January 1 - Aruba became independent of Curaçao, though it remains in free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Spain and Portugal are admitted into the European Community.

 

January 28. The space shuttle Challenger, was the first mission to put a civilian in space, a teacher in space. Seventy-four seconds into the launch the O-rings in the solid rocket boosters gave way in the cold weather and caused a horrible explosion. Today there are 42 Challenger Learning Centers in 26 states, the UK and Canada. Challenger Center is an international, not-for-profit education organization that was founded by the families of the astronauts from Challenger Space Shuttle mission 51-L. The Challenger Center for Space Science Education uses students' natural enthusiasm for space to create innovative learning experiences for imaginative young minds. By transforming the way teachers teach and students learn, Challenger Center is creating a new generation of explorers.

 

The Internet's Domain Name System had just been created.

 

February 19 - After waiting 37 years, the United States Senate approves a treaty outlawing genocide.

 

February 27 - The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.

 

April 13 - Pope John Paul II officially visits the Synagogue of Rome — the first time a modern Pope had visited a synagogue.

 

April 17 - Treaty signed, ending Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly.

 

April 26 - In Ukraine, one of the reactors at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear plant explodes creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. 31 are killed directly by the incident, many thousands more were exposed to significant amounts of radioactive material, vast territories in Ukraine and Belarus rendered uninhabitable.

 

August 31 - Cargo ship Khian Sea departs from the docks of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, carrying 14,000 tons of toxic waste. It will wander the seas for the next 16 months trying to find a place to dump its cargo. In January 1988 the crew finally dumped 4000 tons of the waste near Gonaives in Haiti. The rest of the ash disappeared en route from Singapore to Sri Lanka in November 1988. The case contributed to the creation of the Basel Convention about disposal of hazardous waste.

 

Michael Porter publishes in HBR 1987 an article about a study of the diversification records of 33 large U.S. companies from 1950 to 1986 , that shows that diversification--whether through acquisition, joint venture, or start-up--generally has not brought the competitive advantages or profitability expected. Companies have the best chance of being successful at diversification if they capitalize on the existing relationships between business units by having them transfer skills and share activities.

 

Masaaki Imai was born in Tokyo. In 1986, Masaaki Imai established the Kaizen Institute to help Western companies introduce kaizen concepts, systems and tools. That same year, he published his book on Japanese management, Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. This best-selling book has since been translated into 14 languages. The "zen" in Kaizen emphasizes the learn-by-doing aspect of improving production. This philosophy is focused in a different direction from the "command-and-control" improvement programs of the mid-20th century.

 

W. Edwards Deming's success in Japan led to the introduction of the Total Quality principles in the US.

 

 

1987

 

April 13 - Portugal and China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.

 

May 11 - The first heart-lung transplant takes place (Baltimore, Maryland)

 

October 19 - Black Monday: stock market falls sharply around the world.

 

December 8 - First Intifada begins.

 

 

1988

 

May 15 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army begins its withdraw from Afghanistan.

 

August 20 - Iran-Iraq war finished, ends costing an estimated 1 million lives.

 

November 15 - Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers, by a vote of 253 to 46.

 

November 17 - The Netherlands becomes the second country to get connected to the Internet.

 

December 2 - Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islamic-dominated state.

 

December 2 - Cyclone in Bangladesh leaves 5 million homeless - thousands dead.

 

 

1989

 

February 10 - Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party.

 

February 14 - The first of the 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit.

 

February 16 - Pan Am flight 103 crashes over Scotland: Investigators announce that the cause of the crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player.

 

March 2 - 12 European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end century.

 

March 18 - In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found in the Great Pyramid of Giza.

 

March 24 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground.

 

March 27 - The first free elections for the Soviet parliament go against the Communist Party.

 

April 21 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Students in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Nanjing started to strike.

 

May 2 - Hungary dismantles 150 miles of barbed wire fencing, opening its border to Western Europe.

 

May 30 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 10 m (33 ft) high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

 

June 3 - The Ayatollah Khomeini dies.

 

June 4 - The Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing and is covered live on television.

 

June 4 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland spark off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.

