1999

1999 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1999; MCMXCIX
Ab urbe condita	2752
Armenian calendar	1448; ԹՎ ՌՆԽԸ
Assyrian calendar	6749
Bahá'í calendar	155–156
Balinese saka calendar	1920–1921
Bengali calendar	1406
Berber calendar	2949
British Regnal year	47 Eliz. 2 – 48 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2543
Burmese calendar	1361
Byzantine calendar	7507–7508
Chinese calendar	戊寅年 (Earth Tiger); 4695 or 4635; — to —; 己卯年 (Earth Rabbit); 4696 or 4636
Coptic calendar	1715–1716
Discordian calendar	3165
Ethiopian calendar	1991–1992
Hebrew calendar	5759–5760
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2055–2056
- Shaka Samvat	1920–1921
- Kali Yuga	5099–5100
Holocene calendar	11999
Igbo calendar	999–1000
Iranian calendar	1377–1378
Islamic calendar	1419–1420
Japanese calendar	Heisei 11; (平成１１年)
Javanese calendar	1931–1932
Juche calendar	88
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4332
Minguo calendar	ROC 88; 民國88年
Nanakshahi calendar	531
Thai solar calendar	2542
Tibetan calendar	阳土虎年; (male Earth-Tiger); 2125 or 1744 or 972; — to —; 阴土兔年; (female Earth-Rabbit); 2126 or 1745 or 973
Unix time	915148800 – 946684799

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century ; 20th century ; 21st century ;
Decades:	1970s ; 1980s ; 1990s ; 2000s ; 2010s ;
Years:	1996 ; 1997 ; 1998 ; 1999 ; 2000 ; 2001 ; 2002 ;

Last updated August 13, 2019

1999 ( MCMXCIX ) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar , the 1999th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 999th year of the 2nd millennium , the 99th year of the 20th century , and the 10th and last year of the 1990s decade.

Roman numerals Numbers in the Roman numeral system

Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet. Modern usage employs seven symbols, each with a fixed integer value:

A common year is a calendar year with 365 days, as distinguished from a leap year, which has 366. More generally, a common year is one without intercalation. The Gregorian calendar,, employs both common years and leap years to keep the calendar aligned with the tropical year, which does not contain an exact number of days.

A common year starting on Friday is any non-leap year that begins on Friday, 1 January, and ends on Friday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is C. The most recent year of such kind was 2010 and the next one will be 2021 in the Gregorian calendar, or, likewise, 2011 and 2022 in the obsolete Julian calendar. The century year, 2100, will also be a common year starting on Friday in the Gregorian calendar. See below for more. Any common year that starts on Wednesday, Friday or Saturday has only one Friday the 13th; The only Friday the 13th in this common year occurs in August. Leap years starting on Thursday share this characteristic, but also have another one in February.

Events

January

January 1 – The euro currency is established and the European Central Bank assumes its full powers.
January 3 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched by NASA.
January 4 – Gunmen open fire on Shia Muslims worshiping in a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 16 and injuring 25.
January 20 – The China News Service announces new government restrictions on Internet use aimed especially at Internet cafés.
January 25 – The 6.2 M_w  Armenia, Colombia earthquake hits western Colombia, killing at least 1,900.

January 1 is the first day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year. This day is known as New Year's Day since the day marks the beginning of the year. It is also the first day of the first quarter of the year and the first half of the year.

The euro is the official currency of 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union. This group of states is known as the eurozone or euro area, and counts about 343 million citizens as of 2019. The euro is the second-largest and second-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar, and is divided into 100 cents.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank for the euro and administers monetary policy within the Eurozone, which comprises 19 member states of the European Union and is one of the largest monetary areas in the world. Established by the Treaty of Amsterdam, the ECB is one of the world's most important central banks and serves as one of seven institutions of the European Union, being enshrined in the Treaty on European Union (TEU). The bank's capital stock is owned by all 28 central banks of each EU member state. The current President of the ECB is Mario Draghi. Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, the bank formerly occupied the Eurotower prior to the construction of its new seat.

