Daytona Countdown: '93

Jarrett wins first 500; Kulwicki, Allison die in air-related accidents

With his father cheering him on from the television booth, Dale Jarrett edged past Dale Earnhardt for the win in the 35th Daytona 500 on Feb. 14, 1993.

Running third on the last lap behind Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, Jarrett used a push from Geoff Bodine to pull even with Earnhardt, then bumped his way past as for the fourth time, Earnhardt had been leading with less than 10 laps remaining and failed to finish first.

NASCAR ACCELERATION •   Know Your NASCAR •   Tickets for Daytona •   2004 Daytona 500 highlights •   Get TrackPass for 2005! ALSO IN 1993 ... •   For the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is officially observed in all 50 states (Jan. 18)  •   North Korea says that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites (March 12)  •   Los Angeles Police Department raids the home of Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss (June 9)  •   Lorena Bobbitt cuts off the penis of her husband John Wayne Bobbitt (June 23)  •   Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down in Medellín when police tries to arrest him (Dec. 2)  Courtesy: Wikipedia

On Jan. 20, Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States. Jarrett's win was the first under a Democratic President since Richard Petty's 1979 victory while Jimmy Carter was in office.

A story on Dateline NBC that showed some GM pickups could easily catch fire in accidents caused General Motors to sue NBC on Feb. 8. NBC settled the lawsuit for $2 million the next day after admitting the crashes were rigged.

In fact, studies of fatal crash records showed GM pickups to be 10 percent safer than the average passenger car, 50 percent safer than compact pickups and almost identical in safety to other full-sized pickups.

If Jarrett had been interested in 1993 GMC Sierra K3500 two-door regular cab pickups, he could have purchased 12 at the retail price of $18,576 with his first-place check for $238,200.

Michael Jordan retired from basketball on Oct. 6 to try his hand at minor league baseball. He batted .202 with three home runs for the Birmingham Barons in 1994. Jordan then returned to basketball in 1995, retired again in 1998, then returned to the court again in 2001.

Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, was in movie theaters in February. The plot involved a weathercaster who relived the same day over and over. Janet Jackson's Again was the No. 1 song on Cash Box's singles chart in December.

Martin Sheen, Tom Berenger and Jeff Daniels starred in Gettysburg, which was released on Oct. 8. If Jarrett had wanted to drive his GMC Sierra to see the Gettysburg battlefield site in person, the 436-mile trip from Hickory, N.C., would have taken him a little over seven hours at highway speeds -- or two hours and 49 minutes at the race-winning speed of 154.972 mph.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address took less than three minutes to recite in 1863. Former General and President Dwight Eisenhower and baseball great Eddie Plank both had Gettysburg addresses.

Twelve days after Jarrett's win, a bomb inside a van parked under the North Tower of the World Trade Center exploded, killing six and injuring more than a thousand people. On March 4, Mohammad Salameh was captured and charged with the bombing.

Janet Reno was selected by President Clinton as U.S. Attorney General on Feb. 11 and was confirmed by the Senate on March 11. On Feb. 28, federal agents raided the Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Texas, attempting to arrest cult leader David Koresh. Four agents and five Davidians were killed and a 51-day standoff ended with the compound engulfed in flames on April 19, leaving at least 70 people dead.

The World Health Organization declared tuberculosis a global emergency on April 23. According to WHO, two million people each year die from the disease, which affects the respiratory system. Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, died of tuberculosis in 1933.

Intel shipped the first Pentium chips on March 22. In 1999, Weird Al Yankovic released It's All About The Pentiums.

In December, Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.0. The last version MS-DOS version released by the company was 6.22, before it turned its attention to Windows 95.

Richard Depew accidentally sent 200 copies of one message to a newsgroup on March 31 and Joel Furr called it "spam," the first reported instance of the use of the word to describe what is now considered junk e-mail. IBM's earnings got slammed in 1992 when the company posted a $4.97 billion loss, the largest single-year corporate loss in U.S. history to that point.

There was sad news in NASCAR in 1993, as Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison were killed in separate aircraft accidents. Kulwicki's best finish in seven Daytona 500 starts was a fourth in 1992, the race which Allison won. Allison also made seven 500 starts.

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