It’s always about the economy and on July 9th 1999 it was STILL about the economy and the weather.

Owing to a Census Bureau report, newly revised figures about just how bad things were in the otherwise great economy discovered some 49 million Americans couldn’t afford food or a even place to live had significantly grown over the previous year.

Some blamed falsely depicted rosy scenarios – others claimed America WAS doing great economically, it was just that Americans were rotten at saving money and that even those with what were considered upper middle class incomes were having trouble paying bills and buying food. The economy they said, we sky-high but the nation’s savings rate had reached rock bottom.

In other news former astronaut Charles P. “Pete” Conrad, who in 1969 became the third man to walk on the moon, uttering an exuberant “Whoopie!” as he stepped on the lunar surface, died in a motorcycle accident. He was 69. Conrad, who also flew two Gemini missions in the 1960s and commanded first Skylab mission in 1973, crashed on a turn Thursday on Highway 150 near Ojai and died five hours later at Ojai Valley Community Hospital. Conrad, who lived in Huntington Beach near Los Angeles, was on a trip to Monterey with his wife, Nancy, and friends, Ventura County Deputy Coroner James Baroni said. Baroni said Conrad’s injuries didn’t initially appear to be severe, but he got worse : after arriving at the hospital. He had some chest pain and had more trouble breathing. “He showed that he had some type of internal bleeding and they needed to do exploratory surgery,” Baroni said. But doctors were unable to revive him.

And the Summer weather was having a field day as heavy rains poured down on Las Vegas Thursday turning streets into rivers, stranding motorists on top of their cars. “The Strip is a lake up over the curbs into our fountains” said Phil Cooper spokesman for Caesars Palace hotel-casino “I’ve been here 10 year’s and it’s the worst I’ve ever seen” The rains appeared to have led to the deaths of two people a man whose body was found in a flood channel and a woman who died in a traffic accident officials said Ron McQueen a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said the flooding was the worst in Las Vegas in 15 years.

And that’s just a small slice of what happened on July 9th 1999 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.

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