Never heard that one…I don’t remember any problem with 1999 that way. The only one I remember was the Gregorian calendar turn over…though since there was no year zero the 2000 year anniversary was actually in 2001.
A quick google search only turns up stuff about the Mayan calendar thingy in 2012. I seem to recall though that there were cycles in the Mayan calendar sort of like the Chinese animal years interleaved with longer and shorter periods where events are supposed to cycle through (ETA: think of it as multiple cog wheels of varying size, each with a number of days or years. As they turn you get various alignments of days, years and longer periods which in tern mean…gods know). From memory certain events are supposed to happen in each cycle and subcycle…so perhaps 1999 was one of these turning points for the last of the smaller cycles. Or something. I never really paid all THAT much attention to this kind of thing.
-XT