Jump to content

2000s

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bob rulz (talk | contribs) at 00:59, 31 May 2006 (re-add years for some shows; plus, King of the Hill is not ending; it was renewed for another season). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about the decade starting at the beginning of 2000 and ending at the end of 2009. For the century or millennium starting in 2000 (or, technically, 2001), see 21st century and 3rd millenium.
Millennium
Centuries
  • '
Decades
  • '
Years
Categories

The decade as a whole

The 2000s decade refers to the years from 2000 to 2009, inclusive. Informally, it can also include a few years at the end of the preceding decade or the beginning of the following decade. Many people feel that the 2000s is no different culturally from the 1990s, or actually began during the late 1990s, most likely around the year 1998 in a pop-cultural sense. Others believe it pop culturally began right on target in 2000 or around 2002. Some also state that the symbolic beginning of the decade (and the 21st Century) was the 9/11 attacks, although others find this view pessimistic. Throughout the decade, the conservative George W. Bush presided over the many radical changes in technology and foreign policy in the United States. But beginning around 2004, the decade started to stray from its 1990s style to more contemporary society, which is reflected in design and technological changes.

So far, the 2000s has been marked generally with an escalation of the social issues of the 1990s, which included the rise of terrorism [citation needed], stress, the rapid, exponential expansion of economic globalization on an unprecedented scale [citation needed], the rapid expansion of communications and telecommunications with mobile phones and the Internet and international pop culture.

In North America and the Middle East, most major political developments in the 2000s revolved around the War on Terrorism and the conflict in Iraq. Elsewhere, the major theme has been the rapid development of Asia's economic and political potential, with China, experiencing immense economic growth, moving toward the status of a regional power and billion-consumer market. India, along with many other developing countries, is also growing rapidly, and began integrating itself into the world economy.

Major events relating to the War on Terrorism include the September 11, 2001 Attacks, the Moscow Theatre Siege, the Madrid train bombings, the Beslan school hostage crisis, the 2005 London bombings, and the October 2005 New Delhi bombings. In the news almost daily, the terrorism and Iraq conflicts dominate headlines with controversy regarding their consequences and justifications.

A trend connecting economic and political events in North America, Asia and the Middle East is the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which, along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs (see peak oil), and political turmoil, saw the price of gas and oil soar ~500% between 2000 and 2005.

Names of the decade

In contrast to the decades from 1920 to 1999, which are called "The Twenties", "The Nineties", and the like; the '00s have had no universally-accepted name. Some refer to the decade as "The Two Thousands", but many find that usage awkward and incorrect for a number of reasons, most notably the fact that, formally, the "Two Thousands" (that is, years whose spoken name begins with the words "two thousand") will last for a thousand years and not just the ten years of the "00" decade. Written in numeral form, the decade can be written either as the "2000s" or as the "'00s". But looking for a name that has the same "feel" as 'The Nineties' or 'The Fifties' has been problematic, especially in the United States.

In the rest of the English-speaking world "The Noughties" and "The Noughts" have come to be the most widely recognized and accepted terms.[1] The term "Noughties" has been adopted by the BBC,[2] and while the term may not be quite universal, there is no other term so widely recognized. Probably the only reason that the term "Noughties" has not been completely accepted world wide is the fact that, in the United States (where usage of "naught" or "nought" to mean 'zero' has never been ubiquitous), there is some confusion by those who assume erroneously that the term has something to do with the adjective "naughty".

This decade has occasionally been termed, in historical contexts, as the "turn of the century". But this term—just as when it was used in the early 20th century—does not clearly refer to a precise 10-year period, and indeed, originally carried the connotation of being the last years of a century. The somewhat less wan expression, "turn of the millennium", shares this ambiguity of meaning.

Other proposed names have been almost innumerable, and include, "the zeroes", "double-aughts", "aughties", "awties", "2K's", "uh-ohs", "zoogs", "ozies", "abs", "Tommies", and "tweens". But these other suggestions usually represent the wishes of individuals, and do not generally represent any burgeoning consensus.

