Dictionary of Meaning

---

<<Back
Please select a letter:
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0-9

Search:

Shopping-Bestseller-Search:   All Products Books DVD Elektronics Engl. Books Home, Garden & Hobby Do-It-Yourself Beauty & Bathroom Kitchen & Household Camera & Photo Music Music (Classical) PC Hardware Software Video-Games Magazines   Click here for Shopping

---

20th century

*** Shopping-Tip: 20th century
{{centurybox | cpa=19 | cpb=th century | c=20th century | cn1=21st century | }} The '''20th century''' lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Many people confuse the 20th century and the '''years nineteen hundreds''' (1900s). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One advanced by Stephen Jay Gould is that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. Also, decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989 (or sometimes up to and including 1990 or 1991), rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th century 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st century 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st century 21st Century and is seen by some as being more like the early 21st century 21st Century than the 1980s and prior.

Overview
The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the World War II Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately List of World War II casualties by country 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :''What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.'' Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century. *Technology *20th century/Death rates Death rates *20th century/Infant mortality Infant mortality *20th century/Infectious disease Infectious disease *20th century/Life expectancy Life expectancy *20th century/Maternal death rates Maternal death rates *List of battles 1901-2000 Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

Important developments, events and achievements


Science and technology
image:AssemblyLine.jpeg thumb|250px|Ford assembly line, 1913 * The assembly line and mass production of motor vehicles and other goods allowed manufacturers to produce more and cheaper products. This allowed the automobile to become the most important means of transportation. * The invention of Airplane heavier-than-air flying machines and the jet engine allowed for the world to become "smaller." Space science Space flight increased knowledge of the rest of the universe and allowed for global real-time communications via geosynchronous satellites. * Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact * Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication * Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous Computer computing, and all kinds of "intelligent" appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of Moore's Law exponentially growing calculation power (see supercomputer). * The development of Nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides resulted in significantly higher agricultural yield. * Advances in fundamental physics through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics led to the development of nuclear weapons (known informally as "the Bomb" and dropped on the industrial town of Hiroshima and the historic town of Nagasaki), the nuclear reactor, and the laser. Fusion power was studied extensively but remained an experimental technology at the end of the century. * Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in developed countries. * Most influential inventions in the 20th century: antibiotics, oral contraceptives, new plastics, transistors, Internet * Timeline of invention#20th century More...

Wars and politics
Image:WW1_TitlePicture_For_ _Article.jpg thumb|300px|'''Clockwise from top:''' [[Trench warfare|Trenches in frontline, a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland British Mark I (tank) Mark I Tank crossing a trench, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible (1898) HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a Naval mine mine at the battle of the Dardanelles, a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks and a Sopwith Camel biplane.]] * Democratic nations began to extend Universal suffrage voting privileges to all adults. * Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the causes of World War I, the first of two wars to involve all the major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Ironically, it was said by many to be the 'War to end all Wars'. * The economic and political aftermath of World War I led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe, and shortly to World War II. This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japan Japanese aggression against China and the United States. The First World War cost many soldiers' lives, however it also served as the backdrop to the Armenian Genocide first genocide of the 20th century, where 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated by the Ottoman Young Turks. Among soldiers, civilians also suffered greatly in the Second -- from the bombing of cities on both sides, and in the German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust. * During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, Communism became a major force in global politics, spreading all over the world: notably, to Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with Western world the West, including wars in Korean War Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam War Vietnam (1957 - 75). * The "fall of Communism" in the late 1980s freed Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. It also led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism, and left the United States as the world's superpower. * Through the League of Nations and, after World War II, the United Nations, international cooperation increased. Other efforts included the formation of the European Union, leading to a common currency in much of Western Europe, the euro around the turn of the millennium. * The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the USA, the USSR, or China for defense. * The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in a mostly Arab region of the world, fueled many conflicts in the region, which were also influenced by the vast Petroleum oil fields in many of the Arab countries. * The term ''Southeast Asia'' coined.

