Talk:20th century

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Contents 1 the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, [claimed] that the first decade (AD 1-9) had only nine years. 2 Longest running tv shows 3 1890s & 2000s? 4 Duplication 5 Historical summary of the century 6 Highest grossing films 7 Too negative 8 Significant scientists 9 Which years? 10 Deletions on December 14th, 2004 11 Modernism template 12 Some deletions and other edits 13 John Todd (biologist) 14 Merger 15 capitalisation 16 The American Century 17 Ali Javan removal

the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, [claimed] that the first decade (AD 1-9) had only nine years.

Then the decade was not a decade = 10 years. No need to immortalize a counting blunder. Neither he nor you would accept my following statement: The first quadruped had three legs. Jclerman 18:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

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This is related to the "significant scientists" bit below, but I'm putting it up here for attention-grabbing purposes. I'll move it later.

I realize that "important people" listings are inevitably subjective and debatable, but I find the list of bio scientists astonishingly bad. The name that springs to mind right away for me is Ernst Mayr, considered by many the most important theorist of evolution since Darwin. He's not there. Instead I find Richard Dawkins who, while certainly extremely popular, has done nothing particularly world-changing in his career. The same can be said of Jared Diamond or Stephen Jay Gould. I think there needs to be a good look taken at that bio list. --68.10.255.79 02:40, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

The "6 largest mass killings" section is rather bad. Its standards of what constitutes a mass killing are vague at best -- if Mao's famine is included, which nobody seriously thinks was deliberately caused, is included, why not the Bengal Famine which WAS deliberately caused, and is at least comparable in scale to the Armenian genocide. Sorry, but I can only assume it's because the Bengal Famine was caused by the "good" British Empire, not some Communist enemy.

I suggest scrapping the single list, not to mention the emphasis on numbers, and going to a few different lists. One for deliberate mass killing-for-killing's-sake, as in the Holocaust and Rwanda. Another for war crimes & alleged war crimes which cost many civillian lives, such as the US/British saturation bombings of Germany and Japan. Another for famine, illness, etc caused or alleged to be caused by governmental policies, but which stop short of deliberate mass killing. And there should be a note that by far the greatest shorteners of life in the world are persistant social and economic conditions like lack of clean water, which NGO's have estimated could be almost eliminated with pretty modest contributions from the rich nations.

-- Eleland 19:31, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Indeed this section sucks. A mass killing isn't the number of people who died under a certain regime. Its an act, "holocaust", "collectivization" and "Great Purge" consitute them. "40 million dead under Mao" does not. - CJWilly

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The 50 million figure is't just 'Hitler'. It's the entire WW2 including the fighing in Asia and the Holocaust. --Mixcoatl 13:43, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

jeff dahmer? HAHAHAHAHahahha

might wanna put pol pot in there before you put dahmer in there.

Pol Pot killed an est. 1.6 million people. Not enough to be ranked in the top-10 --Mixcoatl 13:43, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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I have removed "indeed probably the most remarkable century in human history", because it seems to be a-historical and subjective. --Tsja

I think I'll organize the "Significant Persons" section in a bit more useful way. It's been growing, and I don't dispute the significance of the people being listed, but the list is getting long enough that it's going to be hard to follow. -- Blain

Good grief! What a US-centric page! 2002/06/28 Perique

I think this page will need some cleaning up. The independence of Saudi Arabia and Estonia can hardly be called very important to world history, as are the Korean war and the Spanish Civil war. The Vietnam war could be mentioned, but only from a US point of view (and a Vietnamese point of view...). Similarly there's a bunch of "important people" I wouldn't expect here, such as Jozef Pilsudski (who the ... is he?), all of the aerospace pioneers and military leaders. Many of those could be mentioned in the "significant developments" or should only be mentioned implicitly there. Many of the other features can also be combined in shorter and more informative sections. The Soviet Union, the Cold War, Russian Revolution, socialism, Lenin, Stalin, Trotski, could all be combined in one or maybe two bullets. Similarly, the League of Nations and the UN could be put under internationalisation (or so), flight and space flight could be combined, etc., etc.

