In 1999 Davenport Library celebrated its 130th birthday by moving to its new facilities… helped out by schoolchildren and others passing books from the old place to the new. The old library had been named Davenport, after the building donor in 1893. The NEW library was named Dormann, for the family that donated funds for construction. Gerald Ford and Walter Cronkite came for the opening festivities, as did Defense Secretary William Cohen. Every living President donated an autographed book. But what ELSE was going on in that year?
*The Dow-Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 for the first time in history. (Some of that was due to inflation, rather than actual performance.)
*Bill Gates of Microsoft, meanwhile, became the richest person on earth, demonstrating how important computers, including home computers, had become. Science fiction predictions of 1999 were right! (About computers, anyway.)
*Most of the European Union established the Euro, or Eurodollar, as their common currency, equally good in any of the participating countries.
*Lieutenant-Colonel Eileen Collins of Elmira became the first woman to command and pilot the Space Shuttle. As a teenager she had cadged flying lessons at the Harris Hill gliderport by voluntarily helping out with scut work around the hangar. She went on to Corning Community College, Syracuse University, a master’s degree, the Air Force, and the Astronaut’s Corps. The first American woman pilot, Blanche Stuart Scott of Rochester, made her first flight in Hammondsport in 1910. Eighty-nine years later Lieutenant-Colonel Collins was the highest-flying American woman ever.
*Steuben County Historical Society moved into the old library, now renamed Magee House after its 1831 builder. John Magee had been a member of Congress, banker, coal magnate, railroad baron, builder of canals and highways, organizer of stagecoach lines… not to mention twice being a P.O.W. in the War of 1812.
*George Pataki was governor of New York, and Vladimir Putin became president of Russia. Panama took over full control of the Panama Canal, an event now almost unnoticed, but so unpopular when it was planned that it had helped deny Jimmy Carter a second term.
*Bill Clinton weathered an impeachment trial in the US Senate – only the second in our history. Republican Representative Amo Houghton bucked his party to vote against impeachment in the House. Although Republicans controlled the Senate, neither of the two charges against Clinton even received a majority vote, let alone the required two-thirds. Historians and constitutional scholars since then have backed up Houghton and the senators.
*Twelve students and a teacher were killed in the Columbine massacre, after which the shooters killed themselves.
*Deaths for the year included Jordan’s King Hussein, John F. Kennedy Jr., John Ehrlichman of Watergate infamy, singer Mel Tormé (the “velvet fog”), actor Victor Mature, and Candid Camera’s Allen Funt.
*As the days of the year dwindled down, panic ratcheted up amid dire predictions of a worldwide computer crash that would destroy life as we knew it. But the Y2K bug came to nothing, and everyone pretended they hadn’t REALLY been all that worried after all.