The United Nations General Assembly declared the decade of 2000-2009 as the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World."[3]

War, peace and politics

File:WTC1 on fire.jpg
The World Trade Center ablaze after two airplanes crash into the towers in a terrorist attack
Saddam Hussein shortly after his capture

Economics

Technology

File:IPod 4G.jpg
The Apple iPod, a popular digital music player during the 2000s.
  • A huge jump in broadband internet usage, from 6% of U.S. internet users in June, 2000 to what one study predicts will be 62% by 2010.
  • Boom in music downloading and the use of data compression to quickly transfer music over the Internet, with a corresponding rise of portable digital audio players typified by Apple Computer's iPod. Digital music sales rise, accounting for 6% of all music sales in 2005.
  • Digital cameras become very popular due to rapid decreases in size and cost while photo resolution steadily increases. Sales of film reel cameras diminish greatly as a result.
  • Google search engine increases trafficability of the internet and "to Google" becomes a verb.
  • Due to an increase in ability to store data, USB flash drives rapidly replace zip disks and 3.5-inch diskettes.
  • Graphic cards become powerful enough to render nearly photo-realistic scenes in real time.
  • Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 become the ubiquitous industry standard in personal computer software. Open source and free software continues to be a notable but minority interest, with versions of Linux gaining in popularity, as well as the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice document editor.
  • Flat panel displays begin displacing cathode ray tubes.
  • Major advances in Hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, Ford Escape, and the Honda Insight.
  • Greater interest in future energy development due to global warming theory and the potential exhaustion of crude oil.
  • Blogs, portals, and wikis become common electronic dissemination methods for professionals, amateurs, and businesses to conduct knowledge management.
  • Wikipedia began and grew rapidly, becoming the largest encyclopedia and most well known wiki in the world.
  • DVDs, and subsequently HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs, replace VCR technology as the common standard at video stores, but there are an exception to the fact that some VCR technology still appears and various thrift shops and discount stores, along with many other independent markets.
  • Due to the major success of broadband Internet connections, Voice over IP begins to gain popularity as a replacement for traditional telephone lines. Major telecommunications carriers begin converting their networks from TDM to VoIP.
  • Wireless networks are becoming ever more commonplace in homes, education institutes and urban public spaces.
  • Corrective eye surgery becomes popular as costs and potential risk decreases and results further improve.
  • OLED (Organic light-emitting diode) technology revolutionizes display technology, making it possible to "print" screens on everyday objects.
  • GPS (Global Positioning System) becomes very popular especially in the tracking of items or people, and the use in cars. Games that utilize the system, such as geocaching, emerge and become popular.
  • RFID (Radio Frequency ID) becomes widely used in retail giants such as Wal-Mart, as a way to track items and automate stocking and keeping track of items.
  • DVRs (Digital Video Recorders), typified by TiVo, allow consumers to modify content they watch on TV, and to record TV programs and watch them later, leading to problems as consumers can fast-forward through commercials, making them useless and saving TV show for later viewing, causing a downfall of TV viewing.
  • Self-serve kiosks become very widely available, used for all kinds of shopping, airplane boarding passes, hotel check-ins, fast food, and car rental.
  • Internet usage surpasses TV viewing in 2004. Satellite TV loses it ratings as network television ratings gradually increase.
  • Emerging use of robotics, especially telerogsbotics in medicine, particularly for surgery.
  • Many more computers and other technologies incorporated into vehicles such as Xenon HID headlights, GPS, DVD players, self-diagnosing systems, advanced pre-collision safety systems, memory systems for car settings, back-up sensors and cameras, in-car media systems, MP3 player compatibility, USB drive compatibility, keyless start and entry, satellite radio, voice-activation, cellphone connectivity, adaptive headlights, HUD (Head-Up-Display), infrared cameras, and Onstar (on GM models).
  • Peer-to-peer technology use: internet telephony (Skype), file-sharing.
  • The entire videogame industry's profits surpassed the movie industry's in 2004.
  • The tech bubble burst for the most part in late 2000 and after three years of negative growth the market began its rebound in 2003 and has continued to see moderate growth through 2006.
File:Nasdaq 5yr chart.png
  • Videophones are cheap and abundant, yet even by mid-decade, they had not received much attention.
  • Most cellphone carriers offer video viewing services, internet services, and some offer full music downloads, such as Sprint in 2005. This leads to an almost saturation of cell phone ownership among the public and a decline in the use and locations of payphones.
  • Home automation and home robotics advance in North America; iRobot's "Roomba" is the most successful domestic robot and has sold 1.5 million units. (Others of interest include: Robomower, and Scooba as of May 2006)