I'll have a go at this sometime, unless there are objections. Jheijmans 02:06 Jul 22, 2002 (PDT)

I think teh Vietnam war deserves a mention as it played a very significant part in the shaping of both the culture of (Western) Europe and America and also the perception of America in the rest of the world.

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What's with this "Notorious figures" heading? That sounds rather difficult to maintain as NPOV. I just moved Freud out of it, since from a cultural point of view, he fits in better with the scientists (however questionable his attempts at science may have been) than with Rasputin and Goebbels. But come to think of it, should they be given such a classification either? I'm not fond of either of them (nor of Freud, when you get down to it), but surely Hitler is more notorious than Goebbels. Yet Hitler is neutrally placed alongside Churchill under "World Leaders" (which, while I'm on the subject, should say "Political" instead of "World"). Goebbels can be placed there too (or deleted entirely, since we're not listing any other Nazis), and Rasputin will fit in with "Religious Figures". Why do we single out certain individuals for especial censure? — Toby 12:05 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)

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Well, IMHO, in a global and historical perspective, Goebbels is a more significative figure in the field of propaganda and advertising than in the political arena. In fact, he probably will deserve a place in the enciclopaedias of the future centuries much more than 'who the ... is that Nimitz?'. Other than that, the article does not say a word on one of the most important invention of the century, one that freed hours of manual labor changed the life of milions: the washing machine.

 2002/07/29 Perique

You have a point about categorising Goebbels. I mentioned the washing machine, but it looks like you're going to have to write an article about it. — Toby 08:13 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

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Surely Colin Powell should be removed from the list of military leaders, otherwise you should list every peace-time chairman of the US joint chief of staff.

Also with reference to the washing machine, surely the female contraceptive pill made more of a difference to the life and to the culture of the latter half of the20th century than any other single invention. Mintguy 6 Aug 2002.

Surely? Some would argue that the invention of synthetic ammonia had a bigger impact than the Pill. After all, the fertilizer it produced was the key component in the Green Revolution (along with improved cereals, irrigation, and mechanization), which in turn prevented much starvation and war. Nobel prize winner Borlaug wrote It is estimated that 40% of today's 6 billion people are alive, thanks to the Haber-Bosch process of synthesizing ammonia (Vaclav Smil, University Distinguished Professor, University of Manitoba) [1]. Personally, I think there was a tangled web of causes and effects from 20th century inventions, and it's impossible to separate out the effect of a single invention.

List 'em! — Toby 00:05 Aug 7, 2002 (PDT)

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I think that the recent edit of the description of the World Wars is worse in every way. Listing specific European powers is wrong, since more were involved in each case. It's true that more of Asia than just the east was in WWII, but that was true for WWI as well; the addition of the east is the change. We could change "Europe" to "Europe and nearby regions of Africa and Asia" for WWI, but otherwise I think that it should go back to how it was. — Toby 00:05 Aug 7, 2002 (PDT)

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Couldn't this page be a little more condensed, maybe some of the actually not so important facts be removed? Like a summary of the 20th century because the century covers to much to be listed on one page. --BL

I'm surprised that there isn't a single mention on this page about the Civil rights movement in America. Yes there's a mention that women got the vote, but black people were elevated from not-much-better-than-animals to normal citizens. Darac

Longest running tv shows

This section is completely inacurate. It should either be removed, or the title changed to most popular tv shows or something like that, or the shows should be replaced with the genuinely longest running ones. Saul Taylor 12:54, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

1890s & 2000s?