Culture and entertainment
Image:Film reel and film.jpg Film.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|250px|"[[Film" refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed.html" title="Meaning of 250px|"thumb|250px|"[[Film" refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed">250px|"[[Film">thumb|250px|"[[Film" refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed * As the century begins, Paris is the artistic capital of the world, where both French and foreign writers, composers and visual artists gather. * Film Movies, music and the Mass media media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world. * 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. * Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world. The Beatles, a 1960s British Rock and Roll band, becomes one of the most successful acts of all time, and is credited, in their experimental later albums, with permanently changing what was thought possible in popular music. * Modern art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and realism. * The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles. * Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.

Disease and medicine
* Although the availability and quality of medicine continued to improve, epidemic diseases continued to spread, aided by modern transportation. An influenza pandemic, the Spanish Flu, killed 25 million between 1918 and 1919, while AIDS is yet uncured and treatments remain too expensive for wide use in developing countries. * Advances in medicine, such as the invention of antibiotics, decreased the number of people dying from diseases. Contraceptive drugs and organ transplantation were developed. The discovery of DNA molecules and the advent of molecular biology allowed for cloning and genetic engineering.

Natural resources and the environment
Image:oilfield.jpg frame|Oil field in [[California, 1938 The first modern oil well was drilled in 1848 by Russian engineer F.N. Semyonov, on the Aspheron Peninsula north-east of Baku.38]] * The 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 vital 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). * A vast increase in fossil fuel consumption leads to depletion of natural resources, possibly global warming and possibly both local and global climate change. The problem is increased by, believed by many, world-wide deforestation, also causing a loss of biodiversity. The problem of a depletion of natural resources is decreased by advances in drilling technology which led to a net increase in the amount of fossil fuel that is readily obtainable at the end of the century, as compared with the amount considered obtainable at the beginning of the century.

Significant people


World leaders
* Africa ** Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo ** Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire ** Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia ** Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya ** Idi Amin, Uganda ** Nelson Mandela, South Africa ** Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe ** Gamal Abdal Nasser, Egypt ** Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana ** Julius Nyerere, Tanzania ** Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia ** Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya ** Haile Selassie, Ethiopia ** Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal ** Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinea ** Jaja Wachuku, Nigeria * Americas ** Juan Peron Juan Perón, Argentina ** Eva Perón, Argentina ** Victor Paz Estenssoro Bolivia ** Getúlio Vargas, Brazil ** Luis Carlos Prestes, Brazil ** Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil ** Wilfrid Laurier, Canada ** William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada ** Robert Borden, Canada ** Pierre Trudeau, Canada ** Salvador Allende, Chile ** Augusto Pinochet, Chile ** Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Colombia ** Alfonso López Pumarejo, Colombia ** Fidel Castro, Cuba ** Che Guevara Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Argentina/Cuba ** Emiliano Zápata, Mexico ** Pancho Villa, Mexico ** Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, Mexico ** Augusto César Sandino, Nicaragua ** Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Peru ** Alberto Fujimori Alberto Kenya Fujimori, Peru ** Theodore Roosevelt, United States USA ** Woodrow Wilson,United States USA ** Franklin D. Roosevelt, United States USA ** Harry S Truman, United States USA ** Dwight Eisenhower, United States USA ** John F. Kennedy, United States USA ** Lyndon B. Johnson, United States USA ** Richard Nixon, United States USA ** Ronald Reagan, United States USA ** George H. W. Bush, United States USA ** Bill Clinton, United States USA ** José Batlle y Ordóñez, Uruguay ** Romulo Betancourt, Venezuela * Asia ** Mahatma Gandhi, India ** Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore ** Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines ** Corazon Aquino, the Philippines ** Mao Zedong, People's Republic of China ** Deng Xiaoping, People's Republic of China ** Pol Pot, Cambodia ** Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan ** Indira Gandhi, India ** Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia ** Jawaharlal Nehru, India ** Emperor Hirohito of Japan Emperor Hirohito, Japan ** Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam ** Sun Yat-sen, Republic of China ** Chiang Kai-shek, Republic of China ** Achmad Sukarno, Indonesia ** Suharto, Indonesia * Oceania Australia and Oceania ** Edmund Barton, Australia ** Robert Menzies Sir Robert Menzies, Australia ** Peter Fraser, New Zealand ** Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand ** David Lange, New Zealand ** Harold Holt, Australia * Europe ** Franz Joseph of Austria, Austria-Hungary ** Václav Havel, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic ** Franjo TuÄ‘man, Croatia ** Makarios III Archbishop Makarios III, Cyprus ** Urho Kekkonen, Finland ** Georges Clemenceau, France ** Philippe Pétain, France ** Charles de Gaulle, France ** Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, France ** François Mitterrand, France ** Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany ** Friedrich Ebert, Germany ** Adolf Hitler, Germany ** Konrad Adenauer, West Germany ** Walter Ulbricht, East Germany ** Erich Honecker, East Germany ** Willy Brandt, West Germany ** Helmut Kohl, Germany ** Gerhard Schröder, Germany ** Eleftherios Venizelos, Greece ** Ioannis Metaxas, Greece ** Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greece ** Andreas Papandreou, Greece ** Miklós Horthy, Hungary ** Imre Nagy, Hungary ** Benito Mussolini, Italy ** Aldo Moro, Italy ** Eamon de Valera, Republic of Ireland Ireland ** Einar Gerhardsen, Norway ** Józef PiÅ‚sudski, Poland ** Lech WaÅ‚Ä™sa, Poland ** António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal ** Mário Soares, Portugal ** Nicolae CeauÅŸescu, Romania ** Milan KuÄ?an, Slovenia ** Francisco Franco, Spain ** Felipe González, Spain ** Adolfo Suárez, Spain ** Olof Palme, Sweden ** Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey ** Neville Chamberlain, United Kingdom ** Winston Churchill, United Kingdom ** Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom ** Tony Blair, United Kingdom ** Josip Broz Tito,Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia ** Slobodan MiloÅ¡ević, Yugoslavia * Russia and Soviet Union ** Czar Nicholas II ** Vladimir Lenin ** Joseph Stalin ** Leon Trotsky ** Nikita Khrushchev ** Leonid Brezhnev ** Mikhail Gorbachev ** Boris Yeltsin * Middle East ** Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran ** Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran ** Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran ** Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran ** Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran ** Mohammad Khatami, Iran ** Abdul Nasser, Egypt or United Arab Republic ** Anwar Sadat, Egypt or United Arab Republic ** David Ben-Gurion, Israel ** Golda Meir, Israel ** Menachem Begin, Israel ** Yitzhak Rabin, Israel ** Hafez el Assad, Syria ** Saddam Hussein, Iraq ** King Hussein, Jordan ** Yassar Arafat, Palestinian territories Palestine

