~Flashback - The Year 1999~

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)

The world awaits the consequences of the Y2K bug, with more drastic millennial theorists warning of Armageddon.

US Senate opens impeachment trial of President Clinton (Jan. 7); Senate acquits Clinton and rejects censure move (Feb. 12). Background: A Short History of Impeachment.

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). Background: A Timeline of School Shootings and 1999 in Review.

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). Background: John F. Kennedy, Jr. Remembered and Timeline of Kennedy tragedies.

Events

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. In her sit-down with Barbara Walters during 20/20, the former intern was alternately smug, insecure, funny, and girl-like (but she did look like a million bucks).

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. Falwell deduced that because Tinky Winky's 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

What were YOU doing in 1999?