Daytona Countdown: '99

With 11 laps remaining, Jeff Gordon drove onto the apron heading into Turn 1 to pass Rusty Wallace and win the 41st Daytona 500 on Feb. 14, 1999.

Rather than be part of what was shaping up to become a huge accident, Wallace gave Gordon enough room to make the pass and eventually wound up eighth as Chevrolets snagged five of the first six spots.

The Chrysler 300M was Motor Trend's Car of the Year for 1999. At a retail price of $28,300, Gordon could have purchased 41 Chrysler 300Ms with his first-place check for $1,172,246.

NASCAR ACCELERATION •   Know Your NASCAR •   Get your Daytona tickets •   2004 Daytona 500 highlights •   Get TrackPass for 2005 ALSO IN 1999... •   Two Littleton, Col., teenagers -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- open fire on their teachers and fellow students at Columbine High School. They killed 12 students, 1 teacher and then turned their guns on themselves (Apr 20)  •   Nancy Mace becomes the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel military college (May 8)  •   Off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, a plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. crashes with his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister, Lauren, on board. All three are killed in the crash (July 16)  •   Courtesy of:  Wikipedia

Prince released 1999 in 1983. Space: 1999 debuted on television in 1975. Office Space was released in 1999.

If Gordon had wanted to "party like it's 1999" with Prince, the 613-mile trip from Gordon's hometown of Pittsboro, Ind. to Prince's hometown of Minneapolis, Minn. would have taken 19.99 hours at 30.67 mph -- or three hours and 48 minutes at Gordon's race-winning average of 161.551 mph.

The big concern in 1999 was Y2K.

Because early computers only used a two-digit designator for the year, catastrophe was predicted when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.

In 1979, COBOL pioneer Robert Bemer, writing in the journal Interface Age, warned that the Year 2000 bug would cause major problems. In 1993, Canadian Peter de Jager wrote a Doomsday 2000 article for "Computerworld."

Some speculated that airplanes might fall from the sky, electricity generating power stations would go off line and there would be worldwide shortages of food, water and gasoline. Russia even asked the United States for help reprogramming its nuclear weapons computers in order for them to be Y2K compatible.

"I'll tell you that I will not be in an airplane or in a large metropolitan area on New Year's Eve," said Harry S. White Jr., who held several key governmental positions in the 1960s and '70s.

A video featuring Jerry Falwell urged viewers to stockpile food, water, gasoling and ammunition.

After up to $600 billion was spent worldwide -- and an estimated $30 billion was spent by the U.S. government -- there were no widespread computer problems.

The stock market had few concerns in 1999. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit the 10,000 mark on March 29 and reached 11,000 on July 16. The world's population reached six billion on Oct. 12, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

Switzerland's Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones of the United Kingdom flew a hot air balloon around the world in 370 hours and 24 minutes from March 3-20, completing a trip of 25,360 miles. At approximately 68.466 mph, the balloon would have completed the Daytona 500 in seven hours and 18 minutes.

On Dec. 3, Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a rowboat. It took her 81 days to complete the 2,962-mile journey, an average speed of 1.523 mph. Murden could have rowed the Daytona 500 in 328 hours and 18 minutes.

President Bill Clinton was acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial in February. In March, U.S. Marine Captain Richard Ashby was acquitted of the charge of reckless flying which resulted in the deaths of 20 skiers in the Italian Alps when his low-flying jet hit a gondola cable.

On Dec. 31, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia, to be replaced by Vladimir Putin. The New York Yankees signed Kevin Brown to a $105 million contract in 1999, the largest deal in baseball history to that point.

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