Page 54 - 2000

Michel Lipchitz/AP

M illions gathered all over Europe and
gazed curiously skyward to see the moon
smother the light of the sun as the last total
solar eclipse or the millennium swept across
the continent in August. The eclipse,
moving at a speed of 1,500 m.p.h., cast Maurice Greene of the United States made a
darkness on the land for about two last-minute decision to run the 100 meters in
minutes. It w ill be 82 years before
an Athens, Greece, invitational in June. When
Europeans see another solar eclipse. it was over, he had run the fastest time in
history. Greene finished the 100 meters with a
time of 9 .79, a full five-hundreths of a second
faster than the record set by Donovan Bailey
of Canada at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Prince Edward, the youngest
child of Queen Elizabeth, and
publicist Sophie Rhys-Jones were
married in a modest ceremony at
St. George's Chapel inside
W indsor Castle in June. The
prince chose to forgo the royal
pageantry that had accompanied
the weddings of his siblings, most
notably Prince Charles, all of
which ended in divorce.
Michael Probst/AP

Alastair G rant/AP

The advent of revolutionizing
weaponry in the early 12th
Century, such as crude cannons,
paper grenades and iron bombs,
changed the way battles were
fought. Gunpowder allowed
weapons to be designed for
tactical use and eventually led to
standing armies and centralized
power.
In 1117, the first known
reference to the nautical
compass was made in a book
by Chinese scholar Zhu Yu.
Although the first European