Why are the 1890s and 2000s included? --Hemanshu 05:48, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• Handy reference, I guess; notice the different colouring. Robin Patterson 04:42, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Duplication

Wow. WhisperToMe duplicated almost the entire article and nobody noticed. --Eequor 23:03, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

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20th century, 20th Century, Twenieth Century, or twentieth century? Which is it? --Carl 01:57, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Historical summary of the century

Should this article contain a historical summary of the 20th century? Should it have its own article (emerging, though terribly slowly, into a possibly great article at The 20th century in review)? Should this article link to that one? What should be the relation to History of the world, History of Europe etc? I think it's extremely important to have this overview of the century, and so it's nice if we agree on the forms – and also if we make it easy to find, as The 20th century in review seems quite unknown to most. -- Jao 05:54, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Highest grossing films

shouldn't these be in adjusted-for-inflation dollars, which would render 'Gone with the Wind' #1 I believe

Yes, but this is too US-centric anyway and should not be there. --Erauch 19:15, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Too negative

Not enough attention is given to the really positive developments. Material should be paraphrased from the paper "Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century" by Brad Delong. E.g.

"What took a worker in 1890 an hour to produce takes an a worker in a leading economy today only seven minutes: by this measure we today have some eight times the material prosperity of our counterparts of a little more than a century ago. But such a calculation is a substantial underestimate of the boost to productivity and material prosperity of the past century. We today are better at making the goods of a century ago, but we also have the technological capability to make an enormously expanded range of goods and services: from videocassettes and antibiotics to airplane flights and plastic bottles.

--Erauch 19:15, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

From his intro:

...the twentieth century’s tyrannies were more brutal and more barbaric than in any previous century.

Seems pretty negative to me.

Why not The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama?

Brunnock 10:03, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

That quote is true, and the fact should be mentioned, but the article needs balance. DeLong has done more than Fukuyama to quantify the advances. --Erauch 20:32, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Significant scientists

Some of those most significant scientists of the 20th century are a little, err, less significant than others not listed. I am sympathetic to trying to include non-Western scientists but if Ali Javan is not significant enough to warrant more than a stub, is he really worth being put on a list that seems to be something like the top 14 scientists of the 20th century? Is Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov important on the same level as Heisenberg, Einstein, and Fermi (or even Ivan Pavlov)? Should Ernest Rutherford be on there? What about James Watson or Francis Crick or Francis Galton or Marie Curie or Jonas Salk? I'm not saying all of these people should be on there, but I think some people could be dropped. I know that any list has to be arbitrary at some point, but if we're only going to include a dozen or so people they should all be world-shaking in what they accomplished. --Fastfission 03:40, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Which years?

I can see nothing in the Common Era article justifying the early statement here "(1900-1999 in the sense of the Common Era calendar)". Any offers, or can we delete that? Robin Patterson 04:42, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think Wikipedia should adopt ISO 8601:2000 that renumbers 1BC as Year 0, and aligning the centuries to the decimal numbering system. It was already in widespread vernacular use; I certainly celebrated 1 Jan 2000 as being more significant than most new years' days. — PhilHibbs | talk 15:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Deletions on December 14th, 2004

I eliminated the "largest most biggest supreme-o mass killings" because it's obnoxious, it's covered in the article, it has the worst possible title for a section I can conceive of, and finally, it is not found in any of the other centuries before the 16th. If this is too be included, I think it should be across all the areas instead of specific to these later centuries. Also, I took out the movies. Again, unless you want to go back and list the most popular (did no one see the "Most critically acclaimed films" section as hopelessly POV and without any specific facts whatsoever?) plays, operas, minstrels, etc. then this has no place here. Maybe a list page somewhere, but not here. --[[User:TheGrza|TheGrza]] 08:56, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Modernism template

I've added a template feel free to add new articles to it. Stirling Newberry 00:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some deletions and other edits

I've just been trying to make sense of the introductory paragraphs, which meant making some cuts. I don't think that they should be very controversial, except for this:

“Historians sometimes treat the twentieth century as covering only the years 1914–91, the period of time between the outbreak of World War I and the fall of the Soviet Union.”

Historians might be primarily interested in that period, but any historian who treated century as lasting only 77 years should be sacked. I've done some looking through the books I have to hand (tomorrow I'll ask my historian colleagues), and I could find no example of any historian actually using twentieth century to mean 1914–91. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:53, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. -SocratesJedi | Talk 07:05, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The 'Short Twentieth Century' of only 77 years is an attempt to periodize man's history on something less arbitrary then "making periods start and end with really really really round numbers". --CJWilly 14:39, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

John Todd (biologist)

John Todd was recently added under scientists. Since I worked heavily on that section I seem to think it would be not in the spirit of community involvement to just remove him, but I know I've never heard of him and if nobody else has either perhaps he ought to be removed? Will someone please take a look at this and make a decision? Thanks. -SocratesJedi | Talk 00:56, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have actioned this suggestion. I'd never heard of him, either. His article doesn't cross-refer to any major biological developments. Noisy | Talk 17:43, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Merger

Why not merge this with The 20th century in review, and move the lists to separate pages (list of world leaders in the 20th century, etc.)? - Fredrik | talk 16:17, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

capitalisation

I'm not sure why this change demanded discussion first — it seems a relatively minor edit, and one that brings the article in line with its title (as well as with pretty standard usage). I didn't make the original edit, but I'd support it. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:25, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Minor? Have you looked at 'What links here'? You would have to move all the 'xxth century' pages to 'xxth Century'; change all the relevant categories (like Category:20th century) and all the articles that sit in those categories; search out any list articles that include xxth century in the title. That's enough to keep a few people going for a few weeks. Noisy | Talk 14:58, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I think that I was overhasty, careless, or both. Instead of looking at the page I looked at the history, and compared edits — and I did it the wrong way round, so that it looked as though the edit removed the capitals. Just wait a moment while I take this foot out of my mouth, and I'll apologise properkly. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:41, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That explains it. No problem. I wondered why your comment seemed to have internal inconsistencies. I actually kind of agree with the anon that the 'Century' should be capitalized, but I don't fancy the amount of work involved. Noisy | Talk 19:30, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

The American Century

I can imagine such a term being used in America but in my 50 years I had never heard of it 'till I read this article. While our cousins in the USA might claim many things to be American, to claim an entire century - well, it beggars belief! Is someone taking the "whatever" here? Arcturus 22:21, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

May I ask your opinion of terms such as the Elizabethan era and the Victorian era? Brunnock 22:48, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Elizabethan and Victorian are terms well accepted by historians. American Century is most definately not, I too have never heard the term before reading the article. Harley peters 01:49, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

According to Google, there are over 500,000 pages that contain the term "American Century". Fewer than 40,000 contain the term "Elizabethan era". Brunnock 11:14, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Elizabethan and Victorian are used primarily in Britain, and I doubt they were used at the times in question. The Google search is interesting. I expect the large number of hits for American Century is due in no small part to the book of that name. Then there's the restuarants, the theatres and the myriad other establishments that go by that name. As Harley said, this is not an accepted historical term, apart from perhaps in the USA. In years to come maybe the 20th century will come to be known as the American Century, but at the moment it is far too permature to accept such an epithet. I suggest reference to it in the article be removed. Any comments on this? Please note that there is an article called The American Century which gives a good explanation of the term. Arcturus 17:44, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I found 4 British universities whose history departments teach classes titled The American Century - Brunnock 18:51, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

University of Leeds

University of London

University of Kent

University of Aberdeen

Please note that there is an article called The American Century which gives a good explanation of the term.

It should also be noted that Arcturus edited that article earlier today. Brunnock 19:25, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

How about we call it The British Century. Refering to the 20th Century as The American Century is as absurd as referring to the 19th Century as The British Century. This phrase is used in some history courses in the UK but I bet the French and Spanish have other ideas. Arcturus 20:21, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See also Talk:American Century. —Lowellian (talk) 12:01, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Ali Javan removal

I removed Ali Javan from the important physics group. While I would definately like to see more diversity on the list, his name simply does not belong there. His invention of the gas laser is no more important than dozens or hundreds of other inventions of the 20th century, he certainly does not belong on the list that includes Einstein and Bohr. Also, his article is a stub, while the other people in that group have extensive articles. If his article is vastly expanded perhaps he could be put back on the list. Or if a catagory of inventors was added he could be placed in that group, since he did not actually contribute to the field of physics or astronomy in a large way, only invented a physics-related machine. Harley peters 00:10, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)