20th century

The 20th century began on 1 January 1901 (MCMI), and ended on 31 December 2000 (MM).^[1][2] It was the 10th and last century of the 2nd millennium and was marked by new models of scientific understanding, unprecedented scopes of warfare, new modes of communication that would operate at nearly instant speeds, and new forms of art and entertainment. Population growth was also unprecedented,^[3] as the century started with around 1.6 billion people, and ended with around 6.2 billion.^[4]

The 20th century was dominated by significant geopolitical events that reshaped the political and social structure of the globe:

At the beginning of the period, the British Empire was the world's most powerful nation,^[7] having acted as the world's policeman for the past century.

Technological advancements during

After some years of dramatic military success, Germany was

Following World War II, the United Nations, successor to the League of Nations, was established as an international forum in which the world's nations could discuss issues diplomatically. It enacted resolutions on such topics as the conduct of warfare, environmental protection, international sovereignty, and human rights. Peacekeeping forces consisting of troops provided by various countries, with various United Nations and other aid agencies, helped to relieve famine, disease, and poverty, and to suppress some local armed conflicts. Europe slowly united, economically and, in some ways, politically, to form the European Union, which consisted of 15 European countries by the end of the 20th century.

After the war, Germany was

At the beginning of the century, strong discrimination based on race and sex was significant in most societies. Although the Atlantic slave trade had ended in the 19th century, movements for equality for non-white people in the white-dominated societies of North America, Europe, and South Africa continued. By the end of the 20th century, in many parts of the world, women had the same legal rights as men, and racism had come to be seen as unacceptable, a sentiment often backed up by legislation.^[12] When the Republic of India was constituted, the disadvantaged classes of the caste system in India became entitled to affirmative action benefits in education, employment and government.

Attitudes toward pre-marital sex changed rapidly in many societies during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Attitudes towards homosexuality also began to change in the later part of the century.

^[13][14]

Earth at the end of the 20th century

Economic growth and technological progress had radically altered daily lives. Europe appeared to be at a sustainable peace for the first time in recorded history^{[citation needed]}. The people of the Indian subcontinent, a sixth of the world population at the end of the 20th century, had attained an indigenous independence for the first time in centuries. China, an ancient nation comprising a fifth of the world population, was finally open to the world, creating a new state after the near-complete destruction of the old cultural order. With the end of colonialism and the Cold War, nearly a billion people in Africa were left in new nation states.

The world was undergoing its second major period of globalization; the first, which started in the 18th century, having been terminated by World War I. Since the US was in a dominant position, a major part of the process was Americanization. The influence of China and India was also rising, as the world's largest populations were rapidly integrating with the world economy.

Disease threatened to destabilize many regions of the world. New viruses such as the

Based on research done by climate scientists, the majority of the scientific community consider that in the long term environmental problems pose a serious threat.

World population increased from about 1.6 billion people in 1901 to 6.1 billion at the century's end.^[17][18]

Wars and politics

The number of people killed during the century by government actions was in the hundreds of millions. This includes deaths caused by wars, genocide, politicide and mass murders. The deaths from acts of war during the two world wars alone have been estimated at between 50 and 80 million.^[