Scientists
; Biology and Anthropology * Norman Borlaug * Francis Crick * Richard Dawkins * Theodosius Dobzhansky * Paul Ehrlich * Jane Goodall * Stephen Jay Gould * Hans Adolf Krebs * Ernst Mayr * John Maynard Smith * Albert Szent-Györgyi * James Watson ; Chemistry * Elias Corey * Maria Sklodowska-Curie Maria Skłodowska-Curie * Pierre Curie * Albert Hofmann * Fritz Haber * Stanley Miller * Linus Pauling * Ernest Rutherford * J.J. Thomson * Harold Urey ; Computer Science * John Backus * Tim Berners-Lee * E.F. Codd E. F. (Ted) Codd * Edsger Dijkstra * Bill Gates William Gates III * Grace Murray Hopper * Donald Knuth * John von Neumann * Claude Shannon * Richard Matthew Stallman * Linus Torvalds * Alan Turing * Niklaus Wirth ; Mathematics * Nicolas Bourbaki * Alonzo Church * John Conway * Paul Erdős * Kurt Gödel * G. H. Hardy * Felix Hausdorff * David Hilbert * Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov * Benoit Mandelbrot * John von Neumann * Marian Rejewski * Bertrand Russell * Srinivasa Ramanujan * Jean-Pierre Serre * Alan Turing * André Weil ; Medicine and Pharmacy * Carl Djerassi * Alexander Fleming * Howard Walter Florey * Ma Haide (George Hatem) * Jonas Salk ; Physics and Astronomy * Niels Bohr * Paul Dirac * Freeman Dyson * Albert Einstein * Enrico Fermi * Richard Feynman * Stephen Hawking * Werner Karl Heisenberg * Edwin Hubble * Lev Davidovich Landau * Wolfgang Pauli * Max Planck * Carl Sagan * Erwin Schrödinger ; Psychology * Aaron T. Beck * Mary Whiton Calkins * Albert Ellis * Sigmund Freud * Carl Jung * Alfred Kinsey * Stanley Milgram * Ivan Pavlov * Jean Piaget * B.F. Skinner * John B. Watson

