Tuesday, July 24, 2018

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 24, 1998 — US Capitol Shooting

[In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary.]

July 24, 1998: Saving Private Ryan opened; it was in the lead image promo.

Then, another conveniently placed bit of breaking news during the business day happened: the 1998 US Capitol shooting, where a gunman shot and killed two US Capitol Police officers (OK, convenient isn't the right word.)


1998_07_24b

This was the attack that ultimately led to the creation of the US Capitol Visitor Center.

I swapped out the first text promo, which was a generic Local Web Center (basically Digital City) promo, and replaced it with the news item:

1998_07_24

In other happenings, this was the first promo block promotion for AOL NetMail. I think at this time it was still powered by an ActiveX plugin; it would become a lot more central to the site.

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