Science

Culture and religion

  • The rise in religious fundamentalism around the world among all kinds of religions, especially Christianity in America and Islam in the Middle East
  • The fall of the Catholic Church around the world with increasing opposition to Catholic tradition and a revival in modernism, the Church also experiences declines due to molestation by priests of young children.
  • The vast proliferation of information technology and digital media leads to many cultural paradigm shifts as people grapple with information overload. Millennials (Generation Y) are commonly thought of as adept at, or even socially dependent on, these technological developments.
  • Reality television becomes a well-established sector of the television programming industry for most of the early 2000s, switching to more traditional programming starting in the year 2004. Nightly news broadcasts continue to lose viewership to 24-hour internet and cable news broadcasts. Changing television habits that involve increased use of the internet, telephone, and video games and the preponderance of TiVo make marketers rethink the paradigm of the 30-second TV ad. Viral marketing, and product placement within reality television shows and movies are some increasingly used alternatives. Spam is used as an alternative, irritating many.
  • Europe, Australian and New Zealand society continues to become more secular; in contrast, religious groups increase their political influence in the United States and the Middle East.
  • The divisive US presidential election of 2000 leads to commentators describing the country as split between Red States and Blue States.
  • April 2, 2005: Pope John Paul II dies at age 84; succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI on April 19.
  • Same-sex marriage becomes a major cultural issue in developed countries. In 2001, the Netherlands becomes the first country to allow homosexual couples to wed. This is followed by Belgium in 2003, and by Canada, Spain, New Zealand, and South Africa in 2005. In 2004, homosexual marriage, previously banned throughout the United States (sometimes by explicit mention in statute, other times by ommission in statute), becomes legalized in Massachusetts, the first state to do so. Also, in May 2006, the United States Senate Panel OK's a vote for an admendment banning and not recgonizing all same-sex marriges in the country.

Other

The coronavirus suggested as a causative agent of SARS.