Humanities
* Art criticism Art and Literary criticism Literary Theory ** Rudolf Arnheim ** Clive Bell ** Fredric Jameson ** Pauline Kael ** Siegfried Kracauer ** Raymond Williams * Civil Rights ** Martin Luther King Jr. * Economics ** John Maynard Keynes ** John Kenneth Galbraith ** Milton Friedman ** Ludwig von Mises * History ** Stephen Ambrose ** Charles A. Beard ** Marc Bloch ** Fernand Braudel ** Lucien Febvre ** Jacques Le Goff * Philosophy ** Theodor Adorno ** Louis Althusser ** Hannah Arendt ** Gaston Bachelard ** Walter Benjamin ** Henri Bergson ** Gilles Deleuze ** Michel Foucault ** Jürgen Habermas ** Martin Heidegger ** Timothy Leary ** W. V. Quine ** Ayn Rand ** John Rawls ** Bertrand Russell ** Jean-Paul Sartre ** Alfred North Whitehead ** Ludwig Wittgenstein * Political Science ** Noam Chomsky ** Robert A. Dahl ** Maurice Duverger ** Francis Fukuyama ** Samuel P. Huntington ** Arend Lijphart ** C. Wright Mills

Business
* Paul Allen * Momofuku Ando * Warren Buffett * Walt Disney * Henry Ford * Bill Gates * Howard Hughes * Steve Jobs * Linus Torvalds * Donald Trump * Sam Walton * Thomas J. Watson

Aerospace pioneers
* Alberto Santos-Dumont * Robert Goddard (scientist) Robert Goddard * Wernher von Braun * Neil Armstrong * Louis Bleriot * Yuri Gagarin * Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov * Freddie Laker * Charles Lindbergh * Ronald E. McNair Ron McNair * Ellison S. Onizuka Ellison Onizuka * Herman Potocnik Herman PotoÄ?nik Noordung * Alan Shepard * Valentina Tereshkova * Wright Brothers * Chuck Yeager * Mae Jemison

Spiritual figures
* Pope Pius X * Pope Pius XII * Pope John XXIII * Pope John Paul II * Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi * Mother Teresa of Calcutta * The 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Thubten Gyatso * The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso * The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. * The Rev. Billy Graham * Mohandas Gandhi Mahatma Gandhi * Aurobindo Ghosh * Ramana Maharshi * Maharishi Mahesh Yogi * Ayatollah Khomeini * Ayatollah Khamenei * Rasputin * Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson * Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon

Artists
* Josef Albers * Ernst Barlach * Balthus * Max Beckmann * Hans Bellmer * Joseph Beuys * Louise Bourgeois * Constantin Brancusi * George Braque * John Cage * Marc Chagall * Giorgio de Chirico * Chuck Close * Enzo Cucchi * Salvador Dalí * Otto Dix * Marcel Duchamp * Jacob Epstein * Max Ernst * Lyonel Feininger * Helen Frankenthaler * Alberto Giacometti * Juan Gris * Walter Gropius * Erich Heckel * Barbara Hepworth * Eva Hesse * Donald Judd * Frida Kahlo * Wassily Kandinsky * Anselm Kiefer * Ernst Ludwig Kirchner * Paul Klee * Yves Klein * Gustav Klimt * Oskar Kokoschka * Käthe Kollwitz * Willem de Kooning * Jannis Kounellis * Le Corbusier * Sol LeWitt * Roy Lichtenstein * El Lissitzky * René Magritte * Marino Marini * Henri Matisse * Joan Miró * Amedeo Modigliani * László Moholy-Nagy * Piet Mondrian * Henry Moore * Robert Motherwell * Edvard Munch * Bruce Nauman * Emil Nolde * Eduardo Paolozzi * Pino Pascali * Max Pechstein * Pablo Picasso * Jackson Pollock * Diego Rivera * Alexander Rodchenko * Auguste Rodin * James Rosenquist * Mark Rothko * Henri Rousseau * Egon Schiele * Karl Schmidt-Rottluff * Charles Schulz * Kurt Schwitters * Richard Serra * Robert Smithson * Andy Warhol * Frank Lloyd Wright

