Daimler-Chrysler buys 33.4% of Mitsubishi, gaining control of it

Telecom Italia and Seat-PagineGialle announce €100 trillion merger

Launch of the Shuttle mission STS-99, which begins an 11-day SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mapping of 80% of the Earth’s surface. Space Shuttle Endeavour maps 80% of the Earth’s surface with synthetic aperture radar. The radar is a technological gem, the result of a NASA-JPL / Italian Space Agency (ASI) / German Aerospace Center (DLR) collaboration. Earth is the second planet in the Solar System to benefit from such detailed mapping (30m horizontal and 16m vertical resolution). The first was Venus (which, however, was mapped much more thoroughly: 98%), thanks to the American Magellan probe several years earlier.

The merger between the Anglo-American mobile telephone group Vodaphone (50.5%) and the historic German group Mannesmann (49.5%) has been ratified.

Exxon, Mobil merger

Merger between BP, Amoco, Arco

Boris Yeltsin resigns and leaves the presidency to Vladimir Putin, who will then be confirmed in the elections.

The largest full Moon of the century (in the last 133 years): approximate coincidence of the perigee and perihelion (January 3) with the Moon on the ecliptic

Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology announces successful human cloning; experiment halted after 12 days for ethical reasons

Nuclear accident in Takemura, 100 km from Tokyo: it is the second most serious, after Chernobyl.

Russia. Putin insists on not intervening with infantry in Chechnya: “We will patiently and systematically destroy them from the air.” But just two days later, Russian troops will enter Chechnya.

Beginning of the Second Chechen War. 350 kg of TNT causes the collapse of a nine-story building in Pecatniki, on the outskirts of Moscow. Ninety-two people die.

Earthquake in Türkiye: 7.8 on the Richter scale, 17,000 dead

Referendum in East Timor sanctions independence from Indonesia

Moscow. Rush hour. In a subway underpass on Tverskaya, a central Moscow street less than 200 meters from Red Square, a homemade explosive device explodes in the crowded arcade next to a fast food restaurant: one person dies and 30 are injured. It’s just the beginning: every three to five days, there will be further, much more powerful explosions.

Chechnya. Russia intensifies its zachiski, or roundups, and purges.

Eileen Collins is the first female commander of a Space Shuttle. It’s the Space Shuttle Columbia, and it successfully orbits the Chandrasekar telescope, the most powerful X-ray telescope ever launched. On the ground, the women of the so-called Mercury 13 group witnessed the event. These are the women who participated in a selection program for Mercury missions in the 1960s and, despite meeting the requirements, were not able to join the missions. They are Jerrie Cobb, Jane Hart, Wally Funk, Jerry Sloan Tryhill, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Irene Leverton, Bernice “B” Steadman, Rhea Hurrle Woltman, Jan Dietrich, Myrtle Cagle, and Gene Nora Stumbough Jessen. Also absent from the program were Jean Hixson, and Jan and Marion Dietrich. Eileen Collins became the first female commander of the shuttle, and she did so while carrying the heaviest payload ever. During their night launch, a main engine suffered a combustion chamber rupture, causing excess fuel flow that nearly caused a premature shutdown before reaching orbit. Additionally, an electrical short disabled the engine controllers just 5 seconds into the flight. This was recovered by the redundant set, but it may have caused two engines to shut down and required an RTLS abort. Ultimately, everything went smoothly, but two “unusual” anomalies during a flight shortened the lives of several controllers.

Pope John Paul II states that heaven is not a place but a condition. An identical phrase had already been written more than three centuries earlier by a man who refused religious funerals, even though he was later buried in Westminster Abbey: Isaac Newton. Piergiorgio Odifreddi comments that “this teaches those who don’t know, and confirms to those who do, that scientists are much smarter than priests and understand things centuries before them, even when it comes to religion. Therefore, they should be modestly listened to and pondered, rather than haughtily criticized and censored.”

China, booming economically, is using its growing monetary reserves to invest in U.S. Treasury securities and will become the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt in 2008.

NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer (FUSE) satellite is launched; it will provide ultraviolet imaging for eight years.

Bell Labs successfully transmits and receives 1.6 Tbit/s with 40 different frequencies (colors) over optical fiber (40Gbps per color)

Kosovo. When the NATO contingent arrived at the country’s only airport, it had already been in Russian hands since the previous evening. Thirty armored vehicles were deployed to defend the airport. Putin would later claim that, as Secretary of the Security Council, he had authorized the Russian operation. US General Wesley Clark ordered all access routes to the airport to prevent Russian troops from resupplying. Eventually, a compromise agreement was reached: Russian troops would assume a constant role in local support. But something fundamental had broken between the Russians and the Americans, and Clinton realized it during the subsequent phone call with Yeltsin. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov would tell his American counterpart Madeleine Allbright: “Madeleine, you don’t understand: we have many Kosovos in Russia.”

Dr. Chackos finds the Gospel of Judas in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, which is authenticated by experts at Yale University (and subsequently carbon-dated to 280+/-50).

The President of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, says he was abducted by aliens, taken to their star, put on a spacesuit, and held talks with them.

The Yevpatoria Messages: Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas, funded by the Houston-based company Encounter 2001 LLC, are using the Yevpatoria radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful message to four solar-type stars within 70 light-years of Earth. If anyone is listening, they won’t hear it until 2069. Then we’ll see if they respond (in the middle of the next century…)

Merger between Renault and Nissan

BMW buys Rover

Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge movement dissolves.

Chechnya, Russia. The situation for the Russians is rapidly deteriorating. The Russian representative in Chechnya, General Gennady Spigun, is kidnapped by insurgents at Grozny airport. The Russian government refuses to pay the $15 million ransom, and the general is killed. A terrorist attack follows in a market in neighboring Ossetia, killing dozens. The Russian General Staff seeks revenge. This is the perfect moment for Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin will offer the post of Prime Minister on August 5th.

The Breitling Orbiter 3, with Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones on board, completes a round-the-world voyage from Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland, to Egypt: 42,714 km in 19 days 1 hour 49 minutes.

Sea Launch, which launches a Zenit rocket, has the advantage of GEO launches, directly from the equator, thus saving fuel and taking advantage of the Earth’s rotation speed. The floating base is a former North Sea oil platform. It is prepared in the Baltic, shipped by sea under the Oresund, across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. It is then semi-submerged, the crew abandons it, and the launch occurs automatically. The first launch with a demonstration payload takes place in March 1999. The first operational launch is on October 10, 1999. The second operational launch, in March 2000, fails, with the Russians and Ukrainians accusing each other. An investigation commission will attribute the blame to SW. Sea Launch does not lose its customers and returns to launch on July 28, 2000. In total, it launches 31 GEO satellites, with 3 failures. With the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the joint venture was suspended. In September 2016, Sea Launch was sold to the Russian company S7, which reached an agreement with the Ukrainians in August 2017 for the supply of 12 Zenit launchers and to resume launches.