BUG: default pandas.io.data start date 1/1/2000 per docs. close #2011

Author: wesm

RELEASE.rst

@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ pandas 0.9.0
     Finance (#1748, #1739)
   - Recognize and convert more boolean values in file parsing (Yes, No, TRUE,
     FALSE, variants thereof) (#1691, #1295)
+  - Add Panel.update method, analogous to DataFrame.update (#1999, #1988)
 
 **Improvements to existing features**
 
@@ -245,6 +246,7 @@ pandas 0.9.0
   - Fix reset_index bug if both drop and level are specified (#1957)
   - Work around unsafe NumPy object->int casting with Cython function (#1987)
   - Fix datetime64 formatting bug in DataFrame.to_csv (#1993)
+  - Default start date in pandas.io.data to 1/1/2000 as the docs say (#2011)
 
 
 pandas 0.8.1

pandas/io/data.py

@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ def _sanitize_dates(start, end):
     start = to_datetime(start)
     end = to_datetime(end)
     if start is None:
-        start = dt.datetime.today() - dt.timedelta(365)
+        start = dt.datetime(2010, 1, 1)
     if end is None:
         end = dt.datetime.today()
     return start, end