20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Mar. 5, 1999 -- Oscar Votes, Stocks Soar, "Cruel Intentions," Kick Butt's Butt Kicked

March 5, 1999: We started out the day with a meaningless member (AOL, not Academy) voting poll for the Oscars featuring a Gwyneth Paltrow pic from Shakespeare in Love, along with Local fun and NCAA apparel:

We did a mid-morning switch to feature the soaring Dow (which broke through 9,700); we might have done this even if we weren't overly focused on tech stocks:

For the PM update, we switched to a pic of Sarah Michele Gellar in Cruel Intentions. However, look at the "Kick Butt" headline for Tae-Bo workout tapes and gear...

...which we had to reword not long after to "Kung-Fu Fighting"—apparently, "butt" was too spicy for our audience (or at least our leadership):

[Series note: 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 under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]