Page 68 - 2000

Doug Mills/AP I

The surprising St. Louis Rams shocked the world first with a 13-3
season and then by rolling to the team's first world championship
with a 2 3 -16 win over the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV in
January. The Rams' success had a great deal to do with their
explosive offense, which was led by first-year quarterback Kurt
Warner. A former star for the Iowa Barnstormers in the upstart
Arena Football League, W arner took full advantage of his break in
the NFL en route to earning League MVP and Super Bowl MVP
honors. Notable was the fact that just two years before Warner's
storybook season he was out of football and stocking shelves at a
grocery store in Iowa.

Michael Caulfield/AP
1. Kurt Warner
L L L
2. Christopher Reeve
Who was the hero 3. Mark McGwire
o f the year? 4. B it CLinton
5. WaLter Payton

Alaska Airlines Flight 261 lost control and plunged into
the ocean off southern California in February, killing all
88 people aboard. Investigators were looking into an
unexplained loud noise picked up on the plane's cockpit
voice recorder about a minute before it crashed. Early
speculation was that a bomb might have been the
source of the noise, but that was later ruled out by
investigators. The Alaska A irlines crash was one of
several air disasters or mishaps that occurred in late
1 999 and early 2000.

The "method of invention" was said to Railroads and other industrialized
be the 19th Century's greatest invention. machines brought the invading
white man into the western plains of
At the center was Thomas Edison, who
in 1879, gave humans the power to cre­ North America, where tribes of Native
ate light without fire by inventing a long- Americans were living in harmony.
lasting, affordable incandescent lamp. Faced with the loss of their land, resis­
Edison didn't stop there. His other notable tance was inevitable. A combined
inventions included the phonograph, force of Sioux and Cheyenne annihi­
movie camera, and microphone. In addi­ lated Gen. George Custer's cavalry at
tion, he had a hand in the development Little Bighorn in 1876, provoking bru­
of television and the telephone. Edison tal reprisals. W hile the surviving
died 52 years after lighting up the world, Indians were herded into reservations,
and on the night following his funeral, Popperfoto/Archive Photos some were offered roles in a theatrical
Americans dimmed their lights to honor him. fantasy. In 1883, Buffalo Bill organized