World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999 by Robert Famighetti (Editor), World Almanac Editors

From the Publisher

The reference that millions of people turn to each year when they need quick, comprehensive, and authoritative information on a wealth of subjects, The World Almanac is now in its 131st year. Special features for 1999 include coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics, complete election coverage, and more of the "Countdown to the Millennium" feature begun in last year's edition.

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Chapter One

The World Almanac
and Book of Facts 1999

THE TOP 10 NEWS STORIES OF 1998

The U.S. House of Representatives, voting largely along party lines on Oct. 8, authorized a House committee inquiry into the possible impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton. Earlier, on Sept. 9, a report from independent counsel Kenneth Starr had detailed what it called "substantial and credible information" that the president had lied under oath, obstructed justice, and abused powers of his office in an effort to cover up a relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In a surprise turnaround in off-year U.S. elections on Nov. 3, Republicans failed to make any gains in Congress; in fact, Democrats picked up a net gain of 5 seats in the House of Representatives (including 1 seat projected but not final), for a total of 211 out of 435, while the balance of power in the Senate remained unchanged at 55 for the Republicans and 45 for the Democrats. Democrats won key Senate races in New York and California, as well as the California governorship. Republicans defeated the Democratic Senate incumbent in Illinois, while former Pres. George Bush's two sons, Republicans George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, easily won governors' races in Texas and Florida, respectively.

Representatives of Catholic and Protestant groups in Northern Ireland and of the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom signed a major peace accord, Apr. 10. The accord, ratified by the people of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic inreferenda May 22, retained British rule in Northern Ireland but provided mechanisms for limited self-rule and consultation between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. David Trimble and John Hume, heads of major Protestant and Catholic parties in Northern Ireland, respectively, won a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in the negotiations.

India exploded underground nuclear devices in a desert area May 11 and 13; Pakistan, a neighboring state, followed suit, with nuclear tests May 28 and 30. Both actions prompted international concern, with the U.S. and some other countries applying economic sanctions against the two rival states.

Bombs exploded minutes apart, Aug. 7, outside U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. A total of 224 people (213 of them in Nairobi) were killed, including 12 Americans. The U.S. government responded Aug. 20 by firing missiles at suspected terrorist training centers in Afghanistan and at a factory in Sudan that the U.S. said was linked to terrorism.

The rippling effects of continuing economic turmoil in Southeast Asia helped depress the Japanese economy and increase volatility in stock markets around the world, and in late August, a severe financial crisis in Russia caused a global plunge in stocks, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 512 points on one day, Aug. 31.

The weather phenomenon known as El Nino, in which warm ocean currents near the Pacific coast of Peru cause abnormal storm or drought conditions, continued to affect climate in many parts of the world in early 1998. Among other effects, tornadoes hit Florida in February, killing more than 40 people. In California, torrential rains in late February killed 9 people, caused flooding, and destroyed many homes. South America was also hard hit in February. Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador suffered through storms and mudslides, and Colombia experienced a severe drought.

St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire hit his 62d home run of the season, Sept. 8, to surpass the record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961; a spectacular home run race ensued between McGwire and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, who also surpassed Maris's 61; McGwire ended the season Sept. 27 with a record 70 home runs, 4 ahead of Sosa's 66.

Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Min. Benjamin Netanyahu signed a new peace agreement, Oct. 23, in Washington, DC, reached with the encouragement of Pres. Bill Clinton and Jordan's King Hussein. The pact called for Israel to withdraw troops from another 13% of the West Bank and for Palestinians to step up efforts against terrorism and remove from the Palestinian National Charter language calling for Israel's destruction.

On Mar. 24 in Jonesboro, AR, 2 boys aged 11 and 13 fatally shot 4 students and a teacher and wounded 10 others outside their middle school. On May 21 in Springfield, OR, a 15-year-old high school student allegedly shot his parents, then went to school and fired into the cafeteria, killing 1 student and wounding 23, 1 of whom died the next day. These incidents were among the most notable in a small wave of school shootings by students.

Election '98

By Donald Young

Donald Young is a freelance writer and editor who writes
on current affairs.

    In the 1998 midterm elections on Nov. 3, the Republican Party failed to increase its margin in the Senate and lost seats in the House. Republicans retained control of both houses of Congress and also held on to a substantial majority of the nation's governorships. However, their failure to make the gains traditional for an off-year election caused consternation in Republican ranks and appeared to take some steam out of impeachment proceedings against Pres. Bill Clinton for actions relating to his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

    In Senate elections, the Democrats won 18 contests and the Republicans 16, leaving the breakdown unchanged at 55-45 in favor of the GOP. In the House, where all 435 seats were up for election, unofficial returns showed Republicans winning 223 seats to 211 for the Democrats (counting an Oregon seat where the Democrat was leading), with 1 seat going to an independent.