 

August 23 - Baltic Way, an uninterrupted 600 kilometers human chain, in which two million indigenous people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then still occupied by the Soviet Union, joined hands to demand freedom and independence.

 

November 7 - Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia and becomes the first elected African American governor in the United States.

 

November 9 - Cold War: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Germany for the first time in decades (the next day celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down).

 

November 16 - South African President FW de Klerk announces scrapping of Separate Amenities Act.

 

November 17 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins - In Czechoslovakia a peaceful student demonstration in Prague is severely beaten back by riot police. This sparks a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Communist government (it succeeded on December 29).

 

December 3 - Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George Herbert Walker Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end.

 

December 14 - Chile holds its first free election in 16 years.

 

December 17 - Brazil holds its first free election in 29 years. Fernando Collor de Mello wins the election.

 

December 20 - United States invades Panama (Operation Just Cause) to overthrow Manuel Noriega - he takes refuge in the Vatican mission until January 3, 1990.

 

December 25 - Nicolae Ceaucescu, Romanian former President and communist dictator and his wife Elena are executed.

 

America Online (AOL.com) is launched, although the internet provider was founded in 1985 as Quantum Computer Services.

 

 

1990

 

January 31 - The first McDonald's opens in Moscow, USSR.

 

February 2 - Apartheid: In South Africa President F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to legally function again and promises to set Nelson Mandela free.

 

February 7 - Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly of power.

 

March 21 - After 75 years of South African rule Namibia becomes independent.

 

April 24 - West and East Germany agree to merge currency and economies on July 1.

 

June 1 - U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production and to start destroying each of their nation's stockpiles.

 

August 2 - Gulf War: Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.

 

August : Peter Senge publishes "The Fifth Discipline" in the US

 

October 15 - Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at lessening the Cold War tensions and reforming his nation.

 

November 13 - The first known web page is written.

 

November 29 - Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council passes UN Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by Tuesday, January 15, 1991.

 

December 16 - Jean-Bertrand Aristide is elected president of Haiti, ending three decades of military rule.

 

 

1991

 

January 4 - The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to condemn Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

 

January 17 - Operation Desert Storm begins.

 

April 18 - Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq declares some of its chemical weapons and materials to the UN, as required by Resolution 687, and claims that it does not have biological weapons program.

 

April 29 - A tropical cyclone hits Bangladesh killing an estimated 138,000 people.

 

August 25 - Student Linus Torvalds posts a messages to Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix about the new operating system kernel he has been developing.

 

September 6 - The name "Saint Petersburg" is restored to Russia's second-largest city, which had been renamed "Leningrad" in 1924.

 

September 21 - Armenia declares independence from the Soviet Union.

 

November 23 - Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, issues a public statement confirming that he is stricken with AIDS. He would die of complications the next day.

 

November 27 - The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopts UN Security Council Resolution 721, opening the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.

 

December 4 - Pan American World Airways ends operations.

 

December 31 - Soviet Union officially ceases to exist

 

 

1992

 

January 15 - The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceases to exist. Slovenia and Croatia gain independence.

 

January 16 - El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign a pact in Mexico City that ends a 12 year civil war that claimed at least 75,000.

 

January 26 - Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia is going to stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.

 

February 7 - Signing of the Maastricht treaty, which founded the European Union.

 

February 18 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The Executive Chairman of UNSCOM details Iraq's refusal to abide by UN Security Council disarmament resolutions.

 

April 6 - Serbian troops begin to bombard Sarajevo.

 

April 27 - Betty Boothroyd elected the first woman to be Speaker of the British House of Commons.

 

July 10 - In Miami, Florida, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.

 

 

1993

 

January 5 - Washington State executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).

 

April 23 - WHO declares tuberculosis a Global Emergency.

 

June 6 - Mongolia holds its first direct presidential elections.

 

June 25 - Kim Campbell becomes Canada's nineteenth, and first female, Prime Minister.

 

July 31 - Windows NT 3.1 is released.

 

September 13 - PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shake hands in Washington D.C., after signing a peace accord.

 

Michael Hammer & James Champy publish their book "Reengineering the Corporation".

 

 

1994

 

April 6 - Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and president of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira died when a missile shoots down their jet near Kigali, Rwanda. This is taken as a pretext to begin the Rwandan Genocide.

