World Events
Population: 5.996 billion
Nobel Peace Prize: Doctors without Borders (France)
Russian president Boris Yeltsin survives impeachment hearings (May), reshuffles his cabinet twice (May, Aug.), and takes military action against Islamic separatists in Dagestan and Chechnya.
Nelson Mandela, first black president of South Africa, steps down (June 16), and Thabo Mbeki takes over.
War erupts in Kosovo after Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milosevic clamps down on the province, massacring and deporting ethnic Albanians. NATO begins Operation Allied Force on March 24, 1999, launching air strikes against Belgrade for 78 consecutive days until Milosevic relents.
Magnitude 7.4 earthquake kills more than 15,600 and leaves 600,000 homeless in Turkey (Aug. 17).
East Timor population votes for independence from Indonesia (Aug. 30, 1999), which causes pro-Indonesian forces to massacre and uproot thousands of East Timorese.
Pakistani government is overthrown in the midst of economic strife and intensified fighting with India over Kashmir (Oct. 12).
The world awaits the consequences of the Y2K bug, with more drastic millennial theorists warning of Armageddon.
U.S. Events
President: William J. Clinton
Vice President: Albert Gore, Jr
Economics
Federal spending: $1716.95 billion
Federal debt: $5978.5 billion
Consumer Price Index: 166.6
Unemployment: 4.2%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.33 (as of 1/10/99)
US Senate opens impeachment trial of President Clinton (Jan. 7); Senate acquits Clinton and rejects censure move (Feb. 12).
John William King, 24, a white supremacist, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death in case involving the dragging death of a black man, James Byrd, Jr. (Feb 23).
Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, storm Columbine High School in Littleton , CO, killing twelve other students and a teacher, then themselves (April 20).
John F. Kennedy Jr., wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren G. Bessette are lost at sea when a plane he was piloting disappears near Martha's Vineyard, off Mass. coast (July 16).
Sports
Super Bowl
Denver d. Atlanta (34-19)
Halftime Show: Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Savion Glover (produced by Radio City)
NBA Championship
San Antonio d. New York (4-1)
Stanley Cup
Dallas d. Buffalo (4-2)
NCAA Basketball Championship
Connecticut d. Duke (77-74)
Entertainment
Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction: The Hours, Michael Cunningham
Music: Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion, Melinda Wagner
Drama: Wit, Margaret Edson
Oscars awarded in 1999
Academy Award, Best Picture: Shakespeare in Love, David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman, producers (Miramax)
Grammy Awards
Record of the Year: My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
Album of the Year: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill (Ruffhouse/Columbia Records)
Song of the Year: My Heart Will Go On - James Horner and Will Jennings
Miss America: Nicole Johnson (VA)
The merger of two major recording labels, Universal and Polygram, causes upheaval in the recording industry. It is estimated that the new company, Universal Music Group, controls 25% of the worldwide music market.
About 48.5 million people tune in to Monica Lewinsky's first televised interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20.
ER's Dr. Doug Ross bids a bitter farewell to Chicago's General Memorial Hospital. George Clooney played the maverick pediatrician since the show debuted in 1994.
Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel dies at age 53.
Stanley Kubrick, the iconoclastic director of such legendary films as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, dies at his home outside London. He was 70.
The Blair Witch Project emerges as an instant cult classic and becomes the most profitable film of all time, grossing more than $125 million. The film cost $30,000 to make.
Rev. Jerry Falwell outs Teletubby Tinky Winky and calls him a gay role model--which he was not, but he did become a gay icon as a result. Falwell imagined that because Tinky Winky is purple, carries a purse and has a triangle on his head, he's gay.
Woodstock '99 kicks off in Rome, N.Y. Concertgoers complain that the spirit of the original Woodstock has been compromised and commercialized. The event is far from a love-in; the crowd set fires and destroyed property during the finale and there were several reports of sexual assaults.
Star Wars Episode I--The Phantom Menace opens and breaks a string of box office records. The film grosses $102.7 million in its debut five-day weekend.
Movies
Blair Witch Project, American Beauty, Three Kings, The Sixth Sense
Books
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of
Science
Nobel Prizes in Science
Chemistry: Ahmed H. Zewail (Egypt and U.S.), for creating the world's fastest camera, which captures atoms in motion
Physics: Gerardys 't Hooft (Netherlands) and Martinus J. G. Veltman (Netherlands), for their theory concerning the production of the Sun's energy
Physiology or Medicine: Günter Blobel (Germany and U.S.), for discovering that proteins have signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999. Over 50% are from the United States.
The Melissa and Chernobyl viruses afflict computers worldwide, forcing several large corporations to shut down their e-mail servers.
Brian Jones (UK) and Bertrand Piccard (Switzerland), make the first nonstop, non-refueled around-the-world balloon flight in the Breitling Orbiter 3 (Mar. 1).
Doctors in Louisville, Ky. perform the first human hand transplant in the US, replacing the severed left hand of a New Jersey man with one from a recently dead donor. (Jan. 24).
The Liberty Bell 7 space capsule, piloted by Gus Grissom on America's second manned space flight, is discovered off the Florida coast after being submerged for 38 years (May 2). Background: US Staffed Space Flights
Deaths
Joe DiMaggio
Clifton Fadiman
Raisa Gorbachev
King Hassan II
King Hussein I
John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy
Stanley Kubrick
George C. Scott