20 Years Ago on AOL.com: May 12, 1999 -- One Week to "Phantom Menace"

May 12, 1999: Star Wars Episode I: A Phantom Menace was set to open the following week, so we were promoting advance ticket sales (which were still kind of a new thing back then). We started with a pic of Jake Lloyd as young Anakin. The PACT Pledge continues in the top text promo, and in no way could the "Do It Digitally" headline be construed as a double entendre, nossir:

For an afternoon update, we updated the Star Wars promo text; you can also see the continuing My News promo referring to Russian president Boris Yeltsin (facing impeachment) firing Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov:

For the PM update, we switched to a photo of Jedi duo Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson; in the headlines, we see Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announcing his resignation:

[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.]