1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
Germany reunites and the USSR crumbles as Iraqi aggression threatens to ignite a Mideast conflagration.
Soviet leaders agree February 7 to surrender the Communist Party's 72-year monopoly on power (see 1989). The party's governing Central Committee ends a stormy 3-day meeting with a strong endorsement of President Gorbachev's proposal for political pluralism. Gorbachev critic Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Republic in May; he quits the party in July, followed by the mayors of Moscow and Leningrad. Gorbachev asks for special powers November 17 as the Soviet economy collapses, he is granted the powers despite fears of a new dictatorship, the liberal minister of the interior is succeeded by a KGB officer, and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze announces his resignation December 20, warning the Congress of the People's Deputies against "reactionaries." The Parliament shrugs off Shevardnadze's warning and votes December 25 to give Gorbachev almost dictatorial powers, including powers over the 15 republics.
Lithuania's Parliament votes March 11 to secede from the USSR (see 1989). President Gorbachev denounces the move, Soviet tanks move into Vilnius, Gorbachev says there will be no shooting, but his troops take over buildings and in April he cuts off oil and other supplies in an effort to force Lithuania to rescind her declaration of independence. President Bush comes under pressure for backing Gorbachev instead of Lithuania. Lithuanian youths resist conscription into the Soviet army, as do youths in Armenia, Georgia, and other rebellious Soviet republics (see 1991).
East Germans vote March 18 in the first free elections since 1932, approving a parliament that restores the borders of Saxony, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg, and Brandenburg, paving the way for reunification.
The Schengen Border Pact signed at the Luxembourg village of Schengen June 19 opens borders between France, West Germany, and the three Benelux countries as soon as Germany shall reunify.
Germany reunites October 3 after 43 years of separation (see 1989). A 3-day meeting at Ottawa has ended February 13 with an accord by Soviet, British, French, and U.S. foreign ministers on a framework for negotiating reunification. Eduard Shevardnadze meets with Texas-born Secretary of State James A. (Addison) Baker, 3rd, 59, and they agree to reduce Soviet and U.S. strength in Central Europe to 195,000 troops each, while permitting an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to be stationed in England, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. President Gorbachev has met with Chancellor Kohl in July and agreed to permit membership of a unified Germany in NATO.
Romanian voters elect Ion Iliescu president in June (see 1989); the government of former Communist Party members brings in armed miners to put down street demonstrations against the regime in Bucharest.
Moldova struggles to create herself as a new republic with communist Mircea Snegur, 50, as president, but separatists threaten to shatter the country's unity (see 1989). A Turkish-speaking minority establishes an autonomous Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic in the southeast, and Slavs east of the Dneister River establish a Trans-Dnestr Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in September following a referendum (see 1991).
The Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty signed by 22 world leaders at Paris November 19 ends the "era of confrontation and division" that has followed World War II. NATO and Warsaw Pact countries agree to reduce weapons (Moscow will scrap 19,000 tanks, NATO 2,000), no one country may have more than one-third the total number of arms in a single category. But Yugoslavia verges on civil war between her component states, and tensions persist elsewhere on the Continent (e.g., in Moldava, Romania, Hungary, Catalonia). President Slobodan Milosevic pushes through changes in the Serbian constitution to curtail the autonomy of Croatia, Slovenia, and Kosovo (see 1989). Despite growing sentiment in favor of multiparty elections and a looser confederation of the former Yugoslav countries, he resists political and economic reform. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) breaks into separate republican parties, multiparty elections bring noncommunist governments to power in Croatia and Slovenia, but Milosovic transforms the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS) into the Socialist Party of Serbia and wins reelection by a landslide in December (see 1991).
Poland holds her first free elections since before World War II. Voters give Solidarity leader Lech Walesa 40 percent of the presidential vote November 25 and repudiate Prime Minister Mazowiecki, who has eschewed demagogic promises, receives only 18.1 percent of the vote, and promptly resigns. Emigré entrepreneur Stanislaw Tyminski, 42, returned to Poland in September after 21 years in Canada and Peru; he wins 23.1 percent of the vote but loses to Walesa in a run-off December 9.
Bulgaria's prime minister Andrei Lukanov resigns November 29 after 9 months in office following 2 weeks of anticommunist demonstrations by striking workers to protest the nation's economic disarray.
Ireland elects leftist lawyer-parliamentarian Mary Robinson, 46, president November 9. The nation's first female president and the first chief executive since 1945 with no affiliation to the dominant Fianna Fail political grouping, Robinson has campaigned vigorously, accusing the "patriarchal, male-dominated presence of the Catholic Church" of holding back women's rights in Ireland (she is herself a Roman Catholic, married to a Protestant) and speaking out in favor of reforming laws that prohibit divorce, legalizing homosexuality, giving wide access to contraceptives, and ending the constitutional ban on abortion. Robinson is sworn in for a 7-year term December 3 but has limited power beyond calling for new elections after a government loses support.