February

February 4 – Unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo is shot dead by New York City police officers on an unrelated stake-out, sparking outrage in the city.^[1]
February 7 – King Hussein of Jordan dies from cancer, and his son Abdullah II inherits the throne.
February 11 – Pluto moves along its eccentric orbit further from the Sun than Neptune. It had been nearer than Neptune since 1979, and will become again in 2231.
February 12 – U.S. President Bill Clinton is acquitted in impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate.
February 16
- In Uzbekistan, an apparent assassination attempt against President Islam Karimov takes place at government headquarters.^[2]
- Across Europe, Kurdish rebels take over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrests one of their rebel leaders.
Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. The sovereign state is a secular, unitary constitutional republic, comprising 12 provinces, one autonomous republic, and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Tajikistan to the southeast; Afghanistan to the south; and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Along with Liechtenstein, it is one of the world's only two doubly landlocked countries.
Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious or monetary reasons.
Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov was the leader of Uzbekistan and its predecessor state, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, from 1989 until his death in 2016. He was the last First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan from 1989 to 1991, when the party was reconstituted as the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP); he led the PDP until 1996. He was the President of the Uzbek SSR from 24 March 1990 until he declared the independence of Uzbekistan on 1 September 1991.
February 21 – Sanna Sillanpää shoots four men, killing three at a shooting range in Finland.
February 22 – Moderate Iraqi Shiite cleric Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr is assassinated.
February 23
- Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan is charged with treason in Ankara, Turkey.
- White supremacist John William King is found guilty of kidnapping and murdering African American James Byrd Jr. by dragging him behind a truck for 2 miles (3 km).
- An avalanche destroys the village of Galtür, Austria, killing 31.
Abdullah Öcalan, also known as Apo, is a Kurdish leader and one of the founding members of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
In law, treason is criminal disloyalty to the state. It is a crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's nation or sovereign. This usually includes things such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.
Ankara, historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. With a population of 4,587,558 in the urban center (2014) and 5,150,072 in its province (2015), it is Turkey's second largest city after Istanbul, having outranked İzmir in the 20th century.
February 24 – LaGrand case: The State of Arizona executes Karl LaGrand, a German national involved in an armed robbery in 1982 that led to a death. Karl's brother Walter is executed a week later, in spite of Germany's legal action in the International Court of Justice to attempt to save him.
February 27 – While trying to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon, Colin Prescot and Andy Elson set a new endurance record after being aloft for 233 hours and 55 minutes.

February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. 330 days remain until the end of the year.

Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a west-coastal country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea, the modern country is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry in order to distinguish it from other countries with "Guinea" in the name and the eponymous region, such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Guinea has a population of 12.4 million and an area of 245,860 square kilometres (94,927 sq mi).

The shooting of Amadou Diallo occurred on February 4, 1999, when Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers—Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss—after they mistook him for a rape suspect from one year earlier. The officers fired a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck Diallo, outside his apartment at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.

March

March 1
- One of four bombs detonated in Lusaka, Zambia, destroys the Angolan Embassy.
- Rwandan Hutu rebels kill and dismember eight foreign tourists at the Buhoma homestead, Uganda.
- The Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines comes into force.
March 3 – Walter LaGrand is executed in the gas chamber in Arizona.
March 4 – In a military court, United States Marine Corps Captain Richard J. Ashby is acquitted of the charge of reckless flying which resulted in the deaths of 20 skiers in the Italian Alps, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler hit a gondola cable.
March 12 – Former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic join NATO.
March 15 – In Brussels, Belgium, the Santer Commission resigns over allegations of corruption.
March 21
- Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
- The 71st Academy Awards are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles with Shakespeare in Love winning Best Picture.
March 23 – Gunmen assassinate Paraguay's Vice President Luis María Argaña.
March 24
- NATO launches air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign state.
- A fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel kills 39 people, closing the tunnel for nearly three years.
March 25 – Enron energy traders allegedly route 2,900 megawatts of electricity destined for California to the town of Silver Peak, Nevada, population 200.
March 26 – The Melissa worm attacks the Internet.
March 27 – Kosovo War: A U.S. F-117 Nighthawk is shot down by Yugoslav forces.
March 29 – For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark, at 10,006.78.

