question:  Who died in 1999?
context: Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official "1999 In Review" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person "rather annoying and less than professional") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as "Today's Papers" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with "amazing results"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent Slate contributor) 2.
output:  Mel Torme
options:  Jim Landau  Mel Torme  Susan Hoechstetter  Thomas Harris