Fashion

Low-rise jeans
Britney Spears is credited with popularizing low-rise jeans, crop tops, lower back tattoos, navel piercing, and the whale tail in the early 2000s
  • Fashion becomes less grungy and more excessive, as the wearing of flannel by people under 30 declines.
  • The whale tail style (incorporating Hip-hugger jeans, crop tops, and high riding thongs) is popularized by Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova.
  • The "Baggy Jean" craze of the 1990s is replaced by the Muffin tops style, as tighter fitting Low-rise jeans become more commonplace.
  • Coinciding with the low-rise jeans trend, cleavage (the exposure of undergarments and the buttocks) becomes fashionable among young women.
  • The center of the lower back becomes a common placement for tattoos among young women.
  • Navel piercing becomes increasingly popular
  • In the United States, long hair for teenage boys and young men becomes very popular. Shoulder-length hair for young males has become much more mainstream, and is no longer considered just a "skater" and "hick" fashion, as evidenced by the hairstyles of young teen heartthrobs like Jesse McCartney and Zac Efron
  • Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle clothing among both young men and women
  • For girls, ponchos, peasant blouses, and babydoll tops
  • 1980s fashion revival: For girls and women large/clunky jewerly, originally popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, return to style circa 2002. Upturned collars on tennis shirts become popular among the youth as well. Some boys begin to wear pink, and the mohawk makes a comeback, becoming more mainstream and less of a generic trend, as it was during the 1990s. Wearing high-heeled boots, specifically tucking one's slacks into them, becomes a popular trend among young women -- which was also a popular trend during the '80s.
  • Pinstriped button up shirts, striped polo shirts over T-shirts, blazers, and layers of brightly colored sweaters are popular styles of fashion among young males. The trend was made popular by artists such as Usher and Kanye West in the mid 00's. This look may be considered being as the "prep" look for some people.
  • Straight hair on women still remains fashionable in the 00's as it did in the 90's. Wavy and curly hair becomes more widely accepted, especially in the mid-2000s. However, the shoulder-length hairstyle ala donned Rachel-cut from the TV show Friends that dominated the 90's is replaced by women growing their hair out to their back section of their body, sometimes as far down as their buttocks, as they did in the 1970s. The "bun" hairstyle of the late 1990s falls out of style style circa 2004 in most urban areas, but in some rural areas it still remains a major fashion trend.
  • Trucker hats, usually made by the Von Dutch company and commonly worn by celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, become popular in 2003. But the trend quickly falls out of favor around especially in the middle part of 2005.
  • Ugg boots, a boot commonly made with sheepskin in Australia and New Zealand for the last 200 years, become popular and fashionable in 2003 -- a trend first made popular on a movie poster for the film Raising Helen (2004).]]
  • The "rogue" stereotypes such as the Hip-Hop and Emo subcultures become more or less mainstream and are the major fashion and music trends of the '00s.
  • Wearing baseball caps backwards, common in the 1980s and 1990s, falls out of style in favor of wearing them sideways or forwards until about 2005 when major celebrities, such as the ones on the American Chopper Show bring that trend back into fashion once again.
File:Raising-helen-poster01.jpg
Actress Kate Hudson wearing Ugg boots
  • Fad diets such as Atkins and low carb diets are popular during the early '00s, but fall out of favor circa 2004 in favor of diets heavy in whole grain foods.
  • Slang words and catch phrases used often in 2000s America include "Retarded", "Fugly", "Manufactured" "Chill" "Gay", "Crunk", "Wanksta", "Rad", "Whateva", "That's Hot!", "Totally", "Metro", "Tight", "Ill", "Ditty", "Fetch" "Git-R-Dun", "Sick", "Eh-oh", "BOO-YA!", "Pure", "You're fired", "Pwnage" and "Werd up"/"word up" Many of them have roots from the 1980s and 1990s, such as the word "totally" and "rad". 1990s hip hop slang such as the words "yo", "da bomb", "chill" and "buzz kill" still remains popular in the middle 2000s. Other terms involve the word "Bence".
  • Cell phones become prevalent with teenagers and often a fashion statement as opposed to a preppie toy or a tool primarily for adults and businesspeople. Payphone use and locations decline dramatically because of this.
  • MP3 players, particularly the iPod, become very common as they become more powerful and easier to use. By 2006, over 1 billion had been downloaded by customers onto their iPods.
  • Generation Y supplants Gen X as current youth generation.
  • Interracial dating and relationships become more common in the US. Interracial couples on television and movies in all manner of gender and racial scenarios become fairly common. It also becomes more (though not yet universally) accepted, helped by the emergence of famous children from interracial marriages, such as Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Johnny Damon (Amer-Asian).
  • Poker becomes a craze, as many Americans are enticed by online poker rooms and games with their friends and neighbors. The World Series of Poker aired on ESPN becomes a huge success.
  • Emo goes from being a small subculture in the 1980s, and 1990s, becoming mainstream beginning around 1998 but especially later in the decade.
  • Teenagers with non-heterosexual sexual orientations begin to come out earlier in their lives generally to a far more positive response than previous decades.
  • Former 1980s heartthrob Tom Cruise oddly morphs into something of a joke in the middle of this decade, with people often talking about his rants on Scientology and his peculiar romance with the younger Katie Holmes.
  • Popular brand names amongst teenagers include Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, Hurley, O'Neil, Foxy, Roxy, Billabong, and many other. The most popular is American Eagle and then comes Aeropostale.

Europe

  • In Eastern Germany and other ex-Communist countries was for a short time a growth in nostalgia for former Communist times (Ostalgie)(2002).
  • Because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the politics of U.S. president George W. Bush, there has been a surge of anti-Americanism, especially in Western Europe.
  • From early in the decade, mobile phones are largely seen as a necessary accessory, even for the majority of children as young as 10 years old. Ownership approaches 100% of the population in most Western European countries.
  • Fashion and cosmetic surgery become more mainstream; an increase in interest is most notable in men, influenced by fashion-conscious "celebrities" such as David Beckham.
  • Chav culture in the United Kingdom becomes a significant fashion/lifestyle choice, especially amongst those in the working class.
  • Formal wear such as sun dresses and evening gowns become more popular amongst the younger generations in Europe, especially in the latter part of the decade.

