On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Review of Boycott Laws The Supreme Court will decide if Massachusetts can require state agencies to boycott companies doing business in Myanmar. Many states and cities have such laws. PAGE A20
Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column on success of Hofstra University football program under coach Joe Gardi; Gardi discusses problems besetting New York Jets, which use Hofstra as its training facility; photo (M)
Roberta Smith assesses current art scene in London; says 'Sensation artists' or 'Saatchi artists' represented at controversial show at Brooklyn Museum of Art are being absorbed into an expanding art scene; photos (M)
National Academy of Sciences, citing evidence that medical errors cause tens of thousands of deaths each year, calls for new federal agency to protect patients and says Congress should require all health care providers to report mistakes that cause serious injury or death; report by academy's Institute of Medicines says health care is decade or more behind other high-risk industries in attention to basic safety; says in hospitals alone, research suggests that medical errors kill 44,000 to 98,000 people each year, compared with toll from highway accidents or other diseases; says safety experts could prevent many of injuries or deaths if they systematically collected and analyzed data on medical errors to identify causes; says US should strive, as minimum goal, to reduce medical errors by 50 percent in next five years; calls on Congress to create new federal agency, Center for Patient Safety, to set detailed national goals for reducing medical errors (M)
Richard Bernstein column says children are so enthralled by J K Rowling's Harry Potter mysteries because these stories, like classic fairy tales, give uncanny expression to terrors of childhood and show a way to a better future; cites Bruno Bettelheim, the child psychologist; photo (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of November 24, 1999, covering November 30, 1999.
Faith Hill
Mariah Carey
Santana
Rage Against the Machine
Backstreet Boys
1999Exxon and Mobil sign a US$73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating ExxonMobil, the world's largest company.[†]
Exxon Mobil Corporation is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was formed in 1999 following the merger of Exxon and Mobil. It is vertically integrated across the entire oil and gas industry, as well as within its chemicals division, which produces plastic, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products. As the largest U.S.-based oil and gas company, ExxonMobil is the seventh-largest company by revenue in the U.S. and 13th-largest in the world. It is the largest investor-owned oil company in the world. Approximately 55.56% of the company's shares are held by institutions, the largest of which as of 2019 were The Vanguard Group (8.15%), BlackRock (6.61%), and State Street Corporation (4.83%).
1999In Seattle, United States, demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.[†]
Seattle is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the county seat of King County, the most populous county in Washington. The Seattle metropolitan area's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-most populous in the United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities.
1999British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.[†]
British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer that was formed in 1977. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. It purchased Marconi Electronic Systems, the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company, in 1999 to form BAE Systems.
In 1999, the world population was approximately 6,089,006,339 people[†]