• The
  Greeks in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).^[22][23]
• The
  United States of America) formed in 1900 to invade the Qing China
  represented the club of great powers in the early 20th century.
• Rising
  USSR, the British Empire and the United States. At the time, it was said by many to be the "war to end all wars
  ".
• The Arab Revolt of 1916 was an armed uprising against the Ottoman Empire done by the Arabs in agreement with the British Empire. The revolt was led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali who was promised by Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, that in exchange for fighting the Ottoman Empire, Sharif Hussein would gain control over all Arab lands under the Ottoman Empire. A promise the British Empire did not honor.^[24][25][26]
• During World War I, in the
  Tsarist reign were ended and the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, established the world's first Communist state
  .
• The end of World War I saw the collapse of the central powers, the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire into several independent sovereign states throughout Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East.
• After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques, women became more independent throughout the century.
• submarines. The introduction of nuclear warfare in the mid-20th century marked the definite transition to modern warfare
  .
• The Revolutions of 1917-1923 occurred during and World War I inspired by the Russian Revolution which saw many political changes in Europe and in Asia.
• The Osage Murders of 1918-1931 were a series of killings of members of the Native American Osage Nation, who were the richest people per capita in the world at that time.^[27]
• The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, was a racist anti black terrorist attack in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was home to many successful and wealthy Black Americans. The attack was perpetrated by white residents and local white deputies. The perpetrators were armed by local government officials.^[28][29]
• The Great Depression in the 1930s led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe.
• A violent civil war broke out in Spain in 1936 when General Francisco Franco rebelled against the Second Spanish Republic. Many consider this war as a testing battleground for World War II, as the fascist armies bombed some Spanish territories.
• Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan against the allies, China, France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Many atrocities occurred, particularly the Holocaust killing approximately 11 million victims. It ended with the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  in Japan.
• The two world wars led to efforts to increase international cooperation, notably through the founding of the League of Nations after World War I, and its successor, the United Nations, after World War II.
• The creation of Israel in 1948, a Jewish state in the Middle East, at the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, fueled many conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians in addition to regional conflicts. These were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the other countries of the predominantly Arab region.
• In 1948 The Nakba was, according to several historians, a targeted ethnic cleansing campaign against Arabs in Palestine perpetrated by Jewish Militias under Plan Delta, a plan ordered by Ben-Gurion. The campaign utilized methods of intimidation, violent attacks, and the destruction of several Arab villages.^[30][31][32]
• After the
  Indochina and Cuba, where communist parties
  gained near-absolute power.

• The
  Western bloc, including wars in Korea (1950–1953) and Vietnam
  (1957–1975).
• The Soviet authorities caused the deaths of millions of their own citizens to eliminate domestic opposition.^[33] More than 18 million people passed through the Gulag, with a further 6 million being exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.^[34]
• Nationalist movements in the Indian subcontinent led to the independence and partition of Jawaharlal Nehru-led India and Muhammad Ali Jinnah-led Pakistan, although would lead to conflicts between the two nations such as border and territorial disputes.
• After a long period of civil wars and conflicts with western powers, China's last imperial dynasty ended in 1912. The resulting republic was replaced, after another civil war, by the communist People's Republic of China in 1949. At the end of the 20th century, though still ruled by a communist party, China's economic system had largely transformed to capitalism.
• Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence and Indian independence movement against the British Empire influenced many political movements around the world, including the civil rights movement in the United States, and freedom movements in South Africa against apartheid challenging racial segregation
• The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the United States, the USSR, or China for defense.

• Mao Zedong's radical policy of modernization leads to the Great Chinese Famine causing the death of tens of millions of Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. It is thought to be the largest famine in human history.^[35]
• The
  North-South relations.^[36]
• The
  political turmoil in Afghanistan^[35]
• The
  successor states, with many rife with ethnic nationalism. Meanwhile, East Germany and West Germany were reunified in 1990
  .
• The
  Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
  , culminating in the deaths of hundreds of civilian protesters, were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
• European integration began in earnest in the 1950s, and eventually led to the European Union, a political and economic union that comprised 15 countries at the end of the 20th century.

Culture and entertainment

Main article: 20th century in literature

• As the century began, Paris was the artistic capital of the world, where both French and foreign writers, composers and visual artists gathered. By the middle of the century New York City had become the artistic capital of the world.
• Theater, films, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many films and much music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
• 1953 saw the
  coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
  , an iconic figure of the century.
• Visual culture became more dominant not only in films but in comics and television as well. During the century a new skilled understanding of narrativist imagery was developed.
• Computer games and internet surfing became new and popular form of entertainment during the last 25 years of the century.
• In literature, science fiction, fantasy (with well-developed fictional worlds, rich in detail), and alternative history fiction gained popularity. Detective fiction gained popularity in the interwar period. In the United States in 1961 Grove Press published Tropic of Cancer a novel by Henry Miller redefining pornography and censorship in publishing in America.

