We're captives on a carousel of time
We cannot turn, we can only look
behind from where we came
-------The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell

As 1999 faded into 2000 many wanted a name for this year and came up with a shorthand version y2k. y=year, 2k=2000 this is because the Greek prefix
kilo had been chosen to represent 1000 in metric.
There were many who questioned whether we would see a world-wide computer failure as many programs only represented the year with two digits.

Forewarned, however is forearmed, and the techies went to work and solved the problem before it could happen.

Another question was is this the first year of the Millennium?
Some said yes, some said no. Despite assurances by the Planetary society and other assorted geeks that the New century actually began the first of January in 2001, most sites ten years later put the beginning of this decade,and century at January 2000.
This would make the years in question 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,and 2009.

But what did you call this decade? Britons for the most part if they thought about it,which I'm sure many did not, seemed to reach a consensus on the noughts or noughties. In America it was spoken of as the 2000s or the aughts, and one researcher had a fondness for calling it d2k, reasoning if a year was represented as y2k a decade could also use the Greek suffix kilo and be d2k; he got virtually no support for this idea.

And what happened during these ten years? Some life changing events and some very mundane events happened. After all just because the Calendar system Anno Domini (A D) and its alter ego The Common Era (CE) said one 1000 year period had ended and another begun did not make atoms or planets spin any differently than they did before.

Here is a recap of that perplexing decade.

• 2000

  In Korea that year, a summit between North and south looked promising. And Israel ended its 22 year occupation of Lebanon. If everyone thought this decade would be one of glad tidings and rainbow stew, those hopes were dashed by the events of 2001.

  In November of that year in the US Presidential Election Al Gore got 50,999,897 votes to Geo W Bush 50,456,002 votes and had Al Gore gotten the electoral votes in Florida would have won the election, but when the dust finally settled the Electoral College voted 271 votes for Bush, 266 Votes for Gore and one abstention.

• 2001

  In January of 2001 The website h2g2.com quit working. Two months later it reappeared as part of the
  BBC and for ten years bbc.co.uk was part of the URL. In the US George W Bush took office on January 20th and many felt he was a poor candidate, elected upon a technicality and not by the popular vote, and would be a very weak president.
  A preview of how he cherry picked data came when he announced in March
  that the United States would not implement the Kyoto Protocol on global warming because the science was uncertain and it would hurt the economy.
  The top story happened in September when terrorists commandeered four commercial jets and flew two at the World Trade Center in NYC and two at Washington DC. Both the New York bound planes reached their targets and the World Trade Center towers came down, one after another. However, passengers on one of the DC bound planes took matters in their own hands and during the struggle for control of the plane someone set the plane into a deep dive plowing into the Pennsylvania landscape and putting an end to plans for that one. The fourth plane smacked into the side of the Pentagon. Repercussions from this plot would echo down through all public policy from this time on. Literally, it changed the working paradigm overnight. Proving much stronger than his detractors suspected, President Bush also began an open-ended war called the War on Terror. This and the war in Iraq which started in 2003 would put the US in deep financial trouble by the end of the decade.

• 2002

  After September 2001 AL-Qaeda which had previously only been considered a minor annoyance was considered a major threat and the hunt began for its leader Osama bin Laden; and in the US President Bush was also restructuring his security apparatus: laying the groundwork for the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and the Department of Homeland Security. That year, the United Nations passed a resolution (1441) backing the invasion of Iraq. In October 2002 On the Island of Bali Indonesia, a terrorist from Jemaah Islamiah, a radical Muslim group, killed 202 people,including 88 Australians, at a tourist destination called Paddy's Pub.

• 2003

  The US Department of Homeland Security is established.
  Soon afterwards in March the US and UK invaded Iraq, determined to Keep Saddam Hussein from developing "Weapons of Mass Destruction".
  As it turns out, President Bush had been picking and choosing which intelligence reports he would believe, just as he had been doing with the climate change studies, to make a case for attacking Iraq that he could spin to obtain the support in congress that he needed to start this war, which he called Operation Iraqi Freedom and the weapons in question were greatly overstated. On 20-21 March the Iraqi War began in earnest.
  That summer in the UK a heatwave was blamed on global warming.
  That heatwave caused 2,000 to 3,000 excess deaths in England, according to the HPA¹.
  

• 2004

  TV Journalists unveiled a place of human depravity where despicable acts were done to break the prisoners spirits. the place was Abu Ghraib a prison in Iraq.
  When it was unmasked, the world quickly demanded these acts stop. And questions were asked about how far up the chain of command knowledge of them existed.

  In the world of sports Greece hosted its first summer Olympic games since 1896 and in America the Boston Red Sox won the Baseball World series after an 86 year gap.

  The year ended on a tragic note as nearly 300,000 people were killed in December,2004 by a 9.3 magnitude earthquake which occurred west of Sumatra and the resultant tsunami in the region. Also at the end of 2004 Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol leaving the US as the only major nation not ratifying.

• 2005

  In April, a Papal Conclave elected Pope Benedict XVI.
  On the morning of 29 August the city of New Orleans,Louisiana was changed forever as Category 5 Hurricane Katrina swept through placing a large portion of the city temporarily underwater.
  During august and September in the Gaza strip, Israeli soldiers evicted Jewish settlers,
  and turned the land over to Palestinian control. And in Denmark a paper ran a contest for cartoons lampooning the founder of Islam.
  The Jyllands-Posten knew it was breaking Islamic law but published these questionable depictions anyway.

• 2006

  In February Danish embassies in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon were set ablaze in protest against the Danish cartoons. Meanwhile in the US shady dealings started causing problems in a sub-prime lending scheme. In Iraq Saddam Hussein was hung after being convicted by an Iraqi court. The war in Iraq would continue for many years after his death².

• 2007

  In January The US was pursuing AL-Qaeda into Somalia. In March, Leaders in Northern Ireland reached a power sharing agreement. Al Gore was recognized for his efforts in fighting global-warming with a Nobel Peace Prize.
  November then proved deadly along the Indian Ocean as Cyclone Sidr wreaked havoc in southern Bangladesh. Nearly 3,500 people died and a million people were left homeless.

• 2008

  2008 was a year of financial anxiety.
  In the United States the sub-prime mortgage lending scheme was reaching critical mass; and before long the whole world was struggling with debt.
  In Sept.2008 the government of Iceland nationalized the banks. Rioting broke out in Tibet and other parts of China prior to the XXIX Olympiad which was held that summer in Beijing.
  

• 2009

  On January 20, the first African-American in US history, Barack Obama took office as President of the United States. Before doing anything else he had to stop the financial slide into calamity.
  In June the auto making giant General Motors filed chapter 11 bankruptcy and was split into "The New GM" which continued making cars and the "Old GM" that had many of the problem spots.
  In July General Motors emerged with fewer brands, fewer production facilities and a smaller workforce. They had also forced the labor unions to make wage and benefit concessions.