    Democrat Charles E. Schumer, a U.S. representative from Brooklyn, defeated Alfonse D'Amato, the 3-term U.S. senator from New York, in the year's most acrimonious contest. After a campaign marked by negative advertising and heavy spending by both major candidates, D'Amato, the powerful chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, lost by more than 400,000 votes.

    Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina was the only other incumbent Republican senator to lose. He was defeated by the telegenic John Edwards, a trial lawyer, who at 45 was 25 years younger and had never held public office. Faircloth, a harsh critic of the president, had run ads suggesting that Clinton and Edwards shared "a habit of stretching the truth."

    A 3d Democratic pickup in the Senate came in Indiana, where a former governor, Evan Bayh, was elected to the open seat being vacated by Dan Coats. Bayh, in defeating Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, took the seat once held by his father, Birch Bayh.

    The only Democratic senator to be defeated was Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, who in 1992 had been the first black woman elected to the Senate. Moseley-Braun, who had admitted making several ethical missteps, lost to State Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald, a social conservative. Republicans also picked up 2 open seats. In Ohio, Gov. George V. Voinovich was elected to succeed John Glenn, the once and present astronaut who was orbiting the earth even as the votes were cast. In Kentucky, in a contest between 2 former star athletes, both members of the House, Jim Bunning defeated Scotty Baesler by only about 7,000 votes.

    Democratic incumbents who won included Barbara Boxer (CA), who turned back a strong challenge from State Treasurer Matthew Fong; Patty Murray (WA), who won a tough race against U.S. Rep. Linda Smith; and Ernest Hollings (SC), who defeated U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis. In Nevada, the incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D) held onto a narrow lead to defeat U.S. Rep. John Ensign (R) by a few hundred votes.

    Other Democratic incumbents who kept their seats included Christopher J. Dodd (CT), Bob Graham (FL), John B. Breaux (LA), Barbara Ann Mikulski (MD), and Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Leading Republicans returned to the Senate included Charles Grassley (IA), Don Nickles (OK), and Arlen Specter (PA).

    Both sponsors of the McCain-Feingold bill to reform campaign financing were returned to office. Sen. John McCain (R) won big in Arizona, and Sen. Russ Feingold (D) survived a strong challenge from a conservative, Mark W. Neumann, in Wisconsin. Feingold, who had denounced the influence of so-called soft money, objected when the national Democratic Party began running negative ads in his behalf.

    Although Moseley-Braun lost, the ranks of Democratic women were augmented when Blanche Lambert Lincoln won the open Arkansas Senate seat.

    In the voting for the U.S. House, for the first time since 1934, the party that controlled the White House managed to pick up seats in a midterm election. Republican expectations of a gain faded as almost all incumbents in both parties, aided by a strong economy and the usual advantages of incumbency, retained their seats.

    In California, former Rep. Robert Dornan (R), a hardline conservative who had narrowly lost his seat in 1996 to Loretta Sanchez, was defeated by her again by a big margin. Among prominent family names, Tom Udall (D), whose father was former Interior Sec. Stewart L. Udall, won election in New Mexico, and his cousin Mark Udall (D), son of former U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, succeeded in Colorado.

    In New Jersey, Mike Pappas, a Republican who had strongly backed impeachment proceedings against Clinton, was unseated by Democrat Rush Holt. Also, challenger Jay Inslee (D), running in a suburban Seattle (WA) district, defeated his opponent, Rep. Rich White (R), after criticizing the latter's support of the impeachment process.

    The nation's 8 most populous states elected governors, and the Republicans won all but one of these races. Two sons of former Pres. George Bush were elected: George W. Bush, regarded as a possible contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000, easily captured a second term in Texas, and Jeb Bush, on his second try, prevailed in Florida. Both brothers demonstrated remarkable success in winning Hispanic support and also did well, by Republican standards, among blacks. On the other hand, in California, where Republicans had become identified with restraints on immigration and opposition to quotas in college admissions, Hispanics and blacks voted heavily for Democrats. A major beneficiary was Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who took the statehouse for his party after 16 years of Republican occupancy. Davis would be influential in the redistricting process after the 2000 census, when California was expected to have as many as 58 House districts.

    In other major governors' races, Republican incumbents won easily in the states of Michigan (John Engler), New York (George E. Pataki), and Pennsylvania (Tom Ridge). Republicans also won open governorships in Illinois (George H. Ryan) and Ohio (Bob Taft, great-grandson of Pres. William Howard Taft). Republican success in these big-state elections was attributed to effective administration and tax-cutting by moderate governors who avoided divisive social issues.

    Perhaps the most astonishing story of the night was the victory in Minnesota of Reform Party candidate Jesse ("The Body") Ventura, a former professional wrestler who had been mayor of a Minneapolis suburb before running for governor. Debating his major-party opponents--including Atty. Gen. Hubert H. Humphrey III (D), son of the former vice president, who had been favored to win after obtaining a big settlement with tobacco companies--Ventura articulated straightforward opinions on state issues.

    The Democrats, who had become a minority party in the Cotton Belt, once their bastion, staged a partial comeback, unseating GOP governors in South Carolina (David Beasley) and Alabama (Fob James Jr.). The winners, respectively, were Jim Hodges and Don Siegelman. Both had urged the approval of state lotteries to raise money for education. James's loss was a defeat for social conservatives. Roy E. Barnes won the governor's race in Georgia, preserving that state's record of electing only Democratic governors since Reconstruction.

    In Maryland, Parris Glendening, a Democrat, won a second term by again defeating his 1994 opponent, Ellen Sauerbrey. Running in a heavily Democratic state, Glendening had been criticized by blacks for ignoring their concerns. After Clinton admitted his relationship with Lewinsky, Glendening canceled a fund-raiser with the president, then agreed to appear with Clinton a month later.

    Although the president generally limited his campaigning to fund-raisers held indoors, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose popularity was at a peak, and Vice Pres. Al Gore campaigned energetically.

    One early analysis showed that about 38% of eligible voters went to the polls, about the same as in recent off-year elections. Turnout was said to be relatively high among African-Americans, regarded as likely Clinton supporters. But exit polling suggested that strong opinions for and against Clinton may have just about canceled each other out at the ballot boxes. One exit poll showed education--typically an issue favoring Democrats--to be the top issue for voters.

    In state referenda, 5 states (Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) approved the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and 2 states (Alaska and Hawaii) approved measures against same-sex marriages. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide was rejected by Michigan voters.

Results at a Glance

The following table shows how the 1998 elections affected the
balance of power between parties.

SENATE	Before	After	Change	HOUSE	Before	After	Change	GOVERNORS	Before	After	Change
Rep.	55	55	0	Rep.	228	223	-5	Rep.	32	31	-1
Dem.	45	45	0	Dem.	206	211*	+5*	Dem.	17	17	0
Other	0	0	0	Other	1	1	0	Other	1	2	+1

*Assumes Democratic win in Oregon's 1st District, where Democrat was leading.

Clinton Impeachment Inquiry

By Geoffrey M. Horn

Geoffrey M. Horn is a freelance writer and editor
who often writes on political and cultural topics.

    In 1998, for only the 3d time in history, the House of Representatives voted to launch presidential impeachment proceedings. On Oct. 8, after mostly partisan debate, 31 Democrats joined 227 Republicans to pass a resolution authorizing the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Henry J. Hyde (R, IL), to investigate "whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach William Jefferson Clinton."

    The Republican-sponsored resolution imposed no restrictions on the scope or duration of the committee's work. The House had defeated by 236-198 a Democrat-sponsored measure proposing a more limited inquiry.

The Start Report

    The event that prompted House action was the submission by independent counsel Kenneth Starr of a "referral" concerning Clinton's relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The 117,000-word document, commonly known as the Starr report, arrived at the Capitol at 4 PM on Sept. 9, accompanied by 36 boxes of supporting materials. Both the report and a preliminary White House rebuttal were posted on the Internet.

    The Starr report cited what it called "substantial and credible information" that the president lied under oath, obstructed justice, and misused the powers of his office to cover up his sexual activities with Lewinsky, which were described in detail. Clinton's defenders generally conceded that the president had done wrong but insisted that his offense amounted to at most lying about sex and did not meet constitutional standards for impeachment.

Clinton-Lewinsky Liaisons

    Lewinsky began as an unpaid intern in July 1995, shortly before her 22d birthday, and graduated to a paying job at the White House before year's end. According to her testimony, months of flirtation with Clinton blossomed into their first sexual encounter by Nov. 15 (the president acknowledged no "inappropriate, intimate contact" between them until early 1996). Their liaisons, usually in a private study, hallway, or bathroom near the Oval Office, reportedly did not include sexual intercourse but did include oral sex. Clinton aides, concerned that Lewinsky was spending too much time with the president, arranged for her reassignment to the Pentagon in Apr. 1996. Intimate physical contact ceased, except for a brief interval early in 1997.

    After securing immunity from prosecution, Lewinsky provided investigators in 1998 with details of dozens of phone conversations and meetings with the president and of gifts they exchanged. Prosecutors were able to corroborate much of her story by using White House logs, Secret Service testimony, and tape recordings of telephone calls between Lewinsky and a friend, Linda Tripp, made by Tripp without Lewinsky's knowledge.

The Jones Case

    Even as Clinton and Lewinsky pursued their relationship, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones was targeting other instances of alleged sexual misconduct. Jones claimed that on May 8, 1991, while Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she was a state employee, he summoned her to his hotel room and asked her to perform oral sex on him, but that she refused. In fall 1997, Jones's legal team sought to bolster their case by seeking testimony from women rumored to have had illicit sexual contact with Clinton. Acting on tips from Tripp and her friend Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent, the lawyers identified Lewinsky as a potential witness.