Music

United States and Canada

File:Kanyeweststripey200.jpg
Kanye West became a Billboard chart topper, at one point reaching #1, with his hit songs Jesus Walks and Golddigger.

Europe

Australia and New Zealand

  • Rock and Hip Hop remain the most popular music genre amongst youth in Australia and New Zealand.
  • Pop and Rock remain the most widely played genre's on mainstream radio stations.

Latin America/Caribbean

Far East

Film

  • In the USA:
    • Movie remakes and sequels hit an all-time high, in contrast to purely original scripts. Also, many movies based on old TV shows and novels become more popular in Hollywood.
    • Depressed ticket sales throughout the decade due to general lack of quality films and decline of the general moviegoing experience, as movie theaters keep ticket prices high and increase the duration of advertisements before movies, in some cases going as long as 30 minutes. Other trends emerge, such as the decreasing cost and increasing size of quality home theater displays along with the availability mail-based movie rental services, most notably Netflix, which offered an unlimited number of DVD rentals for a fixed price per month. Movie executives attempted to place some of the blame on online piracy due to the advent of BitTorrent, however its effect has been disputed, as some claim that those who download these movies would not have paid to see them in the first place.
    • Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, comic book movies, and the new Star Wars movie sagas dominate the box office. The high profitability of these films arguably has much to do with the lack of investment and quality in newer and more original films in the 2000s as opposed to decades like the 1980s and 1990s.
    • The Matrix very influential on special effect styles (ie: 'bullet-time', dramatic effects in slow motion).
    • "R" rated films are released at their lowest prevalence since the 1960s, reflecting a post-Columbine American society which increasingly lacks tolerance of violent films. While certain exceptions such as Kill Bill are made in protest of this development and in tribute to the overly violent kung-fu and action films of the 1970s, most action films of the 2000s are largely bloodless.
    • East Hollywood High School in Utah becomes the first public film-oriented charter high school in the world.
    • X-Men sparks the "Comic Book Movie Age." Many big-budget adaptions of various comic book characters are made, primarily by Marvel Comics and DC comics. Some of these comic-book movies, aside from X-Men, include X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, The Fantastic Four, Batman Begins, V for Vendetta, and the upcoming Superman Returns, and Spider-Man 3.
File:Spidermanscene2002.jpg
The Spider-Man trilogy was a runaway box office success, grossing some of the highest totals recorded in motion history.

Internet

  • The Internet becomes a major source of all types of media, from music to movies, thanks to file-sharing P2P programs such as KaZaA and Limewire. The debate continues over the ethics of file-sharing.
  • As people become more used to the Internet during this decade it begins to be spelled lower-cased, called simply "the internet" or "internet" as opposed to "Internet" or "The Internet" which were used almost exclusively during the 1990s
  • The diverse and spontaneous nature of the internet allows an internet culture to form. Online projects such as hamsterdance, EBaum's World and Homestar Runner become international trends within short periods of time due to word of mouth on and off the web, with little or no promotion required from their creators. Internet phenomena and jokes spread quickly through out mainstream internet and sometimes off-internet culture from sources such as the Something Awful Forums, 4chan, and Albino Blacksheep. (A good example of this would be Chuck Norris Facts.) Some music acts, such as Arctic Monkeys and Posse of Two became well-known almost entirely from the use of the internet.
  • Legal music download services such as iTunes and the re-designed Napster open up a new market of digital downloading. Napster, even its current version, becomes the number one music swapping enterprise of all time.
  • Popular video shorts of the 2000s include Star Wars Gangsta Rap, D.R.A.F.T., and the SNL skit Lazy Sunday, which was controversially removed from YouTube.com in early 2006.
  • Television and Internet begin to merge as networks start streaming shows online.
  • Craigslist.org, a popular online classified site, saps over 50 million dollars a year from newspaper revenues, with a staff of only 16 people in San Francisco.
  • Cell phones gain the ability to access the Internet.
  • Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol(VoIP) telephones and the Internet slowly begin to merge: Examples are Vonage and Skype.
  • Webcomics by amateur cartoonists begin to surpass the popularity of traditional print comic books and newspaper strips. Flash movies also become popular.
  • Re-cut trailers become popular in the mid-2000s, largely due to the many parody trailers of Brokeback Mountain during the 2005-2006 winter. Popular examples include "Brokeback to the Future", Lazy Brokeback, and the Sleepless in Seattle trailer cut into a horror movie.
  • Social networking programs such as Myspace, Xanga, Facebook, Friendster, and MyYearbook become extremely popular among teens and twenty-somethings inspiring others to share and trade personal information via online. These sites, in particular Myspace skyrocketed in popularity since the late 1990s, especially around the year 1999 and are criticized by many for safety concerns such as their use by pedophiles to exploit the younger generations.
  • Informational and educational web sites abruptly decline as the internet becomes more of a place for advertising and other types of media, such as the use of such chat boards including MySpace.
  • The interactivity of the internet becomes more prominent with websites such as Wikipedia and You Tube where users can become contributors without a specialized knowledge in HTML technology.

