The End of a Millennium
A comical news article about Y2K
The end of the '90s marked the end of not only a decade, but a century and a millennium as well. Widespread fear grew as the new year approached and people worried that computers would be unable to switch to the new millennium date format resulting in catastrophe. There were no major disasters, but some of the few documented results Y2K were:
- Incorrect Down syndrome test results were sent to 154 pregnant women in the UK
- Some Japanese radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight
- An alarm sounded at a Japanese nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight
- a Japanese telecommunications carrier found errors in the date management part of the company's network
- Japan's largest cellular operator reported that some mobile telephones were deleting new messages
- An Australian bus-ticket-validation machine failed to operate
- 150 American slot machines stopped working
- Dates all over the world showed up as "01/01/19100"
Although written in the '80s, the song 1999 by Prince shows the anticipation and excitement held by the public for the end of the Millennium