    Lewinsky's name appeared on a witness list Dec. 5; she was subpoenaed 2 weeks later. The Starr report documents a series of contacts in late 1997 and early 1998 involving Clinton, Lewinsky, Clinton's personal secretary Betty Currie, and his friend Vernon Jordan. The witnesses differed in their specific recollections, but certain facts appeared clear. Jordan, an influential lawyer, got Lewinsky a job offer from a cosmetics firm; gifts given by Clinton were retrieved from Lewinsky and hidden in a box under Currie's bed; and Lewinsky executed an affidavit stating she "never had a sexual relationship with the president."

Tripped Up

    Starr, meanwhile, had been investigating Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater land deal and other scandals since Aug. 1994. A well-connected Republican with an impressive résumé, he was no stranger to the Jones case, having advised her legal team before he became independent counsel. Starr's office believed Clinton had impeded the Whitewater inquiry by encouraging his friends, including Jordan, to arrange lucrative contracts to buy the silence of a key witness, former Associate Attorney Gen. Webster Hubbell. So when Tripp offered her tapes to Starr's office in Jan. 1998, it was the involvement of Jordan in seeking a job for Lewinsky that provided the main rationale for an expansion of Starr's mandate. On Jan. 13, at the urging of prosecutors, Tripp wore a recording device while meeting with Lewinsky, to gain further evidence.

    Tripp also briefed Jones's lawyers before they were scheduled to take sworn testimony from Clinton. When asked about Lewinsky in his deposition on Jan. 17, Clinton appeared to many to be evasive, relying on quibbles and contorted definitions to convey the misleading impression that he and Lewinsky were little more than casual acquaintances. Possibly alarmed by how much the Jones team knew, he summoned Currie to the White House the next day (a Sunday) and went over his version of events ("You were always there when she was there, right?"). Starr's report accused him of coaching a potential witness.

Defiance and Repentance

    Soon after the scandal broke in the Washington Post on Jan. 21, the White House began crafting a hard-line response. Clinton made a vehement, finger-wagging denial and sent out cabinet members and top aides to back up his story. His lawyers sought to shield potential witnesses by making extensive claims of presidential privilege, most of which the courts rejected. Meanwhile, Clinton's high job approval rating allowed the White House to shift the focus to Starr's alleged prosecutorial excesses and portray Starr and his staff as right-wing zealots. On Apr. 1, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright threw out the Jones case, but an appeal was filed and both sides were exploring a possible settlement.

    The impetus toward an impeachment inquiry built in the summer, after word leaked that Lewinsky had given prosecutors a dress with a semen stain--physical evidence that could prove she and the president had sexual contact. Clinton acknowledged on Aug. 17 that he had misled his family, his staff, the public, and Jones's lawyers, although he insisted that his testimony had been "legally correct" and his tone in videotaped testimony before a grand jury convened by Starr, and in a televised speech the same day, seemed to some to be more combative than contrite. On later occasions he expressed his regret more strongly, but said he would tell his lawyers to mount a "vigorous defense" in upcoming proceedings.

SPECIAL SECTION: THE COMING MILLENIUM

    The new millennium has nearly arrived. What will it be like? How will it compare to the past? How are people going to celebrate? The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999 addresses these and other millennial questions in this special section. In the following pages, former astronaut Sally K. Ride describes her vision of how scientific breakthroughs will impact people's lives in the 21st century, while historian Eric Foner relates America's future to its past. Also included is a calendar of millennial events.

    Other special features and Millennium Fact Boxes throughout The World Almanac highlight intriguing facts and accomplishments in the past century or millennium. For example, in the Sports section sportscaster Bob Costas gives his list of the 25 most dramatic moments in sports in the 20th century, and in the Historical Figures chapter Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. offers a list of the 10 most influential people of the 2d millennium. Other topics range from the American Film Institute's choice of America's 100 best movies (Arts and Media chapter) to the most popular first names of the 20th century (Language chapter), to trends in immigration to the United States since the 1820s (United States History chapter), to dramatic changes in death rates from killer diseases (Vital Statistics chapter).

Today's Dreams, Tomorrow's Realities:
Science in the New Millennium

By Sally K. Ride

    Former astronaut Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. She flew in space a second time in 1984. Since 1989 she has been a physics professor at the University of California at San Diego. She is a member of the Presidential Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology.

    We are lucky to be living at the very moment in history when humanity is taking its first careful steps off the planet. As we become a spacefaring species, our perceptions of our world and place in the universe are changing profoundly. Our entry into the Space Age is changing our way of life on Earth, as well. Our day-to-day world is becoming smaller and smaller, as satellites circling the globe link all parts of the planet by telephone, television, and the Internet. But even as the global community is shrinking, our horizons are expanding. Space probes traveling to other planets and telescopes orbiting above Earth's atmosphere are extending our presence and opening new windows on the universe.

    The technological and scientific advances of the Space and Information Ages are revolutionizing human society, enabling us to communicate and to gather and share information like never before. Today it is possible to send email to friends and colleagues around the world, make airline reservations on the World Wide Web, and view images beamed just minutes before from the surface of Mars. The Olympics are watched as they happen by billions of people the world over, wars are covered live on CNN, and the Academy Awards presentations can be seen from nearly anywhere in the world.

    We are only just beginning to realize the potential of these powerful technologies. The next century will see an explosion in space, communications, and information technologies that will create advances as great as that from the slide rule to the supercomputer.

The Impact of Space and Information Technologies

    When I was orbiting the Earth in the Space Shuttle, I looked down at Africa and saw the stark golden deserts, the long winding Nile, and the great rift valleys, but the boundaries between nations were invisible. The view from space makes it vividly clear that the human-made borders separating one group of people from another are artificial. Space and information technologies are beginning to erase these and other boundaries for everyone.

    Communications and information now regularly flow across national boundaries. Satellite technology has greatly accelerated that flow. Early satellites were crude compared to their modern descendants. The first communications satellite was nothing more than a huge balloon with a reflective coating; signals were simply bounced off its surface and reflected back down to Earth. The first weather satellite was little more than a camera sent into orbit, but when the photographs were put together into a time-lapse movie it gave weather forecasters their first view of global cloud systems. The first spy satellites carried cameras to keep close watch on adversaries, but their reconnaissance photographs were not transmitted down to satellite dishes. Instead, a capsule containing the exposed film was sent back to Earth, snatched out of the air by an airplane, and then taken to a lab to be developed. Though the early satellites were simple, together they demonstrated the potential for worldwide communication, weather forecasting, accurate positioning, and global monitoring of military movements and intentions.

    Advances in satellite technology have been remarkable and rapid. Today, communication satellites carry television signals and telephone conversations all over the world. Weather satellites monitor global weather systems, track storms, and save thousands of lives. Navigation satellites provide precise locations to airplanes, oil tankers, and mountain climbers around the world. Surveillance satellites help keep the peace by watching for troop movements, missile launches, and warhead detonations.

    Even more dramatic advances are on the horizon. New constellations of satellites will provide coverage to every square meter of the planet; combinations of telecommunications technologies will make high bandwidth available everywhere. These advances will draw us closer and closer together as we all become part of a global society, able to communicate at the speed of light. Soon, our voices, images, and ideas may be carried as digitized signals--nearly instantaneously--across national, cultural, and economic boundaries to any place on Earth. Soon, the information accessible in downtown Manhattan will also be accessible in rural Madagascar. Soon, wristwatch-size TVs with instant access to the Internet will allow us to stay connected to family and co-workers anytime, anywhere.

    Navigation satellites may be the next to affect daily life. These satellites instantly provide a user's precise location any place on Earth. Small receivers may soon be standard equipment in every car and every pager, and be found in every hiker's backpack. Learning the most direct route to a new restaurant, or where (exactly) your children are playing after school, will be as quick as a few keystrokes.

    Today, only a small fraction of Earth's roughly 6 billion inhabitants have access to communication and information technologies. The most important outcome of the explosion in these technologies may be the entry of billions of people into the Information Age. Villages in underdeveloped countries will gain access to basic information about clean drinking water and basic sanitation. Young mothers in rural and poverty-stricken regions of developed countries will have access to information about neonatal care and infant nutrition. Remote parts of the world will no longer be unprepared for natural disasters, as weather forecasters will be able to transmit hurricane advisories to places where storms still hit without warning and claim thousands of lives.

    As people from all parts of the world gain access to humanity's knowledge base, and to immediate and constant communication, they will be able to make more informed decisions about their lives, their communities, and their planet. With access to the latest information about health and medicine, billions of people will have the opportunity to live healthier lives. With access to information about their local environment, people can make more thoughtful decisions about the natural resources in their communities. With access to information about regional and remote education, more people will be able to learn basic skills and raise their standard of living. And with access to information about different parts of the world, and the ability to communicate with other cultures, more people will gain an appreciation for the splendid diversity of the human family. The future of these technologies appears to be boundless; they will most certainly have an enormous impact on society in the 21st century.

Stepping Into the Solar System

    Before the Space Age, scientific instruments were chained to Earth's surface. Telescopes strained to gather light from distant planets. Even the most powerful produced only fuzzy images that did not reveal much about the mysterious worlds they were studying. In the absence of science fact, science fiction flourished. As recently as the 1950s, scientists and writers alike speculated about civilizations on Mars and jungles on Venus.

    Now we send spacecraft through the vast expanse of interplanetary space to give us a close-up view of these alien worlds. Though astronauts have never traveled beyond our own moon, humankind can now see the magnificent rings of Saturn, the majestic canyons of Mars, and the stormy atmosphere of Neptune through the eyes of robot spacecraft. These probes have visited every planet except Pluto. They wander the dusty, red surface of Mars; sample the toxic, roiling atmosphere of Venus; and witness volcanoes erupting on Jupiter's moon Io.

