CNN 2000 (Part One)

 

I can't remember where this came from. It might have been eBay. It's something I always meant to post, but never got around to doing so.

Like the earlier ABC 2000 Millennium Highlights video, this is a compilation of New Year's 1999/2000 celebrations from all around the world. 

CNN is the very first 24-hour cable news channel. The brainchild of media mogul Ted Turner, CNN launched on June 1st, 1980, which means that, this June, it will be on the near side of 50. It's frightening how swiftly the years fly by. 

Since its debut, it has been ubiquitous in airports and hotel lobbies all around the world. That's pretty much my only experience with it, for we were antenna-only until the early 2010s. Well, that, and M's snarky quip in GoldenEye: "Unlike the Americans, we [at MI-6] prefer not to get our bad news from CNN."

Like the earlier ABC video, this begins on Millennium Island in Kiribati and moves across 26 time zones from New Zealand and Australia to Asia, Europe, Africa, the United Kingdom, and finally the United States.

The most notable moments, the ones that I personally found the most interesting:

In Australia, Sydney Harbour Bridge exploded with a gorgeous fireworks show all along its length, accompanied to a majestic orchestral arrangement of "Auld Lang Syne."

In South Korea ("the good side, where they make all the widgets," as my high-school Consumer Education teacher would have said), the news displayed the first 21st Century baby born in the country, while a huge pendulum swung for the Countdown.

In Hong Kong, the government's official celebration saw a wingsuit-clad Jackie Chan fly toward the stage on wires to deliver the keynote speech.

In Moscow, Boris Yeltsin passed the presidential torch to Vladimir Putin. 

In Egypt, the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx--the last surviving Wonder of the World--basked in the glow of a fireworks show in a dusk-to-dawn celebration with a full soundtrack composed by Jean-Michel Jarre. The year 2000 marked Egypt's seventh millennium.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela passed a presidential candle to his successor, Thabo Mbeki. He lit this candle in his former prison cell on Robben Island, where he served an 18-year sentence as a prisoner of conscience. 

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower boasted a gorgeous pyrotechnics show, with sparklers beginning at its base, as if to resemble a shuttle preparing to launch, followed by a countdown fireworks going up along its length and top and, at the stroke of midnight, little comets shooting out from along the tower.

In a unified Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate lit up with fireworks and lasers. It's meaningful because Berlin spent most of the 20th Century carved in half, with a wall stretching for miles to separate the East and West. In fact, the Gate is where Ronald Reagan delivered his speech: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The new, healed Berlin was only a little more than eleven years old in 2000.

In Rome, Pope John Paul II delivered his annual speech from St. Peter's Basilica. The Pope will become very important in a long-form book report for the Lenten season...stay tuned.

In London, the Millennium Dome, the world's largest domed structure, hosted a huge party, while the Queen of England lit a beacon in the Thames River, which in turn lit beacons elsewhere in England and in Scotland and Wales. 39 tons of fireworks erupted along the Thames in a 15-minute show that you could see from space.

In North America...ah, that one deserves its own article, because almost every state had its own celebration. The North America side of things gets very short shrift in this video, since we're all aware of Times Square and Las Vegas, and they all get their own local news coverage. This video served much more as a way of bringing the world's parties to American viewers.