Music
{{main|20th century music}} * ABBA * King Sunny Ade * Madonna (entertainer) Madonna * Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan * Louis Armstrong * Béla Bartók * Mariah Carey * Carlos Chavez * Luigi Dallapiccola * Celine Dion Céline Dion * Alban Berg * Luciano Berio * Chuck Berry * Pierre Boulez * David Bowie * Johnny Cash * John Cage * Bryan Adams * Georges Auric * Ray Charles * John Coltrane * Aaron Copland * Dalida * Gary Davis * Miles Davis * Claude Debussy * Louis Durey * Jacques Dutronc * Bob Dylan * Duke Ellington * Manuel de Falla * Serge Gainsbourg * Jerry Garcia * Carlos Gardel * Marvin Gaye * George Gershwin * Alberto Ginastera * Philip Glass * Amy Grant * Manos Hadjidakis * Francoise Hardy * Nazia Hassan * Jimi Hendrix * Lauryn Hill * Arthur Honegger * Gustav Holst * Michael Jackson * Janis Joplin * Scott Joplin * Aram Khachaturian * Kraftwerk * Fela Kuti * Yo-Yo Ma * Bob Marley * Olivier Messiaen * Darius Milhaud * Nirvana (band) Nirvana * Luigi Nono * Kevin Oakley III * Charlie Parker * Oscar Peterson * Edith Piaf * Astor Piazzolla * Michel Polnareff * Francis Poulenc * Pink Floyd * Elvis Presley * Sergei Prokofiev * Queen (band) Queen * Sergei Rachmaninoff * Maurice Ravel * Steve Reich * Cliff Richard * Joaquin Rodrigo * Roxy Music * Rush * Erik Satie * Arnold Schönberg * Dmitri Shostakovich * Jean Sibelius * Frank Sinatra * Phil Spector * Karlheinz Stockhausen * Richard Strauss * Igor Stravinsky * Mikis Theodorakis * T-Rex * Charles Trenet * The Beach Boys * The Beatles * The Bee Gees * The Clash * The Doors * The Grateful Dead * The Ramones * The Rolling Stones * The Smashing Pumpkins * Germaine Tailleferre * The Velvet Underground * The Who * Tupac Shakur * U2 * Van Morrison * Joe Dolan * Edgard Varèse * Caetano Veloso * Heitor Villa-Lobos * Christopher Wallace * Anton Webern * John Williams * Iannis Xenakis * La Monte Young * Neil Young * Frank Zappa * Metallica * Led Zeppelin * Mick Flavin

Film
* Woody Allen * Michelangelo Antonioni * Ingmar Bergman * Gianni Bongioanni * Frank Capra * Charlie Chaplin * Francis Ford Coppola * Sergei Eisenstein * Federico Fellini * Jean-Luc Godard * D.W. Griffith * Werner Herzog * Alfred Hitchcock * Jim Jarmusch * Jean-Pierre Jeunet * Elia Kazan * Stanley Kubrick * Akira Kurosawa * Fritz Lang * Sergio Leone * Richard Linklater * George Lucas * Vincente Minelli * Hayao Miyazaki * Roman Polanski * Jean Renoir * Martin Scorsese * Kevin Smith * Steven Spielberg * Quentin Tarantino * Andrei Tarkovsky * François Truffaut * Orson Welles