April

April 1 – Nunavut, an Inuit homeland, is created from the eastern portion of the Northwest Territories to become Canada's third territory.
April 5
- Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 are handed over to Scottish authorities for eventual trial in the Netherlands. The United Nations suspends sanctions against Libya.
- In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleads guilty to kidnapping and felony murder, in order to avoid a possible death penalty conviction for the apparent hate crime killing of Matthew Shepard.
April 7 – Kosovo War: Kosovo's main border crossings are closed by Yugoslav forces to prevent Kosovar Albanians from leaving.
April 8 – Bill Gates's personal fortune makes him the wealthiest individual in the world due to the increased value of Microsoft stock.
April 9 – Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, president of Niger, is assassinated.
April 14 – Kosovo War: NATO warplanes repeatedly bomb ethnic Albanian refugee convoys for 2 hours over a 12-mile stretch of road, after mistaking them for Yugoslav military trucks, between Đakovica and Dečani in western Kosovo, killing at least 73 refugees.
April 17 – A nail bomb, the first of three planted by David Copeland over a fortnight, explodes in the middle of a busy market in Brixton, South London.
April 20 – Columbine High School massacre: Two Littleton, Colorado, teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, open fire on their teachers and classmates, killing 12 students and 1 teacher, and then themselves.
April 26
- Sultan Salahuddin of Selangor becomes the 11th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
- British TV presenter Jill Dando, 37, is shot dead on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, London.
April 30
- Cambodia joins the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), bringing the total members to 10.
- A third nail bomb planted by David Copeland explodes in The Admiral Duncan pub in Old Compton Street, Soho, London, killing a pregnant woman and two friends and injuring 70 others.

May

May 3 – 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak: a devastating tornado, rated F5 on the Fujita scale, hit southern and eastern Oklahoma City metropolitan area, killing 36 people (and 5 indirectly). It also produced the highest winds recorded on Earth: 301 ± 20 mph (484 ± 32 km/h).
May 6 – Elections are held in Scotland and Wales for the new Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.
May 7
- Kosovo War: in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, three Chinese embassy workers are killed and twenty others wounded when a NATO B-2 aircraft bombs the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
- In Guinea-Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup.
May 12 – David Steel becomes the first Presiding Officer (Speaker) of the modern Scottish Parliament.
May 13 – Carlo Azeglio Ciampi is elected President of Italy.
May 17 – Ehud Barak is elected prime minister of Israel.
May 26
- The Indian Air Force launches an attack on intruding Pakistan Army troops and mujahideen militants in Kashmir.
- The first Welsh Assembly in over 600 years opens in Cardiff.
- The 1999 UEFA Champions League Final takes place at the Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona, in which the English side Manchester United defeats the German side Bayern Munich 2–1.
May 27 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.
May 28
- Two Swedish police officers are wounded by bank robbers armed with automatic firearms, and later executed with their own service pistols in Malexander, Sweden.
- After 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is placed back on display in Milan, Italy.
May 29 – Nigeria terminates military rule, and the Fourth Nigerian Republic is established with Olusegun Obasanjo as president.

June

June 1 – Napster, a music downloading service, debuts.
June 2 – The King of Bhutan allows television transmissions to commence in the Kingdom for the first time, coinciding with the King's Silver Jubilee.
June 5 – The Islamic Salvation Army, the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front, agrees in principle to disband in Algeria.
June 8 – The government of Colombia announces it will include the estimated value of the country's illegal drug crops, exceeding half a billion US dollars, in its gross national product.
June 9 – Kosovo War: Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty to end their hostilities.
June 10 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its air strikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
June 12
- Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian/Operation Agricola begins: NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping forces KFOR enter Kosovo, Yugoslavia.^[3]^[4]^[5]
- Texas governor George W. Bush announces he will pursue the Republican Party's nomination for president of the United States.
June 14 – Thabo Mbeki is elected president of South Africa.
June 16 – Thabo Mbeki is inaugurated as the second president of South Africa, marking the first peaceful transfer of executive power in the country's post-democratization history.^[6]^{[ importance? ]}
June 18 – The J18 international anti-globalization protests are organized in dozens of cities around the world, some of which led to riots.
June 19 – Turin, Italy, is awarded the 2006 Winter Olympics.
June 24 – Kosovo War: NATO marines shoot three gunmen in Kosovo, Yugoslavia after being attacked by the latter, killing one of them and injuring the other two.^[7]^[3]
June 25 – Bosnia and Herzegovina gets a new national anthem.^[8]
June 30 – Twenty-three people die in a fire at the Sealand Youth Training Center in South Korea.

