2005.
WMulennium is a live release by the band Gov't Mule. The release includes all three sets from the band's December 31, 1999/January 1, 2000 New Year's Eve show at the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The band had headlined the same venue exactly one year before, which resulted in their second live album Live... With a Little Help from Our Friends. Unlike that release, which came out within a year of the actual concert, Mulennium was not released until 2010.
WProject Megiddo was a report researched and written by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation under Director Louis Freeh. Released on October 20, 1999, the report named followers of white supremacy, Christian Identity, the militia movement, Black Hebrew Israelites, and apocalyptic cults as potential terrorists who might become violent in reaction to the new millennium.
WQuestioning the Millennium is a 1997 book by the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould that deals with the definition and calculation of the millennium, and its meaning in Western culture. New York Times reviewer Robert Eisner described it as a "slim and attractive meditation," which touches upon calendrics, Biblical exegesis, millennial cults, and includes "a charming essay on a young autistic man whose amazing ability to calculate instantly which day of the week coincided with any date mentioned over many centuries". Gould reveals that this young man was his autistic son, Jesse.
WThe Revolutions of 1989 formed part of a revolutionary wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s that resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. The period is often also called the Fall of Communism and sometimes called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848.
WTertio millennio adveniente is an apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, promulgated on 10 November 1994, concerning preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.
WOn 8 September 2000, following a three-day Millennium Summit of world leaders gathered in New York at the headquarters of the United Nations, the UN General Assembly adopted some 60 goals regarding peace; development; environment; human rights; the vulnerable, hungry, and poor; Africa; and the United Nations which is called Millennium Declaration . A follow-up outcome of the resolution was passed by the General Assembly on 14 December 2000 to guide its implementation. Progress on implementation of the Declaration was reviewed at the 2005 World Summit of leaders. The Declaration includes 8 chapters and 32 paragraphs.
WWindows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me, is a graphical operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. It is the successor to Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, with general availability on September 14, 2000.
WThe Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, Y2K bug, the Y2K glitch, or Y2K, refers to events related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000. Problems were anticipated, and arose, because many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits – making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. The assumption of a twentieth-century date in such programs could cause various errors, such as the incorrect display of dates and the inaccurate ordering of automated dated records or real-time events.