Year zero
ISO 8601:2004 (and previously ISO 8601:2000, but not ISO 8601:1988) explicitly uses astronomical year numbering in its date reference systems. Because it also specifies the use of the proleptic Gregorian calendar for all years before 1582, some readers incorrectly assume that a year zero is also included in that proleptic calendar, but it is not used with the BC/AD era. The "basic" format for year 0 is the four-digit form 0000, which equals the historical year 1 BC. Several "expanded" formats are possible: −0000 and +0000, as well as five- and six-digit versions. Earlier years are also negative four-, five- or six-digit years, which have an absolute value one less than the equivalent BC year, hence -0001 = 2 BC. Because only ISO 646 (7-bit ASCII) characters are allowed by ISO 8601, the minus sign is represented by a hyphen-minus.
Century leap year
In the Gregorian calendar, a year ending in "00" that is divisible by 400 is a century leap year, with the intercalation of February 29 yielding 366 days instead of 365. Century years (divisible by 100) that are "not" divisible by 400 are not leap years but common years of 365 days. For example, the years 1600, 2000, and 2400 are century leap years since those numbers are divisible by 400, while 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, and 2300 are common years despite being divisible by 4. Leap years divisible by 400 always start on a Saturday; thus the leap day February 29 in those years always falls on a Tuesday (dominical letter BA).