The "millennium bug" actually could have happened at the turn of any regular ol' century--. The concern was valid: Many computing systems used two digits to store the year, and so the rollover from 99 to 00 could cause various logic errors (such as recognizing the New Year as 19100) that would cause the system to fail.

Luckily, technicians were aware of the issue (it was first mentioned in print as early as 1984), and . While the fear-mongering media no doubt overhyped Y2K, it was a real problem that would have caused some large-scale issues had your trusty IT guys not been on the ball.

Years: 2008-2009

Predicted outcome: Not applicable