Writers and poets
* Alamgir Hashmi * Alan Moore * Albert Camus * Aldous Huxley * Allen Ginsberg * Amy Tan * Yves Bonnefoy * André Breton * Andre Malraux * Anna Seghers * Anne Frank * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry * Antonio Machado * André Malraux * Arthur Miller * Ayn Rand * Anna Akhmatova * Rafael Alberti * Gabriele D'Annunzio * Apollinaire * Louis Aragon * Simone de Beauvoir * Basil Bunting * Bertolt Brecht * Constantine P. Cavafy * Paul Claudel * Robert Desnos * C.S. Lewis * Albert Camus * Arthur C. Clarke * Gerald Durrell * Lawrence Durrell * Carlos Fuentes * Andre Gide * Nikolai Gumilev * Charles Olson * Charles Reznikoff * Cid Corman * Dario Fo * Dorothy Richardson * Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi * Douglas Adams * Dylan Thomas * Paul Claudel * E. E. Cummings * Odysseus Elytis * Erich Maria Remarque * Ernest Hemingway * Max Jacob * Phillipe Jacottet * Ezra Pound * Fernando Pessoa * F. Scott Fitzgerald * Franz Kafka * Nikos Kazantzakis * Osip Mandelshtam * Gabriel García Márquez * Czeslaw Milosz * Boris Pasternak * Gary Snyder * George Orwell * Gerina Dunwich * Gertrude Stein * Andre Frenaud * Jean Giraudoux * Günter Grass * H.D. * Halldór Laxness * Harold Pinter * Harper Lee * Harry Turtledove * Hart Crane * Hermann Hesse * Hugh MacDiarmid * Henri Michaux * Gabriela Mistral * Luigi Piandello * Ilja Ehrenburg * Isaac Asimov * Isabel Allende * Italo Calvino * J. D. Salinger * Jean-Paul Sartre * J.K. Rowling * Jean Paul Sartre * J.R.R. Tolkien * Jack Kerouac * James Joyce * Henry Miller * John Millington Synge * John Steinbeck * Rabindranath Tagore * John Updike * Jorge Luis Borges * Julio Cortázar * Kurt Vonnegut * Louis Aragon * Louis Zukofsky * Lu Xun * Marcel Proust * Marianne Moore * Maya Angelou * Mikhail Bulgakov * Mina Loy * Muhammad Iqbal * Nazim Hikmet * Orrick Johns * Paul Eluard * Federico Garcia Lorca * Grazyna Miller * Pablo Neruda * Marcel Proust * Philip Larkin * Ray Bradbury * Richard Wright (author) Richard Wright * Robert Creeley * Robert Frost * Ruben Darío * Salman Rushdie * Samuel Beckett * Saul Bellow * Seamus Heaney * Sean O'Casey * S.M. Stirling * Stan Lee * Stephen King * T.H. White * T.S. Eliot * Toni Morrison * Thomas Pynchon * Thomas Mann * Truman Capote * Umberto Eco * George Seferis * Upton Sinclair * Virginia Woolf * Vladimir Nabokov * Paul Valery * W. B. Yeats * W.H. Auden * Wallace Stevens * William Carlos Williams * William Faulkner

