OCaml would like to have a word with you. In 2005 it already had better static analysis and correctness on object oriented stuff than what Java struggles to approach today.
OCaml is also from 1996. And I say 2005 because that's when I started using it, not when it started being useful.
By that time it supported parametric generics, multiple inheritance, named parameters, optionals instead of nulls everywhere, compile to machine code and quite a few extra things that I couldn't understand at the time.
It got really useful by 1998.