Astronomical year numbering
Cassini gave the following reasons for using a year 0:
Fred Espanak of NASA lists 50 phases of the moon within year 0, showing that it is a full year, not an instant in time. Jean Meeus gives the following explanation:
Although he used the usual French terms "avant J.-C." (before Jesus Christ) and "après J.-C." (after Jesus Christ) to label years elsewhere in his book, the Byzantine historian Venance Grumel used negative years (identified by a minus sign, −) to label BC years and unsigned positive years to label AD years in a table. He did so possibly to save space and put no year 0 between them.
Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia
In a 2007 speech, "Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire", Pilger described his experience with executives of the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). They refused to screen "Year Zero", which, according to Pilger, has never been broadcast in the USA.