January 3, 2000 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
January 3, 2000 – The day everyone breathed a sigh of relief and the day everyone got a little misty. The relief came in the form of a clean bill of health over the infamous Y2K scare; the dreaded and anticipated computer glitch that was predicted to wreak havoc on the world and shut everything down as we knew it. Scenarios ran the gamut from worldwide panic to the end of the planet. None of which happened. Fixes and patches were installed, updates and upgrades were performed, and in the end the relief turned into a streak of cynicism, snorting the Billion + dollars spent fixing the potential problem was just hype. Despite the sour grapes, many asked the question “well, how do you know?” It was a response no one really had an answer for. Could’ve been nothing – could’ve been a lot.
So while the rest of the world was breathing a sigh of relief, the sighs of exasperation were coming from the Middle East as observers cautioned everyone not to get hopes up over the latest Israeli–Syrian peace talks. Another series of fits and starts in the long road to something resembling peace in that region.
But everyone agreed, at least in America, that the sad news of the day came from Charles M. Schulz, creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip. It was a daily fixture in American Popular Culture since the early 1950s and Schulz, now suffering from colon Cancer, could no longer keep the pace of a daily strip going. To many it was the end of an era, and newspapers throughout the country ran the last Peanuts strip on their front page, above everything else. Snoopy sitting at the typewriter staring off, and a message from Charles Schulz thanking readers and fans for all the years and all the love.
It was the end of an era alright.
And that’s a little of what went on, this January 3, 2000 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
