August 26, 1999

A Big Mac cost $2.43 that summer of 1999, and the Dow Jones sat at 11,497 — a peace agreement between NATO and Serbian forces had just ended the Kosovo air campaign, bringing a fragile resolution to the Balkans crisis that had dominated global headlines for months. On American screens and radio stations, audiences were lining up for "American Pie" at the multiplex while Jennifer Lopez held the top spot on the charts with "If You Had My Love," her debut single that signaled a new era in pop music. On July 31, NASA deliberately guided the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon's surface at the conclusion of its 19-month mission, an intentional controlled impact designed to test whether the resulting debris cloud would reveal traces of frozen water in the lunar craters.