Timeline August 1999

Events in August 1999 8

• 1913 – 1999 Victor Mature (1913-1999) American actor, the muscular star of Samson and Delilah and The Robe.
• 1999 US Open 1999 Men: Andre Agassi · Women: Serena Williams Serena Williams won her first Grand Slam.
• 1999 Wins PGA Championship First major title in two years Woods captured the PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club, holding off a hard-charging Sergio Garcia for his second career major. The win kicked off a stretch of dominance in which Woods would win 10 of the next 14 majors he entered, redefining expectations for excellence in professional golf.
• 1999 Victor Mature dies in Rancho Santa Fe Victor Mature dies aged 86.
• 1999 Izmit Earthquake Magnitude 7.6 quake devastates northwestern Turkey A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Izmit region of northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. It was one of the deadliest earthquakes of the decade and exposed widespread construction failures. The disaster prompted major reforms to Turkish building codes.
• 1999 Second Chechen War Begins Russian forces invade Chechnya after Dagestan incursion Russia launched a military campaign against the separatist republic of Chechnya following an armed incursion into neighboring Dagestan by Chechen-based militants and a series of apartment bombings blamed on Chechen terrorists. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the offensive, which boosted his political standing ahead of becoming president. The war continued for years and resulted in the capture of Grozny.
• 1999 East Timor Independence Referendum and Violence Vote for independence triggers militia violence East Timorese voters overwhelmingly chose independence from Indonesia in a UN-supervised referendum on August 30, 1999. Pro-Indonesian militias responded with a violent campaign that killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands. An Australian-led international peacekeeping force, INTERFET, was deployed in September to restore order.
• 1999 GeForce 256 — the first GPU Nvidia releases the GeForce 256 on 31 August 1999, coining the term GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to describe a chip that handles geometry and lighting calculations previously performed by the CPU. The GeForce 256 delivers dramatic gaming performance improvements and establishes Nvidia's GeForce brand as the leading gaming GPU line. The GPU concept — a massively parallel processor for visual computation — will prove one of the most consequential hardware innovations of the 21st century.