Video games

  • Next Generation Consoles: The first batch of "next-generation" home consoles are released at the turn of the new millennium featuring larger production values, more realistic graphics, and consoles with built-in multimedia such as DVD and a hard drive. Sony Playstation 2 (2000), Nintendo Gamecube (2001), and the Microsoft Xbox (2001) are the three main contenders in the sixth-generation console wars.
  • The Sims, released in fall of 1998 and again in the winter of 2000 for PC, along with its expansions and the help from many companies such as Electronic Arts, Maxis, and Disney becomes the best selling video game of all time. The Sims 2, released in 2004, becomes almost as popular.
  • Sega in 2001 drops out the home console market after the Dreamcast (1999) fails to regain lost marketshare from the 1990s.
  • Nintendo releases the Game Boy Advance (GBA) in 2001, a 32-bit handheld system. A redesign of the GBA dubbed Game Boy Advance SP (GBASP) was released in 2003 introducing flip-top design and a frontlit screen. Another even smaller version of the GBA was released as the Game Boy micro in 2005. The GBA line is still the best selling handheld system to date.
  • Gamers who were kids in the 1980s and 1990s are now adults. The average age for video game players rises into the mid to late 20s as videogames become mainstream global entertainment.
  • The Grand Theft Auto series sparks a fad of Mature rated videogames based on including gang warfare, drug use, senseless violence and pornography into the gameplay or more commonly just the storyline. The controversy is responded to by mothers, lawmakers and activists (such as Jack Thompson) pushing an agenda to ban the sale of Mature rated games to minors.
  • Console gaming officially hits the Internet with Xbox Live. Introducing widespread use of voice-chat via headset and requiring broadband Internet connection for "no-lag" gameplay.
  • Sequels become the more prominent as popular franchises begin releasing new versions every year along with spin-offs. This flooding of the market is similar to what was happening before the video game crash of 1983.
  • Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS in late 2004 featuring dual screens, a touch screen, built-in mic and Wi-fi, and flip top design. The system's innovation allowed for new gameplay, strengthening many genres such as simulation, platform, and puzzle games.
  • Sony releases the PSP (PlayStation Portable) in early 2005, a handheld gaming console with many multimedia features and sharp graphics to compete with the Nintendo DS and the still popular GameBoy Advance.
  • During 2005 and 2006 the seventh generation of home consoles arrive: Microsoft's Xbox 360 (2005), the Sony Playstation 3 (expected 2006), and the Nintendo Wii (expected 2006) have sharper HDTV ready graphics, multi-media, wireless controllers, and more integrated online features. The PlayStation 3 will also feature a Blu-Ray disk drive, while the Wii will feature a revolutionary controller (see below).
  • Sony announced that the PlayStation 3 will also add tilt-sensitive capabilities to their controller, the first standard motion sensing for home consoles.
  • Video games like Halo and Half-Life 2 with its Source engine are said to revolutionize the physics aspect of gameplay. They pave the way for other hit first-person shooters, one of which is F.E.A.R..

