BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: CNN 20 with a look back now at the day when our big boss, Ted Turner, gave a billion dollars to the U.N.</s>RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): I will always remember the night that Ted Turner announced his billion-dollar gift to the United Nations. It was a speech, a United Nations Association dinner at a midtown hotel in Times Square.</s>ROTH: Media titan Ted Turner stunned an audience of U.N. diplomats and officials with an offer the U.N. can't refuse.</s>TED TURNER, FOUNDER, CNN: To donate a billion dollars to the U.N. causes myself.</s>ROTH: The donation will go to a nonprofit foundation. Turner told "LARRY KING LIVE" how he wants the $1 billion spent.</s>TURNER: Go to all kinds of humanitarian causes. It's going to go to help give inoculations to kids who -- the programs of the United Nations, and for refugees and for people, you know, that have been in hurricanes that have knocked down their houses. It's going to go to the poorest people in the world, the ones that need the help the most.</s>ROTH: Turner tipped off the U.N. secretary-general a few hours before the event.</s>KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: And I think it's a great gesture, it's a noble gesture. And I hope others who are also fortunate and have the capacity to give will follow Ted Turner's example.</s>ROTH: There might have been some skepticism whether the money would come through, but it didn't take long for a foundation to be set up and for the money to start flowing.
CNN 20: Ted Turner Announces Gift to the U.N.