Kiribati became the first island country to enter the year 2000 by moving its eastern islands across the International Date Line.
Kiribati is spread across a vast area of the central Pacific, including the Line Islands. Before the change, different parts of the country were separated by a date difference that complicated government, travel, and communication. In 1994, Kiribati shifted the date-line boundary used for its eastern islands so that the country could share the same calendar date.
The change placed Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, among the earliest inhabited places to celebrate New Year. This made Kiribati a major focus of worldwide media coverage for the arrival of 2000. The International Date Line is not a perfectly straight legal line; it bends around countries and island groups. Samoa and Tonga are also early Pacific New Year locations, but they are not the country associated with the celebrated 1999–2000 date-line adjustment.