See also: 1998 in piracy, other events of 1999, 2000 in piracy and the list of 'years of Piracy'.

Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American writer, film producer and scholar. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and has lived in Los Angeles, California since 1973. Taplin graduated from Princeton University in 1969 and is currently the Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Taplin is married to the photographer Maggie Smith and has three children: Daniela Lundberg, a film producer; Nicholas Taplin, a recording engineer and Blythe Taplin, a human rights lawyer.

Taplin's early production work included producing concerts for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first major feature film, Mean Streets which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for the Public Broadcasting Service) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until the End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and chosen for the Cannes Film Festival six times. Taplin is the author of Outlaw Blues: Adventures in the Counter-Culture Wars, an enhanced eBook from Annenberg Press.

John Sachs (born 1957) is a British television presenter, voiceover and commentator known for his narration on the original series of Gladiators and as a long time DJ on London's 95.8 CapitalFM.

Sachs has been involved in the entertainment industry for the past 25 years. He has been a radio and television broadcaster for 17 years with 12 of those years spent on Capital FM, where he won numerous awards, namely Variety Club ILR Presenter of the years and Silver at the World Radio awards in New York. Other radio stations include Jazz FM (now Smooth FM), BBC Radio 2, and Y100 in Florida, United States. His television credits include Gladiators, Four Square, Take Your Pick, The Brian Conley Show and currently Dancing on Ice. He has also worked on a variety of television and radio adverts. He was also a well known presenter on Swansea Sound in Swansea, Wales. Sachs founded Talking Heads Productions in 1993, making television and radio commercials.

He is the son of Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs.

Big Mouth (Lakota: Itȟáŋka) (born 1822–died October 29, 1869) was an Oglala-born chieftain of the Brulé Lakota, highly regarded by the Brulé for his bravery and aggressive military leadership. He was one of the chiefs who signed the second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 and remained a bitter opponent of further American settlement, ridiculing Spotted Tail and other Sioux chieftains upon their return from a mission to Washington, DC. He was sixth son of Old Chief Smoke (1774–1864) and twin brother of Blue Horse.

One of the principal chiefs at the Whetstone Agency, located along the Missouri River, where most of the Brulé and Oglala bands had gathered, Big Mouth gained increasing support for his stance among members of the tribe. He criticized what he described as Spotted Tail's reversal of Sioux policy, saying Spotted Tail had been entertained by American politicians and given a personal tour through the major cities of the east coast. Faced with increasing opposition to his leadership, Spotted Tail visited Big Mouth at his lodge, where, upon approaching the entrance, Big Mouth was seized by two warriors and held down while Spotted Tail shot and killed him.