 

April 26 - South Africa holds its first fully multiracial elections.

 

May 1 - Formula One driver Ayrton Sena of Brazil, age 34, is killed in a high-speed, single-car accident during the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy

 

May 6 - The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers over seven years to complete, opens between England and France. Passengers can now travel between the two countries in 35 minutes.

 

May 9 - Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president .

 

July 25 - Israel and Jordan sign the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace which formally ends the state of war that has existed between the nations since 1948.

 

August 31 - The Irish Republican Army announces a "complete cessation of military operations" from midnight.

 

September 3 - Cold War: Russia and the People's Republic of China agree to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.

 

December 19 - A planned exchange rate correction of the Mexican Peso to the US Dollar, becomes causes a massive financial meltdown in Mexico, unleashing the 'Tequila' effect on global financial markets. This will prompt a US$ 50,000 million 'bailout' by the Clinton administration.

 

December 19 - Civil unions between homosexuals are made legal in Sweden.

 

 

1995

 

June 13 - French president Jacques Chirac announces the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.

 

July 28 - Network Solutions announces a new policy to help companies protect their trademarks on the Internet.

 

September - DVD, optical disc storage media format, is announced.

 

November 4 - After attending a peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is mortally wounded by a right-wing Israeli gunman. (He later died on the operating table at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv)

 

Amazon.com is launched as the first online bookstore.

 

Daniel Goleman first publishes "Emotional Intelligence" in the US.

 

eBay is founded.

 

General Electric adopts the Six Sigma model created by Motorola in the 80s.

 

 

1996

 

January 29 - President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear testing.

 

February 9 - IRA ceasefire ends with a one-ton bomb in London's Canary Wharf District - 2 dead.

 

February 17 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world chess champion Garry Kasparov beats the IBM "Deep Blue" supercomputer in a chess match.

 

July 5 - Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born. It will prematurely die prematurely in February 2003.

 

The Detroit of India and port city, Madras, is renamed Chennai.

 

General Motors EV1 launched. The EV1 is the first electric car to go into mass production.

 

 

1997

 

January 19 - Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city.

 

April 22 - France supports new transitional government for Zaire, withdrawing its support of Mobutu Sese Seko.

 

April 22 - In Lima, Peru, after four-month standoff, government troops storm the Japanese ambassador's residence - they release 71 hostages and kill one hostage and 14 captors.

 

July 1 - The United Kingdom hands sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.

 

August 31 - Diana, Princess of Wales is taken to a hospital after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris. She is pronounced dead at 4:00 the next morning.

 

September 5 Death of Mother Teresa.

 

October 27 - Stock markets around the world crash because of a global economic crisis scare.

 

December 3 - In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign a treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.

 

December 29 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the chickens within its territory (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.

 

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997.

 

The Toyota Prius comes to showrooms, only in Japan. The Prius was the first hybrid vehicle to go into full production. The Prius would come to US showrooms in 2000.

 

 

1998

 

January 1 - Smoking is banned in all California bars and restaurants.

 

January 12 - 19 European nations agree to forbid human cloning.

 

January 28 - Ford Motor Company announces the buyout of Volvo Cars for $6.45 billion.

 

March 2 - Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

 

May 7 - Apple Computer unveils the iMac.

 

August 17 - Russian financial crisis: Devaluation of the ruble. The ruble lost 70% of its value against US dollar in 6 months following August 1998. Several largest Russians banks collapsed, and millions of people lost their savings.

 

September 7 - Google, Inc. is founded.

 

September 29 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The U.S. Congress passes the "Iraq Liberation Act", which states that the United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power and replace the government with a democratic institution.

 

October 29 - Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.

 

November 12 - Daimler-Benz completes a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler.

 

November 30 - Deutsche Bank announces a US$10 billion deal to buy Bankers Trust, thus creating the largest financial institution in the world.

 

December 1 - Exxon announces a US$73.7 billion deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the largest company on the planet.

 

Ibrahim Hanna, the last native speaker of Mlahsö, dies in Qamishli, Syria, making the language effectively extinct. In that same year, the last native speaker of related Bijil Neo-Aramaic dies in Jerusalem.

 

 

1999