Television and radio

File:ThreeJudgesatAmericanIdol.jpg
Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell were the three infamous judges of American Idol, which was among the most watched television programs of the decade.

Sports

Books & Literature

People

World leaders

State leaders by year: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006...

Entertainers

Sports figures

Athletics
Kenenisa Bekele
Justin Gatlin
Yelena Isinbayeva
Paula Radcliffe
Baseball
Barry Bonds
Vladimir Guerrero
Derek Jeter
Paul Konerko
David Ortiz
Albert Pujols
Mariano Rivera
Alex Rodriguez
Curt Schilling
Basketball
Gilbert Arenas
Kobe Bryant
Vince Carter
Dwyane Wade
Tim Duncan
Kevin Garnett
Emanuel ("Manu") Ginobili
Allen Iverson
LeBron James
Tracy McGrady
Yao Ming
Steve Nash
Shaquille O'Neal
Amare Stoudemire
Cricket
Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Rahul Dravid
Andrew Flintoff
Adam Gilchrist
Inzamam-ul-Haq
Jacques Kallis
Brian Lara
Glenn McGrath
Muttiah Muralitharan
Kevin Pietersen
Ricky Ponting
Sachin Tendulkar
Shane Warne
Cycling
Lance Armstrong
Figure Skating
Michelle Kwan
Evgeny Plushenko
Irina Slutskaya
Football (Australian)
Warren Tredrea
Chad Cornes
Andrew McLeod
James Hird
Michael Voss
Jason Akermanis
Nathan Buckley
Paul Licuria
Matthew Lloyd
Matthew Pavlich
Josh Carr
Matthew Scarlett
Tom Harley
Shane Crawford
Shane Woewodin
David Neitz
Jason McCartney
Wayne Carey
Nathan Brown
Barry Hall
Leo Barry
Chris Judd
Ben Cousins
Adam Cooney
Chris Grant
Luke Darcy
Gavin Wanganeen
Football (American)
Tiki Barber
Tom Brady
Daunte Culpepper
Brett Favre
Ray Lewis
Donovan McNabb
Steve McNair
Peyton Manning
Randy Moss
Terrell Owens
Ben Roethlisberger
Michael Strahan
Michael Vick
Kurt Warner
Football (Association)
David Beckham
Luis Figo
Steven Gerrard
Thierry Henry
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Oliver Kahn
Frank Lampard
Henrik Larsson
Paolo Maldini
Robinho
Ronaldinho
Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo
Ruud Van Nistelrooy
Patrick Vieira
Zinedine Zidane
Golf
Phil Mickelson
Annika Sorenstam
Michelle Wie
Tiger Woods
Ice Hockey
Peter Forsberg
Jarome Iginla
Nikolai Khabibulin
Nicklas Lidstrom
Markus Näslund
Chris Pronger
Joe Sakic
Martin St. Louis
Mario Lemieux
Sidney Crosby
Alexander Ovechkin
Motor Sport
Fernando Alonso
Kurt Busch
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Carl Edwards
Jeff Gordon
Marcus Grönholm
Jimmie Johnson
Sébastien Loeb
Juan Pablo Montoya
Danica Patrick
Kimi Räikkönen
Petter Solberg
Michael Schumacher
Paralympics
Tanni Grey-Thompson
Rugby Union
George Gregan
Gavin Henson
Martin Johnson
Richie McCaw
Lote Tuqiri
Tana Umaga
Jonny Wilkinson
Daniel Carter
Swimming and Diving
Alexandre Despatie
Grant Hackett
Michael Phelps
Ian Thorpe
Pieter van den Hoogenband
Tennis
Roger Federer
Marat Safin
Andy Roddick
David Nalbandian
Lleyton Hewitt
Rafael Nadal
Guillermo Coria
Ivan Ljubicic
Justine Henin-Hardenne
Lindsay Davenport
Kim Clijsters
Amelie Mauresmo
Serena Williams
Maria Sharapova
Triathlon
Simon Whitfield
Volleyball
Misty May
Kerri Walsh

See also

Look up 2000s in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2000s&oldid=56041206"