Music

Main article: 20th-century music

The invention of music recording technologies such as the phonograph record, and dissemination technologies such as radio broadcasting, massively expanded the audience for music. Prior to the 20th century, music was generally only experienced in live performances. Many new genres of music were established during the 20th century.

• Igor Stravinsky revolutionized classical composition.
• In the 1920s, Arnold Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, which became widely influential on 20th-century composers.
• In classical music,
  dodecaphony, aleatoric (chance) music, and minimalism
  .
• Tango was created in Argentina and became extremely popular in the rest of the Americas and Europe.
• Blues and jazz music became popularized during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s in the United States. Bebop develops as a form of jazz in the 1940s.
• Country music develops in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States.
• Blues and country went on to influence rock and roll in the 1950s, which along with folk music, increased in popularity with the British Invasion of the mid-to-late 1960s.
• Rock soon branched into many different genres, including folk rock, heavy metal, punk rock, and alternative rock and became the dominant genre of popular music.
• This was challenged with the rise of hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Other genres such as house, techno, reggae, and soul all developed during the latter half of the century and went through various periods of popularity.
• Synthesizers began to be employed widely in music and crossed over into the mainstream with
  synth-pop, electronic dance music, and industrial
  .

Film, television and theatre

See also: History of film

Film as an artistic medium was created in the 20th century. The first modern movie theatre was established in

cel animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937. Computer-generated imagery was developed in the 1980s, with the first full-length CGI-animated film Toy Story

released in 1995.

• Julie Andrews, Harry Belafonte, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, James Dean, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Jane Fonda and John Wayne are among the most popular Hollywood stars of the 20th century.
• Madhubala, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Karel Roden, Sean Connery, Marcello Mastroianni, Salah Zulfikar, Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot, Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Soad Hosny, Fernanda Montenegro, Sophie Marceau, Fatima Rushdi, Amitabh Bachchan, Jean Gabin, Toshiro Mifune, Shoukry Sarhan, Lars Mikkelsen, Sophia Loren, Youssef Wahbi, Claudia Cardinale, Klaus Kinski, Gérard Depardieu, Max von Sydow, Faten Hamama, Rutger Hauer and Toni Servillo are among the most popular movie stars of the 20th century.
• Sergei Eisenstein, D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Spike Lee, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Walt Disney, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, William Friedkin, Ezz El-Dine Zulficar and George Lucas are among the most important and popular filmmakers of the 20th century.
• In theater, sometimes referred to as
  Broadway in New York City, playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams introduced innovative language and ideas to the idiom. In musical theater, figures such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Mohammed Karim, and Irving Berlin
  had an enormous impact on both film and the culture in general.
• Dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey, Isadora Duncan, Vaslav Nijinsky, Ruth St. Denis, Mahmoud Reda, Martha Graham, José Limón, Doris Humphrey, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Taylor
  re-defined movement, struggling to bring it back to its 'natural' roots and along with Jazz, created a solely American art form. Alvin Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance.

See also:

History of Television

Video games

Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey

, the first video game console, released in 1972.

Main article: History of video games

Video games—due to the great technological steps forward in computing since the second post-war period—are one of the new forms of entertainment that emerged in the 20th century alongside films.

• While already conceptualized in the
  Donkey Kong, Namco's Pac-Man and Galaga, Konami's Frogger, Capcom's 1942 and Sega's Zaxxon,^[38] the worldwide success of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros.^[39] and the release in the 1990s of Sony PlayStation console, the first one to break the record of 100 million units sold, with Gran Turismo being the system's best selling video game.^[40]
• Video game design becomes a discipline. Some game designers in this century stand out for their work, such as Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Sid Meier and Will Wright.

Art and architecture

• The art world experienced the development of new styles and explorations such as
  minimal art, lyrical abstraction, and conceptual art
  .
• The modern art movement revolutionized art and culture and set the stage for both Modernism and its counterpart postmodern art as well as other contemporary art practices.
• Art Nouveau began as a form of architecture and design but fell out of fashion after World War I. The style was dynamic and inventive but unsuited to the depression of the Great War.
• In Europe,
  building materials
  and technologies. Before World War II, many European architects moved to the United States, where modern architecture continued to develop.
• The automobile increased the mobility of people in the Western countries in the early-to-mid-century, and in many other places by the end of the 20th century. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car.

Sport

• The popularity of sport increased considerably—both as an activity for all and as entertainment, particularly on television.
• The modern Olympic Games, first held in 1896, grew to include tens of thousands of athletes in dozens of sports.
• The FIFA World Cup was first held in 1930 and was held every four years after World War II.
• American League Baseball was formed in 1900 and in 1903, both National and American agreed to play in the first World Series with over 100,000 in attendance.^[41]
• Boxing, also known as "Prize Fighting" became popular over this decade although
  bare-knuckle fighting
  was still popular.

Science

Mathematics

Multiple new fields of mathematics were developed in the 20th century. In the first part of the 20th century,

Later in the 20th century, the development of computers led to the establishment of a theory of computation.^[42] Computationally-intense results include the study of fractals^[43] and a proof of the four color theorem in 1976.^[44]

Physics

• New areas of physics, like special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, were developed during the first half of the century. In the process, the internal structure of atoms came to be clearly understood, followed by the discovery of elementary particles.
• It was found that all the known forces can be traced to only four fundamental interactions. It was discovered further that two forces, electromagnetism and weak interaction, can be merged in the electroweak interaction, leaving only three different fundamental interactions.
• Discovery of nuclear reactions, in particular nuclear fusion, finally revealed the source of solar energy.
• Radiocarbon dating was invented, and became a powerful technique for determining the age of prehistoric animals and plants as well as historical objects.

Astronomy

• A much better understanding of the evolution of the universe was achieved, its age (about 13.8 billion years) was determined, and the Big Bang theory on its origin was proposed and generally accepted.
• The age of the Solar System, including Earth, was determined, and it turned out to be much older than believed earlier: more than 4 billion years, rather than the 20 million years suggested by Lord Kelvin in 1862.^[45]
• The planets of the Solar System and their moons were closely observed via numerous
  space probes. Pluto was discovered in 1930 on the edge of the Solar System, although in the early 21st century, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet
  instead of a planet proper, leaving eight planets.
• No trace of life was discovered on any of the other planets orbiting
  Extrasolar planets
  were observed for the first time.

• Norman Borlaug fathered the Green Revolution, the set of research technology transfer initiatives occurring between 1950 and the late 1960s that increased agricultural production in parts of the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s, and is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.

Biology

• James Watson,^[46][47] Francis Crick,^[46][47] Rosalind Franklin^[47] and Maurice Wilkins,^[46][47] following by developing techniques which allow to read DNA sequences and culminating in starting the Human Genome Project (not finished in the 20th century) and cloning the first mammal
  in 1996.
• The role of sexual reproduction in evolution was understood, and bacterial conjugation was discovered.
• The convergence of various sciences for the formulation of the modern evolutionary synthesis (produced between 1936 and 1947), providing a widely accepted account of evolution.

Medicine

• blinded clinical trials
  became a powerful tool for testing new medicines.
• bacterial diseases
  .
• A vaccine was developed for polio, ending a worldwide epidemic. Effective vaccines were also developed for a number of other serious infectious diseases, including influenza, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), chickenpox, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B.
• Epidemiology and vaccination led to the eradication of the smallpox virus in humans.
• sonography and magnetic resonance imaging
  .
• Development of
  vitamins virtually eliminated scurvy
  and other vitamin-deficiency diseases from industrialized societies.
• New psychiatric drugs were developed. These include antipsychotics for treating hallucinations and delusions, and antidepressants for treating depression.
• The role of tobacco smoking in the causation of cancer and other diseases was proven during the 1950s (see British Doctors Study).
• New methods for cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, were developed. As a result, cancer could often be cured or placed in remission.
• The development of blood typing and blood banking made blood transfusion safe and widely available.
• The
  organ and tissue transplantation
  a clinical reality.
• New methods for
  pacemakers and artificial hearts
  .
• Prohibition of drugs caused a growth in the black market drug industry, and expanded enforcement led to a larger prison population in some countries.^[48]
• Contraceptive drugs were developed, which reduced population growth rates in industrialized countries, as well as decreased the taboo of premarital sex
  throughout many western countries.
• The development of medical insulin during the 1920s helped raise the life expectancy of diabetics to three times of what it had been earlier.
• Vaccines, hygiene and clean water improved health and decreased mortality rates, especially among infants and the young.

Notable diseases

• An
  Spanish Flu
  , killed anywhere from 17 to 100 million people between 1918 and 1919.
• A new
  developing countries
  , and a cure has yet to be discovered.
• Because of increased life spans, the prevalence of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and other diseases of old age increased slightly.
• Changes in food production, along with sedentary lifestyles due to labor-saving devices and the increase in home entertainment, contributed to an "epidemic" of obesity, at first in the rich countries, but by the end of the 20th century spreading to the developing world.

Energy and the environment

• Fossil fuels and nuclear power
  were the dominant forms of energy sources.
• Widespread use of petroleum in industry—both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane—led to the geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became a center of geopolitical and military tension throughout the latter half of the century. (For example, oil was a factor in Japan's decision to go to war against the United States in 1941, and the oil cartel, OPEC, used an oil embargo of sorts in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s).
• The increase in
  global warming, and global climate change
  .
• Pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals accumulated in the environment, including in the bodies of humans and other animals.
• Population growth and worldwide deforestation diminished the quality of the environment.
• In the last third of the century, concern about humankind's impact on the Earth's
  global warming
  began in the 1980s, commencing decades of social and political debate.

Engineering and technology

One of the prominent traits of the 20th century was the dramatic growth of technology. Organized research and practice of science led to advancement in the fields of communication, electronics, engineering, travel, medicine, and war.

• Basic
  dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, electric stoves and vacuum cleaners
  became popular from the 1920s through the 1950s. Radios were popularized as a form of entertainment during the 1920s, followed by television during the 1950s.
• The first airplane, the Wright Flyer, was flown in 1903. With the engineering of the faster jet engine in the 1940s, mass air travel became commercially viable.
• The
  divided highways
  reduced the death rate.
• The triode tube was invented.
• Air conditioning of buildings became common
• New materials, most notably stainless steel, Velcro, silicone, teflon, and plastics such as polystyrene, PVC, polyethylene, and nylon came into widespread use for many various applications. These materials typically have tremendous performance gains in strength, temperature, chemical resistance, or mechanical properties over those known prior to the 20th century.
• Aluminum became an inexpensive metal and became second only to iron in use.
• Thousands of
  chemicals
  were developed for industrial processing and home use.
• Digital computers came into use

Space exploration

• The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union gave a peaceful outlet to the political and military tensions of the Cold War, leading to the first human spaceflight with the Soviet Union's Vostok 1 mission in 1961, and man's first landing on another world—the Moon—with America's Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Later, the first space station was launched by the Soviet space program. The United States developed the first reusable spacecraft system with the Space Shuttle program, first launched in 1981. As the century ended, a permanent crewed presence in space was being founded with the ongoing construction of the International Space Station.
• In addition to human spaceflight, uncrewed space probes became a practical and relatively inexpensive form of exploration. The first orbiting space probe, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Over time, a massive system of artificial satellites was placed into orbit around Earth. These satellites greatly advanced navigation, communications, military intelligence, geology, climate, and numerous other fields. Also, by the end of the 20th century, uncrewed probes had visited or flown by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and various asteroids and comets, with Voyager 1 being the farthest manufactured object from Earth at 23,5 billion kilometers away from Earth as of 6 September 2022, and together with Voyager 2 both carrying The Voyager Golden Record containing sounds, music and greetings in 55 languages as well as 116 images of nature, human advancement, space and society.
• The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, greatly expanded our understanding of the Universe and brought brilliant images to TV and computer screens around the world.
• The Global Positioning System, a series of satellites that allow land-based receivers to determine their exact location, was developed and deployed.^[49]