New Perspectives From Space

    As these robot explorers radio images and data back to Earth, they are changing our view of the solar system. We are learning that today's Mars is a dry, desolate planet, without water or life on its surface; Venus is an inhospitable inferno, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead; and Jupiter's moon Europa has ice-covered oceans that some speculate might harbor life. The exploration of our solar neighborhood is teaching us that each of these worlds is complex and unique. It is also teaching us that each holds important clues to Earth's origin and evolution. In the coming decades, scientists will examine these worlds in detail and learn what they can tell us about our own planet.

    The new perspective from space is also revolutionizing our understanding of Earth. Until Yuri Gagarin rocketed into history and became the first human to orbit the planet, no one had ever seen Earth from above. When the Apollo astronauts first showed us our magnificent blue planet suspended in space, our perspective as a species changed forever. But today we still know surprisingly little about our own planet. We are only beginning to understand the exquisite interdependence of Earth's land, air, water, and living things; we are only beginning to appreciate the global scale of their interactions and to realize we have the power to throw these systems irreparably out of balance. In the coming decades, fleets of satellites will study the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere, and civilization's influence on them.

    As more data are gathered and fed into increasingly sophisticated computer models, scientists will come to understand the detailed workings of the planet. They will understand natural effects, like El Nino, that dramatically alter weather patterns and affect the economies and living conditions of billions of people around the globe. They will understand the implications of human-induced changes, like global warming and ozone destruction, which threaten to alter the delicate planetary balance that sustains civilization. This detailed understanding of Earth's systems may be our most important scientific advance in the next century.

    In the next millennium, enormous solar sails will unfurl to power planetary spacecraft, and lightweight, miniature instruments will explore every corner of the solar system. Some will return with scoops of comet dust, ice cores from the far side of the moon, and rocks from Mars. A few of the spacecraft launched decades ago are finally about to cross the boundary of the solar system and become our first emissaries into interstellar space. They inspire us to dream of sending spacecraft to other stars. But that grand voyage will have to wait for quantum leaps in technology. Voyager 1 is traveling at over 35,000 miles per hour, yet it will not reach the nearest star for 40,000 years! Though our technology cannot yet match the "warp speed" of Star Trek, this past century has seen modes of travel advance from the horse and buggy to the Space Shuttle, so we can only wonder what marvels the next century will bring.

    One of the most intriguing scientific and philosophical questions yet to be answered is whether or not life exists beyond our own planet. In a universe so vast, with countless other galaxies and billions of stars like our sun, it seems likely that other planets exist with the conditions necessary for life to evolve. But no one knows. In the next decades, telescopes will be able to detect Earth-size planets (if there are any) around the nearest stars. But even in our own solar system there are worlds that might harbor life. Future missions may find microscopic living things in underground hot springs on Mars, or in the waters beneath Europa's icy shroud. In the next century we can expect to answer one of our most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? Or will life develop anywhere conditions are right?

    Our robot explorers allow us to imagine what it would be like to visit an alien world and are paving the way for human explorers to follow. When Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn squeezed into their tiny capsules and blasted into space, they broke humanity's bond with Earth, and lifted us beyond Earth's boundaries and into orbit with them. Now, as we enter the new millennium, the Space Shuttle routinely carries astronauts and instruments into space. The Space Shuttle and fleets of Russian rockets are launching pieces of the International Space Station, an enormous orbiting laboratory nearly the size of a football field. Astronauts will set up long-term housekeeping there, spending months at a time testing new technologies, studying how people and materials respond to weightlessness, and conducting other experiments impossible on Earth.

Future Explorers

    With the Space Station, we will establish a foothold in space, and create a stepping-stone for future exploration. Sometime in the next century, we will extend humanity's presence farther still. Astronauts will return to the moon, this time to stay, and establish a scientific outpost and possibly a launch pad for further exploration. The moon is our nearest neighbor in space--just a 2- or 3-day rocket ride from Earth. Mars, on the other hand, is a long way away! With today's technology, it will take 8 to 10 months to get to the Red Planet. But astronauts will almost certainly embark on an expedition to Mars, the planet most like our own, within the first few decades of the 21st century. Humanity's first visit to another planet will be an historic undertaking. The attention of the world will be focused on the modern pioneers as they travel over 100 million miles through interplanetary space to explore this alien world.

    In the 21st century, space travel will become more commonplace. As technologies mature, travel agencies will begin booking passages on commercial "spaceliners" and adventurous travelers will enjoy vacations in orbit around Earth. As they rise above Earth's atmosphere, these space travelers will experience the transforming view of their home planet's oceans and land, wrapped in a thin cocoon of air, set against the velvety blackness of space.

