By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM
February 8, 2005
08:18 AM EST (13:18 GMT)
Sterling Marlin broke the family's 0-for-443 winless streak in a big way in the 36th Daytona 500 on Feb. 20, 1994. Running 59 laps on his final tank of fuel, Marlin had just enough left to outlast the competition for his first win. A 1994 Chevrolet Beretta Z26 two-door coupe cost $15,310. With his winnings of $258,275, Marlin could have purchased 16 Berettas.  |  | NASCAR ACCELERATION | |
| ALSO IN 1994 ... |
| • | The first trial of accused murderer Lyle Menendez ends in a mistrial. He and his brother Erik are later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole (Jan. 28) |
| • | Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers (Feb. 5) |
| • | A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as 'proof' of the Loch Ness monster, is confirmed to be a hoax (March 12) |
| • | Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found dead in Seattle, Washington. He had committed suicide three days earlier. (April 8) |
| • | The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers over seven years to complete, opens between England and France. Travelers can now travel between the two countries in 35 minutes. (May 6) |
Courtesy: Wikipedia
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The United States population was estimated to be 260 million on July 1, with 4,877,000 of those living in Tennessee. Marlin could have given nearly 1 in every 10 Americans a penny from his first-place prize money, or about five cents to each Tennessee resident. The orange and white checkerboard end zones returned to Tennessee's Neyland Stadium when it was converted back to natural grass in 1994. Tennessee beat Virginia Tech 45-23 in the 1994 Gator Bowl. If Marlin had wanted to drive from his hometown of Columbia, Tenn., to Jacksonville, Fla., to watch the Vols win, the 609-mile trip would have taken about 10 hours in the Beretta -- or three hours and 53 minutes at Marlin's race-winning speed of 156.931 mph. Unusual trials were the order of the day in 1994. The biggest was the result of the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. Five days later, a White Ford Bronco driven by Al Cowlings, with former NFL star O.J. Simpson as a passenger, led police on a low-speed chase to Simpson's Brentwood mansion, where Simpson surrendered. The jury to hear the Simpson case was selected on Nov. 3, two months after prosecutors announced they would seek a sentence of life without parole rather than the death penalty. Despite a mountain of evidence which pointed to his involvement in the murders, the jury of eight blacks, one Hispanic, one white and two people of mixed race found Simpson not guilty on Oct. 3, 1995. A 1994 Ford Bronco XLT two-door sport utility retailed for $23,965. The 1994 Ford Bronco was included in a 884,400-vehicle recall to repair faulty emergency parking brakes. On Jan. 6, Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the right leg with a crowbar during the U.S. National skating championships in Detroit. One month later, Jeff Gillooly -- ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya Harding -- accepted a plea bargain in exchange for testifying against Harding. In March, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for trying to cover up the attack. She was fined $100,000 and banned from the sport. Convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was clubbed to death by a deranged inmate in a Wisconsin prison gymnasium on Nov. 28. On Jan. 10, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial for cutting off the private parts of her husband John during a family dispute. Eleven days later, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. John Bobbitt, who had surgery to reattach what had been cut off, starred in two pornographic films to help pay for the operation, became a minister in Las Vegas and was arrested by Las Vegas police seven times between 1994 and 2002. After winning a lawsuit against The Citadel, Shannon Faulkner enrolled as the school's first female cadet on Jan. 20. She lasted a week, citing exhaustion and allegations of abuse. On Feb. 22, Aldrich Ames and his wife were charged with spying for the Soviet Union. Ames was convicted to life imprisonment, while his wife received a five-year sentence. Francisco Martin Duran was convicted of trying to kill President Bill Clinton when he fired more than two dozen bullets at the White House in October. Friends debuted on network television in 1994. On Jan. 17, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge Earthquake crunched apartments and homes in California's San Fernando Valley. Edvard Munch's painting, "The Scream", was stolen from Oslo, Norway, on Feb. 12. It was recovered May 7. It takes 2,633,000 pounds of peanuts and 3,478,000 pounds of popcorn to make a year's supply of Crunch 'N Munch. → Click here for more Daytona Countdown. | 