Religion

• 1900s – A number of related revival movements mark the start of Pentecostalism.
• 1904 – Aleister Crowley dictates The Book of the Law, the foundational text of Thelema.
• 1922 – The Soviet Union establishes a doctrine of state atheism.
• 1924 – Mustafa Kemal Pasha abolishes the Islamic Caliphate, in favor of secularism. This marks the last widely recognized Muslim Caliphate.
• 1930 – Wallace Fard Muhammad founds the Nation of Islam. The Seventh Lambeth Conference allows for the possibility of birth control within Anglicanism, the first example of a modern Christian church supporting such a position.^{[citation needed]}
• 1940s – Wicca is formalized by Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente.
• 1950s –
  jihadist ideology. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi begins to teach Transcendental Meditation
  .
• 1953 – L. Ron Hubbard founds the Church of Scientology, which has a unique cosmology based on science fiction and his older system of Dianetics.
• 1956 – B. R. Ambedkar launches the Dalit Buddhist movement.
• 1960 – The charismatic movement starts within Anglicanism, quickly spreading to other Christian sects.
• 1962–65 – The Second Vatican Council is held, resulting in significant changes in the Catholic Church.
• 1970s – New Age beliefs and practices are popularized.
• 1979 – In
  theocratic state within Iran
  .
• 1988 –
  Islamic extremists, is founded among Arab members of the Afghan mujahideen. It engages in a number of terror attacks throughout the 1990s, leading up to the September 11 attacks
  in 2001.
• 1999 – Falun Gong, a Chinese new religious movement dating to the early 1990s, begins to be persecuted by the Chinese government.

Economics

• The
  economic slowdown
  that lasted throughout the early 1930s.
• The
  five-year plans
  for industrialization and economic development.
• Most countries abandoned the
  pegged to the United States dollar; after the system collapsed in 1971 most major currencies had a floating exchange rate
  .
• Economics was divided into two general economic schools: Keynesian and neoclassical
• The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period were the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, when, respectively, the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution triggered interruptions in Middle Eastern oil exports.

See also

• 20th-century inventions
• Death rates in the 20th century
• Infectious disease in the 20th century
• Modern art
• Short twentieth century
• Timelines of modern history
• List of 20th-century women artists
• List of notable 20th-century writers
• List of battles 1901–2000
• List of stories set in a future now past

References

Sources

• IPCC AR5 WG1 (2013), Stocker, T.F.; et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group 1 (WG1) Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5), Cambridge University Press{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link). Climate Change 2013 Working Group 1 website.
• IPCC TAR WG2 (2001). McCarthy, J. J.; Canziani, O. F.; Leary, N. A.; Dokken, D. J.; White, K. S. (eds.). Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the
  ISBN 978-0521807685. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016. Retrieved 18 December 2019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 0521015006
  )
• ISBN 979-10-210-0681-2
  .
• ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1
  .

Further reading

• Brower, Daniel R. and Thomas Sanders. The World in the Twentieth Century (7th Ed, 2013)
• CBS News. People of the century. Simon and Schuster, 1999.
  ISBN 0-684-87093-2
• Grenville, J. A. S. A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994). online free
• Hallock, Stephanie A. The World in the 20th Century: A Thematic Approach (2012)
• Langer, William. An Encyclopedia of World History (5th ed. 1973); highly detailed outline of events online free
• Morris, Richard B. and Graham W. Irwin, eds. Harper Encyclopedia of the Modern World: A Concise Reference History from 1760 to the Present (1970) online
• Pindyck, Robert S. "What we know and don't know about climate change, and implications for policy." Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy 2.1 (2021): 4–43. online
• Pollard, Sidney, ed. Wealth and Poverty: an Economic History of the 20th Century (1990), 260 pp; global perspective online free
• Stearns, Peter, ed. The Encyclopedia of World History (2001)
• ISBN 978-0-415-09311-8
  .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to 20th century.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 20th century.

• The 20th Century Research Project (archived 26 February 2012)
• Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century (archived 6 February 2012)
• Discovering Literature: 20th century at the British Library