    Every day, astronauts floating in orbit gaze back at Earth; orbiting telescopes send us images of the universe unobscured by Earth's atmosphere; and distant spacecraft radio information from faraway worlds. We are literally learning new things about our planet, and its place in the universe, every day. In the future, an understanding of the intricacies of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere will enable us to manage the world's natural resources, and avoid disrupting the conditions that make Earth the habitable planet it is today.

    Every day, communications satellites relay billions of conversations around the globe, weather satellites track our planet's severe storms, and millions of computers exchange data and information worldwide. We are literally becoming more of a global community every day. In the future, the accelerating advances in telecommunications, space, and information technologies will likely affect the very structure of our society. As these technologies reach all corners of the world, the importance of political, cultural, and economic boundaries will slowly fade.

    As we enter the new millennium, no one really knows where our scientific and technological innovations will lead. But our past reminds us that what we dare to dream today often becomes reality tomorrow.

Can America Predict Its Future?

By Eric Foner

    Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University since 1982, has written numerous books on American history, including The Story of American Freedom (1998) and Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (1988), for which he won the Bancroft Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

    "No man can have in his mind a conception of the future," wrote the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, "for the future is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future." Hobbes's subject was politics, not prognostication--his point being that deeply-rooted traditional values can in the right circumstances (in this case the English Civil War of the mid-17th century) beget revolutions. But his remark can also be taken as a comment on what we now call futurology--the art, science, or harmless diversion of forecasting events to come. As the world approaches a new century and a new millennium, predictions of all kinds abound. Yet few take into account, as Hobbes reminds us, how powerfully the past informs and shapes the future.

America's View of the Future

    Efforts to predict the future, through oracles, crystal balls, or computer programs, are as old as civilization itself. But the obsession with milestones like the year 2000 is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of human history, people assumed that the future would be much like the past. Until the idea of progress took hold during the Enlightenment, history was generally viewed as a tale of endlessly recurring cycles. Change was impermanent and decline as common as improvement.

    Americans have always had a highly ambiguous attitude toward their own past and, therefore, toward the future. On the one hand, they have always tended to adopt rosier views of the future than other peoples. For Americans, as the writer Ambrose Bierce put it, the future seems always to be a time when "our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured."

    From the beginning, after all, the New World has been the site of idealized hereafters, beginning with Sir Thomas More's 1516 satire Utopia, which initiated the futurist genre, and continuing in 17th-century writings promoting colonization--which promised European settlers a society in which all would be made equal by the bounty of nature.

    The American Revolution greatly enhanced Americans' sense of a future constantly improving and infinitely malleable. "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," wrote Thomas Paine in Common Sense (1776), his clarion call for American independence. "The birthday of a new world is at hand." To Paine and his 19th-century progeny, history was a burden to be discarded, not a guide to the future. "The past," wrote the novelist Herman Melville, "is the textbook of tyrants; the future is the Bible of the free." History meant Europe, with its wars, monarchies, and rigid class divisions; progress meant leaving all that behind. Other peoples might ground their sense of national identity on a common experience dating back over the centuries. America's identity rested on a shared future--the destiny of spreading the blessings of liberty to all humanity.

    To the founding fathers, however, the future, when viewed through the "lamp of experience," suggested danger as well as limitless possibility. An uneasy amalgam of optimism and pessimism hovered over the creation of the American republic. James Madison, the "father" of the constitution, and his friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson believed that the Revolution had opened a new era for the human race, in which political democracy and unhampered commerce would bring Americans an unprecedented prosperity. Yet, simultaneously, these thinkers were apprehensive about the social and political consequences of economic change.

    Convinced that democratic government required an economically independent citizenry, they feared that progress would inevitably produce a society with a wealthy aristocracy akin to the upper classes of Europe, and a nonpropertied majority easily incited by demagogues to use their political power to despoil the rich. In such circumstances, democracy could not flourish. Westward expansion, they hoped, could forestall this day of reckoning by guaranteeing that the United States would remain a society of land-owning farmers and independent artisans for generations to come. But eventually, the continent would be filled, the promise of economic autonomy eroded, and the republic endangered.

    This same combination of optimism and foreboding affected their views on the most serious internal problem confronting the new nation, slavery. Jefferson and Madison, like many of the founders, were certain that slavery would and should be abolished (even though both owned slaves). "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate," Jefferson wrote, "than that these people are to be free." But, he added, it was equally certain that blacks and whites could never live together in harmony or equality. Paralyzed by this conviction, the founders left the contradiction of chattel slavery in a self-proclaimed "empire of liberty" to future generations to solve.

The 19th Century

    The 19th century, of course, proved to be an era of unprecedented economic transformation, spurred by the industrial revolution, the railroad, and the advent, via the telegraph, of virtually instantaneous communication. So rapid was the pace of change that when Charles Francis Adams returned to America in 1868 after having served for 8 years as ambassador to Great Britain, his family felt as strange as if they had been "Tyrian traders of the year BC 1000, landing from a galley fresh from Gibraltar." Not only new technologies, but the destruction of slavery reinforced the idea of history as a narrative of unending progress.

