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Converting Unix timestamp 0 using our Time Converter gives us the following information:

0 is representing the 0 day of the year 1970 in the Gregorian calendar, having 365 days. There are 365 days left of the year and this particular timestamp falls on a Thursday, January 01 of week 01 at 00:00 UTC in the monrning meaning that about 0% of the day has passed. At this specifc time, the moon was in its Third quarter phase, about 243,097 miles (or 391,227 km) from Earth.

On this day, many notable and historically important events have taken place. But to only mention a few, in year 42 BC, the Roman Senate posthumously deifies Julius Caesar. And later in 45 BC the Julian calendar takes effect as the civil calendar of the Roman Republic, establishing January 1 as the new date of the new year. More recently, in 2011 Estonia officially adopts the Euro currency and becomes the 17th Eurozone country.

We've also, tragically, seen a few famous deaths throughout history on this day. One notable mention is in 138 when Lucius Aelius, adopted son and intended successor of Hadrian (born in 101) passed away and in 404 when Telemachus, Christian monk and martyr left us. And more recently, Wayne Osmond, American singer-songwriter and actor (born in 1951) who died in in 2025.

January 1, or 0, is also a day that we should celebrate. This date marks the birth of many influential people throughout history, including Ali al-Ridha, 8th Imam of Twelver Shia Islam (died in 818) who was born in 766, and later in 1431 - Pope Alexander VI (died in 1503). More recently, Lamine Camara, Senegalese footballer who was born in 2004.

Everything has a beginning

Many have asked us why January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC is considered as the start of Epoch time. And it’s a valid question. There were already some rough versions of Unix available in the 1960s so why indeed does Unix Time start in the 1970?

Well, those very early Unix system measured system time in intervals of sixtieths of a second. This interval was selected as it was the rate of the system clock, running at 60 Hz, on the hardware in those early Unix systems. As the 32-bit integer had an incrementing rate of 1/60^th of a second, there was a limitation that a 32-bit unsigned integer only could represent a span of time less than 829 days.

Because of the limited range the Unix Time would have measuring in 1/60^th of a second, the epoch was redefined many times. Finally, the incrementing rate was settled to 1 Hz, giving increments of one second that we still use today. This increased the span of time that could be represented by a 32-bit unsigned integer to around 136 years. And a lifespan of 136 years is indeed much more useful than 829 days.

In fact, the first edition of the “Unix Programmer’s Manual” that was released on November 3, 1971, defines the Unix Time as following:

The time since 00:00:00, Jan. 1, 1971, measured in sixtieths of a second.

The manual, as stated above, defines Unix Time to start in 1971, and not 1970. But as the incrementing rate was finally settled to 1 Hz, so was the starting year. In combination with extending the lifespan of Unix Time to 136 years, there was no longer a need to squeeze out every second of the counter, so the epoch was rounded down to the nearest decade, from 1971 to 1970. And so, we got a new starting date of Unix Time, the timestamp of 0 was settled to be 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. A nice, round number that is easy to remember and would continue to fulfill it purpose for another 136 years.

Conversion help

For your conveniance, we have listed the conversion syntaxes for 0 timestamp to serveral of the most popular programming lanugages below.

date('Y-m-d H:i:s', 0);

select from_unixtime(0);

new Date(0*1000).toString();

time_t epch = 0;
printf("%i -> %s", epch, asctime(gmtime(&epch))); (time.h);

String.Format("{0:d/M/yyyy HH:mm:ss}", new System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0).AddSeconds(0));

new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss").format(new Date(0 * 1000L))

require 'date'
DateTime.strptime("0",'%s')

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0

A few related timestamps to 0 are: