December 31, 1999, 25 years ago: The Millennium arrives. The people of planet Earth survived. At a terrible cost. But we hadn't destroyed ourselves. It felt like a great achievement. It was, "Hey, we made it! We actually made it! This is something really worth celebrating!"
January 1, 2000: As time zone after time zone turned over from 11:59 to 12:00, there was great joy -- literally, all over the world.
It didn't last. So far, the 21st Century has been a bust. In words that have been attributed to, among others, Yankee Legend Yogi Berra, then 74 years old, "The future ain't what it used to be."
December 31, 1999 was a Friday. It was the day that Boris Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia, handing the office over to the Prime Minister -- Vladimir Putin. It was the day that Elliot Richardson died. He remains the only person to serve the President of the United States in 4 different Cabinet posts, including Attorney General, an office he resigned rather than follow Richard Nixon's unconstitutional order in "the Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973.
It was also the day that actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones announced their engagement. They had to wait to get married until Douglas' divorce from current wife Diandra Luker was final. The ceremony was held on November 18, 2000.
And the computer problem known as "The Y2K Bug"? Not much happened. A few minor things, like scattered automatic teller machines (ATMs) at banks not quite working properly. But that was it: The computers didn't cause an apocalypse, or even an inconvenient power outage.
Why? Because changing the format from one that would have followed 12-31-99 with 01-01-00, and thus caused computers to think it was January 1, 1900, and thus confuse them into not working, into one that would recognize 01-01-2000, was a problem that human society took seriously, and properly handled. We'll never know what would have happened if we got it wrong, because we, as a people, stepped up, did what we had to do, and got it right.
And nobody stepped forward to say that the Y2K Bug was just a hoax perpetrated by liberals to take away your freedom, like gun control already had been for 20 years, and COVID-19 would be 20 years later.
Several big-city arenas hosted concerts, usually (but not exclusively) by local artists. Billy Joel played Madison Square Garden. James Taylor, who grew up in North Carolina and wrote and sang "Carolina In My Mind," played the Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena (now the Lenovo Center) in Raleigh.
Cher played Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. From the New York side of New Jersey rather than from New England, Bruce Springsteen played the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston. Quebec native Celine Dion played the Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre) in Montreal.
John Denver, singer of "Rocky Mountain High," the natural choice to play the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver, was already dead, so the artist in residence that night was New York native Neil Diamond. Elton John played Circus Maximus at Caesars Palace outside Las Vegas. Los Angeles-based rock band The Eagles played that city's Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena). NSYNC played the Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu, the arena that had hosted Elvis Presley's "Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite" concert in 1973.
And the American Airlines Arena opened in Miami. Naturally, the choice to open it was Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. The building is now named the Kaseya Center.
Neither Paul McCartney nor Bob Dylan played a concert that night. Michael Jackson was scheduled to play Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, but had to cancel after being injured in a concert in Munich, Germany.
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