    Yet the late 19th century also confronted the fact that the consequences of change were complex and contradictory. That era of recurrent economic depressions, violent labor conflict, and agrarian unrest raised anew the question that had concerned Jefferson and Madison--could democratic institutions survive in the face of immense inequalities of wealth and economic power? Why, wondered Henry George in the era's greatest best-seller, did "progress and poverty" always seem to accompany each other? The country's bitter social conflict helped to frame visions of the future as the 20th century approached.

    One gets the impression that the years 1700 and 1800 did not produce an outpouring of prognostications about the coming century. But the end of the 19th century certainly did. The most popular, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) and Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1891), each projected contemporary trends into the future, but with starkly different results. In Bellamy's novel, the protagonist falls asleep in the late 19th century only to awaken in the year 2000, in a world where inequality has been banished and social harmony achieved. The process of economic concentration, evident in the rise of corporate enterprise in the 1870s and 1880s, had culminated in the creation of a single Great Trust, now controlled by society at large, for whom all citizens worked in an Industrial Army. Equal rights and an adequate income were now guaranteed to all Americans, women as well as men.

    From today's vantage point, Bellamy's technocratic utopia seems a chilling blueprint for a world of coerced uniformity. Yet it had an immense impact on social thought and inspired thousands to try to make a reality of Bellamy's social vision. For Bellamy held out the prospect of retaining the material abundance made possible by industrial capitalism while restoring an imagined past of broad equality. Far more disturbing to contemporaries was Donnelly's anti-utopian novel, in which industrial progress produces a degraded, impoverished working class that rises up in violent revolution. Civilization perishes in an immense mound of dead bodies (the "column" of the book's title), while Donnelly's hero implausibly finds sanctuary in Uganda (the New World seeking refuge in the Old).

    Americans in 1900 also had to grapple with the same problem of race relations the founders had failed to solve. The abolition of slavery brought with it a "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, but did not produce anything resembling racial justice, except for a brief period after the Civil War when African-Americans enjoyed equality before the law and manhood suffrage. By the turn of the century, a new system of inequality, resting on segregation, disenfranchisement, a labor market rigidly segmented along racial lines, and the threat of lynching for those who challenged the new status quo, was well on its way to being consolidated in the South, with the acquiescence of the rest of the nation. The road to reunion after the Civil War was paved with the shattered dreams of black Americans. Yet few who sought to predict the future around 1900 made much mention of race relations. One exception was the scholar and activist W. E. B. DuBois, whose comment that the "color line" would turn out to be "the problem of the twentieth century" was one of the era's more prescient forecasts.

The 20th Century and Beyond

    Not even DuBois, of course, really anticipated the colossal changes in every aspect of human life that have marked the 20th century. Indeed, most of the pivotal events of the century now drawing to a close have come as complete surprises. World wars, the Great Depression, the social upheaval known as the 1960s (which, among other things, overthrew what DuBois had called the "color line"), the rise and fall of the Soviet Union--so much of what has happened to 20th-century men and women was neither expected nor predicted by them. The record of predictions in this century ought to instill modesty among those attempting to forecast the next.

    Today, while one can encounter anticipations of impending disaster--the earth consumed by a "population bomb" or the environment destroyed by heedless economic growth--most prognostication remains decidedly optimistic. Even though the 20th century, with its world wars, crimes against humanity, and the social costs of scientific advances like the splitting of the atom, has thrown the idea of progress into disarray, predictions of the next century tend to assume that new technology will solve our problems. Today, cyberspace is hailed as the site of a new, egalitarian utopia, where individuals can reinvent themselves to their heart's desire. Once they turn off their computers, however (and, increasingly, on-line as well), people encounter the same material world, with its opportunities and discontents. What is important about technology, moreover, is not simply how it advances, but who controls it and to what ends.

    I would like to propose the heretical idea that in thinking about the future, we pay less attention to predicting what changes will take place and more to the implications of different possible changes for existing values and institutions. If anything is constant in history, it is change. Yet the same issues that preoccupied the men who created the American republic--about the social foundations of democratic government and about the possibility of racial justice in a heterogeneous society--continue to shape American life and, I believe, will do so in the future.

    Will progress produce a widely-shared abundance or a continued widening of the gap between social classes (or, more precisely, on the evidence of the 1990s, between the rich and everyone else)? Will democratic self-government survive the next century or will the continuing internationalization of economic relations render the nation-state essentially irrelevant? Will the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the American population promote greater toleration and harmony or will it produce fragmentation and bitterness as the affluent (mostly white) wall themselves off from the increasingly nonwhite groups at the bottom of the social order?

    History suggests that such issues will help to shape life in America of the 21st century. The answers to the questions defy accurate forecast, for they rest on the decisions of innumerable men and women about how to order their lives. If history proves anything, it is that life, fortunately, is unpredictable. But these are some of the issues upon which the future will hinge.