New Year's Day is the dawn of a new era in Europe, as 11 nations adopt a single currency, the euro. Now the official currency of 19 members of the European Union, as well as the nations of Kosovo and Montenegro, the euro's introduction had a profound effect on the global economy and was a watershed moment in the continent’s history.

On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only attempted to remove a president on one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican Party’s wrath after he proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan.

On January 13, 1999, the National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls announces his retirement from professional basketball, for the second time, in front of a crowd at Chicago’s United Center.

On January 19, 1999, the first BlackBerry pager, BlackBerry 850, is released. BlackBerry devices go on to drive explosive growth for upstart Canadian producer Research in Motion (RIM), dominating the U.S. smartphone market for much of the 2000s. But they eventually lose their market share to Apple's iPhone.

Weeks after California passed a law against cyberstalking, Gary Dellapenta is charged with using the Internet to solicit the rape of a woman who had rejected his advances. (He pleads not guilty.) Dellapenta terrorized a North Hollywood woman by placing ads in her name that claimed she had rape fantasies and provided her address and instructions for disarming her security system. At least six men saw the Internet ads and came to the woman’s home. Many more called with obscene messages.

Plainclothes officers of the New York Police Department’s Street Crime Unit fire 41 shots at unarmed Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, killing him on the steps of his apartment building shortly after midnight on February 4, 1999. Diallo’s killing sparked a public outcry and eventually resulted in the shuttering of the SCU, but the four officers who shot him were found not guilty of his murder.

On February 12, 1999, the five-week impeachment trial of Bill Clinton comes to an end, with the Senate voting to acquit the president on both articles of impeachment: perjury and obstruction of justice.

On March 7, 1999, American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick dies in Hertfordshire, England, at the age of 70. One of the most acclaimed film directors of the 20th century, Kubrick’s 13 feature films explored the dark side of human nature.

On March 19, 1999, law enforcement officials discover the charred bodies of forty-two-year-old Carol Sund and sixteen-year-old Silvina Pelosso in the trunk of their burned-out rental car, a day after the vehicle was located in a remote area several hours from Yosemite National Park. Cary Stayner, a handyman at the lodge where the women were last seen a month before, later confessed to their murders as well as those of two other women.

On March 22, 1999, a 22-year-old-year-old woman named Cynthia Vigil Jaramillo is found running naked—except for a padlocked metal collar around her neck—down an unpaved road near Elephant Butte State Park in New Mexico. She told police that she had been abducted three days earlier in Albuquerque by David Parker Ray and Cynthia Lea Hendy who brought her to their mobile home, where she was raped and tortured.

On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commences air strikes against Yugoslavia with the bombing of Serbian military positions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The NATO offensive came in response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing launched by Serbian forces against the Kosovar Albanians on March 20.

On March 31, 1999, the writing and directing sibling team of Lana and Lilly Wachowski release their second film, the mind-blowing science-fiction blockbuster The Matrix.

On April 20, 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded another 23 people. Shortly after noon, the two teens turned their guns on themselves and died by suicide.

On May 14, 1999, President Bill Clinton apologizes directly to Chinese President Jiang Zemin on the phone for the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, that had taken place six days earlier. Clinton promised an official investigation into the incident.

“The streak is over…Susan Lucci!” announces Shemar Moore of The Young and the Restless on this night in 1999, right before presenting the Daytime Emmy Award for Best Actress to the tearful star of ABC’s All My Children. The award was Lucci’s first win in 19 straight years of being nominated in the Best Actress category for her portrayal of Erica Kane.

On June 16, 1999, Kathleen Ann Soliah, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), is arrested near her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. Soliah, who now calls herself Sara Jane Olson, had been evading authorities for more than 20 years.

On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the single-engine plane that Kennedy was piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

The music festival Woodstock ’99 opens on July 23, 1999. The festival—timed to the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock—attempts to bring the spirit of peace, music, and love to a new generation; instead it devolves into three days of scorching heat, raw sewage, misogyny and greed in upstate New York.

On July 30, 1999, The Blair Witch Project, a low-budget, independent horror film that will become a massive cult hit, is released in U.S. theaters.

The first cases of an encephalitis outbreak are reported in New York City on August 23, 1999. Seven people die from what turns out to be the first cases of West Nile virus in the United States.

Millions of people evacuate their homes as Hurricane Floyd moves across the Atlantic Ocean on September 14, 1999. Over the next several days, deaths are recorded from the Bahamas to New England due to the powerful storm.

An earthquake in Taiwan on September 21, 1999 kills thousands of people, causes billions of dollars in damages and leaves an estimated 100,000 homeless. It was the worst earthquake to hit Taiwan since a 1935 tremor that killed 3,200 people.

The Colorado grand jury investigating the case of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in December 1996 is dismissed and the Boulder County district attorney announces no indictments will be made due to insufficient evidence.

On November 18, 1999, thousands of logs stacked 59 feet high for a massive pre-football game bonfire collapse at Texas A&M University, killing 12 and injuring nearly 30 in an avalanche of timber.

November 20, 1999 marks the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring the victims of transphobic violence. Now an annual observance, the first TDoR is a vigil commemorating Rita Hester, a 34-year-old African American trans woman murdered in Boston the previous year.

A ferry sinks in the Yellow Sea off the coast of China, killing hundreds of people on November 24, 1999. The ship had caught fire while in the midst of a storm and nearly everyone on board perished, including the captain.

On December 2, 1999, in the journal Nature, scientists announce that they have sequenced the DNA of a human chromosome for the first time. The genetic sequence of chromosome 22 is one of the first major findings of the Human Genome Project, an international scientific effort to decode the instructions for life hidden in our cells.

On New Year’s Eve, 1999, Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, resigns after eight years in office. The presidency passes to the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former intelligence officer who will quickly become the central figure in Russian politics and play a major role in global affairs in the new century.

On December 31, 1999, the United States, in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands for the first time. Crowds of Panamanians celebrated the transfer of the 50-mile canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and officially opened when the SS Arcon sailed through on August 15, 1914. Since then, over one million ships have used the canal.