July

NASA's Lunar Prospector LPnosunm.jpeg — NASA's Lunar Prospector

July 1
- The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Elizabeth II on the day that devolved powers are officially transferred from the Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh.
- Europol (short for European Police Office) the European Union's criminal intelligence agency becomes fully operational.
July 7 – In Rome, Hicham El Guerrouj runs the fastest mile ever recorded, at 3:43.13.
July 10 – American soccer player Brandi Chastain scores the game winning penalty kick against China in the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup.
July 11 – India recaptures Kargil, forcing the Pakistani army to retreat. India announces victory, ending the 2-month conflict.
July 16 – Off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, a plane crashes piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr., killing him, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette.
July 20
- Mercury program: Liberty Bell 7 – piloted by Gus Grissom in 1961 – is raised from the Atlantic Ocean.
- Falun Gong is banned in the People's Republic of China under Jiang Zemin.
July 23
- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is launched.
- Mohammed VI of Morocco becomes king upon the death of his father Hassan II.
July 23 – Fourteen Kosovar Serb villagers are killed by ethnic Albanian gunmen in the village of Staro Gračko.
July 27 – Twenty-one people die in a canyoning disaster at the Saxetenbach Gorge near Interlaken, Switzerland.
July 31 – NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surface.

August

August 7 – Hundreds of Chechen guerrillas invade the Russian republic of Dagestan, triggering a short war.
August 10 – The Atlantique incident occurs as an intruding Pakistan Navy plane is shot down in India, sparking tensions between the two nations, coming just a month after the end of the Kargil War.
August 11 – A total solar eclipse is seen in Europe and Asia.
August 17 – The 7.6 M_w  İzmit earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving more than 17,000 dead and around 50,000 injured.
August 19 – In Belgrade, tens of thousands of Yugoslavs rally to demand the resignation of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević.
August 26 – The Second Chechen War begins
August 30 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia (which had invaded and occupied it since 1975) in a referendum.

September

September 7 – The 6.0 M_w  Athens earthquake affected the area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing 143, injuring 800–1,600, and leaving 50,000 homeless.
September 8 – The first of a series of Russian apartment bombings occurs. Subsequent bombings occur on September 13 and 16, while a bombing on September 22 fails.
September 12 – Under international pressure to allow an international peacekeeping force, Indonesian president BJ Habibie announces that he will do so.
September 14 – Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations.
September 21 – The 921 earthquake, also known as the Jiji earthquake (magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale), kills about 2,400 people in Taiwan.

October

October – NASA loses one of its probes, the Mars Climate Orbiter .
October 1 – Shanghai Pudong International Airport opens in China, taking over all international flights from Hongqiao.
October 5 – Thirty-one people die in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash, west of London, England.
October 12 – Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attempts to dismiss Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf, who is out of the country. The generals lead a coup d'état, ousting Sharif's administration, and Musharraf takes control of the government.
October 13 – The United States Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).^{[ importance? ]}
October 27 – Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and six other members.
October 29 – A super cyclonic storm impacts Orissa, India, killing approximately 10,000 people.
October 30 – 1999 Inchon bar fire [ ko ]: A pub catches fire in Inchon, South Korea, killing 56 people.
October 31
- EgyptAir Flight 990, travelling from New York City to Cairo, crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on board.
- Roman Catholic Church and several Lutheran Church leaders sign the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, attempting to resolve a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation.

November

November 6 – Australians defeat a referendum proposing the replacement of the Queen and the Governor General with a President to make Australia a republic.
November 12 – The 7.2 M_w  Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 845 people were killed and almost 5,000 were injured.
November 20 – China launches the first Shenzhou spacecraft.
November 23 – The National Assembly of Kuwait revokes a 1985 law that granted women's suffrage.
November 26 – The 7.5 M_w  Ambrym earthquake shakes Vanuatu and a destructive tsunami follows. Ten people were killed and forty were injured.
November 27 – The centre-left Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government, with leader Helen Clark becoming the second female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history.
November 30 – The ExxonMobil merger is completed, forming the largest corporation in the world.

December

The Millennium Dome opened in London. Canary.wharf.and.dome.london.arp.jpg — The Millennium Dome opened in London.

December 3
- After rowing for 81 days and 5,486 kilometers (2,962 nautical miles), Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone, when she reached Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.
- NASA lost radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander, moments before the spacecraft entered the Martian atmosphere.
December 5 – Bolivian municipal elections, the first election contested by Evo Morales' Movement for Socialism.
December 18 – NASA launched the Terra platform into orbit, carrying 5 Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.
December 20 – The sovereignty of Macau is transferred from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese settlement.
December 26 – Cyclones Lothar and Martin killed 140 people as they crossed France, southern Germany, and Switzerland.
December 27 – Storm Martin caused damage throughout France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy, including an emergency due to flooding at the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant.
December 31
- The U.S. turned over complete administration of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian Government, as stipulated in the Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977.
- Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.
- 3rd millennium celebrations.