Sports figures
;American Football : George Halas : Jim Brown : Joe Montana : Red Grange : Vince Lombardi : Walter Payton : Steve Young : John Elway : Dan Marino : Emmitt Smith : Jerry Rice : Terry Bradshaw : Brett Farve : Barry Sanders ;Athletics : Al Oerter : Betty Cuthbert : Bob Beamon : Emil Zátopek : Fanny Blankers-Koen : Jim Thorpe : Paavo Nurmi : Hicham El Guerrouj : Steve Ovett : Sebastian Newbold Coe Seb Coe : Jesse Owens : Carl Lewis : Michael Johnson (athlete) Michael Johnson ;Baseball : Babe Ruth : Jackie Robinson : Roberto Clemente : Ted Williams ;Basketball : Wilt Chamberlain : Kareem Abdul-Jabbar : Larry Bird : Magic Johnson : Michael Jordan : Bill Russell (basketball) Bill Russell ;Bodybuilding : Arnold Schwarzenegger ;Boxing : Jack Dempsey : Joe Louis : Muhammad Ali : Larry Holmes : Rocky Marciano ;Cricket : Brian Lara : Sachin Tendulkar : Sir Don Bradman : Douglas Jardine : Sir Gary Sobers : George Headley : Herbert Sutcliffe : Sir Jack Hobbs : Len Hutton : Malcolm Marshall : Ray Lindwall : Richard Hadlee : Shane Warne : Steve Waugh : Sunil Gavaskar : Victor Trumper : Sir Vivian Richards : Wasim Akram : Wilfred Rhodes ;Cycling : Eddy Merckx : Fausto Coppi : Lance Armstrong ;Equestrian : Mark Todd (NZ) Mark Todd ;Football (soccer) : Michel Platini : Alfredo di Stefano : Giuseppe Meazza : Bill Shankly : Bobby Moore : Denis Law : Diego Maradona : Eusebio : Ferenc Puskas : Franz Beckenbauer : Gordon Banks : George Best : Johann Cruyff : Kenny Dalglish : Lev Yashin : Mokhtar Dahari : Pelé : Obdulio Varela : Sir Stanley Matthews ;Golf : Arnold Palmer : Bobby Jones : Gary Player : Jack Nicklaus : Severiano Ballesteros : Tiger Woods ;Ice Hockey : Wayne Gretzky : Bobby Orr : Gordie Howe : Mario Lemieux : Maurice Richard ;Martial Arts : Bruce Lee ;Motor Sport : Ayrton Senna : Jim Clark (racing driver) : Juan Manuel Fangio : Michael Schumacher ;Mountaineering : Sir Edmund Hillary : Tenzing Norgay ;Racing : Lester Piggott : Tony McCoy ;Rugby Football : Colin Meads : Gareth Edwards : Wally Lewis ;Skiing : Jean-Claude Killy : Franz Klammer : Ingemar Stenmark ; Squash : Jahangir Khan : Jansher Khan ;Swimming : Dawn Fraser : Mark Spitz : Martin Strel ;Tennis : Martina Navrátilová : Arthur Ashe : Rod Laver : Fred Perry : Pete Sampras : Andre Agassi : Bill Tilden : Steffi Graf : John McEnroe : Bjorn Borg : Boris Becker : Venus Williams : Serena Williams

Decades and years
{{commonscat|20th century}} {{DecadesAndYears|18|19|20}} {{Modernism}} Category:20th century Category:Centuries Category:Modernism Category:Postmodernism af:20ste eeu als:20. Jahrhundert ang:20e gÄ“arhundred ast:Sieglu XX bg:20 век be:20 Ñ?тагодзьдзе br:XXvet kantved ca:Segle XX cv:XX ĕмĕр cs:20. století da:20. Ã¥rhundrede de:20. Jahrhundert et:20. sajand el:20ος αιώνας es:Siglo XX eo:20-a jarcento fa:سده Û²Û° (میلادی) fr:XXe siècle fy:20e ieu ko:20세기 hi:बीसवी शताबà¥?दी hr:20. stoljeće io:20ma yar-cento id:Abad ke-20 it:XX secolo he:המ×?×” ×”-20 la:Saeculum 20 lt:XX amžius lb:20. Joerhonnert li:Twintegste iew hu:20. század mi:Tua 20 rau tau nl:20e eeuw ja:20世紀 no:20. Ã¥rhundre nn:1900-talet os:XX æнуÑ? pl:XX wiek pt:Século XX ro:Secolul XX ru:XX век scn:Sèculu XX simple:20th century sk:20. storoÄ?ie sl:20. stoletje sr:20. век fi:1900-luku sv:1900-talet th:คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 20 tr:20. yüzyıl uk:20 Ñ?толіттÑ? wa:20inme sieke zh:20世纪 see 20th century {{commonscat|20th century}} Articles and events specifically relating to the 20th century, which began in 1901 and ended with the year 2000. {{YearsInCentury|19|th|20|th|21|st}} Category:Years Category:Centuries Category:2nd millennium af:Kategorie:20ste eeu ast:Categoría:Sieglu XX be:КатÑ?горыÑ?:20 Ñ?тагодзьдзе bg:КатегориÑ?:20 век ca:Categoria:Segle XX cs:Kategorie:20. století da:Kategori:20. Ã¥rhundrede de:Kategorie:20. Jahrhundert et:Kategooria:20. sajand es:Categoría:Siglo XX he:קטגוריה:המ×?×” ×”-20 ko:분류:20세기 io:Category:20ma yar-cento id:Kategori:Abad ke-20 is:Flo