1989 in the United States

1989 in the United States
Decades:	1960s 1970s – 1980s – 1990s 2000s
Years:	1986 1987 1988 – 1989 – 1990 1991 1992
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Events from the year 1989 in the United States.

Incumbents

• President: Ronald Reagan (Republican) (until January 20), George H. W. Bush (Republican) (starting January 20)
• Vice President: George H. W. Bush (Republican) (until January 20), Dan Quayle (Republican) (starting January 20)
• Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Jim Wright (D-Texas) (until June 6), Tom Foley (D-Washington) (starting June 6)
• Senate Majority Leader: Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) (until January 3), George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) (starting January 3)
• Congress: 100th (until January 3), 101st (starting January 3)

Events

January

January 20: George H. W. Bush becomes U.S. president

• January 4 – Second Gulf of Sidra incident: Two Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are engaged and shot down by 2 US Navy F-14 Tomcats.
• January 17 – Stockton massacre: Patrick Edward Purdy kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in Stockton, California.
• January 20 – George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan as the 41st President of the United States of America.
• January 24 – Serial killer Theodore Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair.

February

• February 7 – The Los Angeles, California City Council bans the sale or possession of semiautomatic weapons.
• February 10 – Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to lead a major United States political party.
• February 11 – Barbara Clementine Harris is consecrated as the first female bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
• February 14 – The first of 24 Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit.
• February 23 – After protracted testimony, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee rejects, 11–9, President Bush's nomination of John Tower for Secretary of Defense.

March

March 24: Exxon Valdez oil spill

• March 1 – The Berne Convention, an international treaty on copyrights, is ratified by the United States.
• March 1 – Louis Wade Sullivan starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
• March 1 – James D. Watkins starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Energy.
• March 4 – Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming Time Warner.
• March 13 – A geomagnetic storm causes the collapse of the Hydro-Québec power grid. 6 million people are left without power for 9 hours. Some areas in the northeastern U.S. and in Sweden also lose power, and aurorae are seen as far as Texas.
• March 14 – Gun control: U.S. President George H. W. Bush bans the importation of certain guns deemed assault weapons into the United States.
• March 22 – Clint Malarchuk of the NHL Buffalo Sabres suffers an almost fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat.
• March 23 – Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce that they have achieved cold fusion at the University of Utah.
• March 24 – Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (38,000 m³) of oil after running aground.
• March 29 – The 61st Academy Awards are held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, with Rain Man winning Best Picture.

April

• April 14 The U.S. government seizes the Irving, California Lincoln Savings and Loan Association; Charles Keating (for whom the Keating Five were named – John McCain among them) eventually goes to jail, as part of the massive 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis which costs U.S. taxpayers nearly $200 billion in bailouts, and many people their life savings.^[1]
• April 19 – Trisha Meili is attacked while jogging in New York City's Central Park; as her identity remains secret for years, she becomes known as the "Central Park Jogger."
• April 19 – A gun turret explodes on the U.S. battleship Iowa, killing 47 crew members.
• April 20 – NATO debates modernising short range missiles; although the U.S. and U.K. are in favour, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl obtains a concession deferring a decision.

May

• May 1 – Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World opens to the public for the first time.
• May 4 – STS-30 was launched, deploying the Venus-bound Magellan probe.
• May 8 – STS-30 lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after four days of its mission and the successful deployment of a Venus spacecraft.
• May 12 – A Southern Pacific Railroad freight train crashes on Duffy Street in San Bernardino, California.
• May 25 – Thirteen days after a Southern Pacific train derails, a Calnev pipeline explodes at the same section of Duffy Street in San Bernardino, California.

June

• June 12 – The Corcoran Gallery of Art removes Robert Mapplethorpe's gay photography exhibition.

July

• July 9–12 – U.S. President George H. W. Bush travels to Poland and Hungary, pushing for U.S. economic aid and investment.
• July 18 – Actress Rebecca Schaeffer is murdered by an obsessed fan, leading to stricter stalking laws in California.
• July 19 – United Airlines Flight 232 (Douglas DC-10) crashes in Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112; 184 on board survive.
• July 26 – A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus, making him the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

August

• August 7 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
• August 7 – Federal Express purchases Flying Tiger Line for approximately 800 million U.S. dollars.
• August 8 – STS-28: Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret 5-day military mission.
• August 16–17 – Woodstock '89 festival.
• August 20 – In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their wealthy parents to death in the family's den.
• August 23 – Yusef Hawkins is shot in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, sparking racial tensions between African Americans and Italian Americans.
• August 24 – Record-setting baseball player Pete Rose agrees to a lifetime ban from the sport following allegations of illegal gambling, thereby preventing his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• August 29 – Harry Zych a diver and salvager files a lawsuit to gain ownership of the wreck of the Lady Elgin which he has recently discovered in Lake Michigan in Highland Park, Illinois.^[2]

September

• September 5 – U.S. President George H. W. Bush holds up a bag of cocaine purchased across the street at Lafayette Park, in his first televised speech to the nation.
• September 21 – Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in South Carolina, causing $7 billion in damage.

October

October 17: Loma Prieta earthquake

Galileo and its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) booster being deployed by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission on October 18, 1989.

• October 13 – Friday the 13th mini-crash: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 190.58 points, or 6.91 percent, to close at 2,569.26, most likely after the junk bond market collapses.
• October 17 – The Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, strikes the San Francisco–Oakland region of Northern California, killing 67 people and delaying the 1989 World Series for ten days.
• October 18 – STS-34 was launched, deploying the Jupiter-bound Galileo probe.
• October 19 – The Wonders of Life pavilion opens at Epcot in Walt Disney World, Florida.
• October 23
  • The Phillips Disaster in Pasadena, Texas kills 23 and injures 314 others.
  • STS-34 lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after five days of its mission and the successful deployment of a Jupiter-bound spacecraft.

November

• November 2 – North Dakota and South Dakota celebrate their 100th Birthdays.
• November 7 – Douglas Wilder wins the Virginia governor's race, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.
• November 7 – David Dinkins becomes the first African American mayor of New York City.
• November 16 – Six Jesuit priests—among them Ignacio Ellacuría, Segundo Montes, and Ignacio Martín-Baró—their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter, are murdered by U.S. trained Salvadoran soldiers.
• November 21 – North Carolina celebrates its bicentennial statehood.

December

December 20: United States invasion of Panama

• December 3 – Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end.
• December 20 – Operation Just Cause is launched in an attempt to overthrow Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Undated

• The Museum of Jurassic Technology is founded in Culver City, California by David and Diana Wilson.

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)

Births

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Deaths

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References

External links

• Media related to 1989 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons