ANNAPOLIS – If you’re a twentysomething man driving alone in a Ford during the daytime this December, put this paper down and keep your eyes on the road

SILVER SPRING – Kenny Beath dismisses all the rumors his friends tell him, that the first baby of 2000 will win a free education, a $1 million prize or other windfalls

WHEATON – Immigrants made up 6

WHEATON – Nikita Chernyakov does not drink often, but said he is often asked if he likes vodka

ANNAPOLIS – There are more men and women drivers on the roads these days, but the fairer sex is involved in a bigger share of fatal crashes than 20 years ago, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics

SILVER SPRING – As if there weren’t enough potential Y2K computer problems already, Debbie Hagopian has to grapple with the possibility that she may be giving birth when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve

WASHINGTON – Turn-of-the-century dreamers weren’t too off the mark when they predicted we would be riding in “airships,” traveling in express trains at 100 mph and living longer lives by the end of the 20th century

WASHINGTON – Diseases that could be cured today with a trip to the doctor’s or a short hospital stay were deadly business — literally — in 1910

WASHINGTON – Marion Friedman was “a sickly child” in the early 1920s, when the doctor would drop by his house every week to check on him

WASHINGTON – James McKusick thinks “education has vastly improved in the last century,” but that’s about the only nice thing the English professor has to say about the public school system