Britain's prime minister Margaret Thatcher is forced out after 11½ years in office, the longest ministry of the century. She is succeeded November 27 by her chancellor of the exchequer and hand-picked successor John Major, 47-year-old son of a circus acrobat. The youngest prime minister thus far in this century, he will prove inadequate.
Iraqi forces invade Kuwait August 2 after Kuwait refuses demands by President Saddam Hussein that she pay compensation for allegedly drilling oil on Iraqi territory, cede disputed land, reduce oil output, and raise prices. Kuwait has rebuffed Iraqi demands that she forgive $15 billion in loans extended during the Iraq-Iran war. The Bush administration has told Saddam Hussein that it has no treaty obligation to defend Kuwait and would not take sides (Saddam has interpreted remarks by U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Gillespie that Washington would not oppose him), but Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, London, Teheran, and Beijing unite in denouncing his move and the United Nations Security Council votes 13 to 0 August 6 to impose economic sanctions (Yemen and Cuba abstain). Iraq masses troops on the border of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh agrees to receive U.S. ground and air forces. President Bush says Iraq's aggression "will not stand" and dispatches forces to Saudi Arabia August 7, risking his presidency. Iraq annexes Kuwait August 8 and proceeds to loot the country; Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and nine other Arab states vote August 10 to oppose Iraq with military force; Saddam Hussein calls for a "holy war" against Westerners and Zionists, gaining wide popular support among Arabs; he holds more than 10,000 foreigners hostage beginning August 18 but permits women and children to leave August 29 and releases all the others by early December as the standoff continues. Kuwait's billionaire emir Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, 64, has narrowly escaped capture and fled to Saudi Arabia; he addresses the United Nations General Assembly September 27, urging it to stand by the sanctions it has imposed. His relatives have acted swiftly to keep Kuwaiti funds abroad out of Saddam Hussein's hands. Bush ups the ante November 8 (2 days after the elections), committing far more U.S. forces to "Operation Desert Shield," but popular opposition grows to launching any offensive action (see 1991).
The United Nations Security Council votes November 29 to authorize members to use all necessary force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait if they remain there after January 15, the first such resolution since the Korean conflict in 1950. President Bush reverses his position November 30 and agrees to talks with Saddam Hussein and his foreign minister.
The Republic of Yemen created May 23 unites the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south with the Yemen Arab Republic in the north after more than 400 years of separation. The country has upwards of 1,400 tribes and clans, Eastern European states have bankrolled the communist south, the north has enjoyed freewheeling capitalism, but the past 20-plus years have seen endless assassinations, coups, and countercoups. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, 48, casts his lot with Iraq, denouncing Western sanctions and military threats, but then bars Iraqi ships from unloading at Aden.
Lebanon's 15-year-old civil war ends in the fall with the surrender of Christian forces led by Gen. Michel Aoun (see 1989); the allied embargo against Iraq has cut off his supply of arms and he is ousted from the presidential palace October 13. President Elias Hrawi orders the departure of sectarian militias October 25 after some weeks of murders to settle old scores, Hrawi is more sympathetic to Damascus, Syria begins to withdraw her militia, and Beirut's barricades come down (see 1992).
Israeli security forces open fire October 17 on a group of Palestinians throwing stones to protest calls by ultra-Orthodox Jews to raze two of Islam's holiest mosques at Jerusalem (see 1988). The Palestinians have attacked worshipers at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall on the Temple Mount close to the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques; 19 are shot dead, more than 140 wounded in the intifada's worst single incident of violence. Israel says the violence was inspired by Iraq's Saddam Hussein; the United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to support a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning Israel's excessive use of force. The political assassination of Brooklyn-born Israeli extremist Meir (originally Martin David) Kahane, 58, by a gunman at a midtown Manhattan hotel November 5 exacerbates Israeli-Palestinian animosities. Rabbi Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, moved to Israel in 1971, and has stirred up anger against Arabs. A drive-by shooting on the West Bank November 6 kills a 65-year-old Palestinian man and a 61-year-old woman in an apparent act of retaliation.
Pakistan's president Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto August 6, dissolves the National Assembly, and declares a state of emergency, saying that the Bhutto government is corrupt and inefficient (see 1988; 1993).
Former U.S. secretary of labor, Supreme Court justice, and UN representative Arthur Goldberg is found dead of heart disease at his Washington, D.C., home January 19 at age 81; Lieut. Gen. James M. Gavin (ret.) dies of complications from Parkinson's disease at Baltimore February 23 at age 82; former CIA director Vice Admiral William F. Raborn Jr. (ret.) dies at McLean, Va., March 3 at age 84; Admiral Robert B. Carney (ret.) at Washington, D.C. June 25 at age 95; former U.S. Air Force chief of staff Gen. Curtis E. LeMay (ret.) of a heart attack at California's March Air Force Base October 1 at age 83; diplomat-historian Edwin O. Reischauer at La Jolla, Calif., September 1 at age 79.
Canada's Meech Lake Accord of 1987 expires June 23 as two provincial legislatures refuse to ratify it.
Nicaraguan voters defeat Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra's bid for reelection February 25 and elect coalition leader Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, 60, to the presidency. Widow of La Prensa editor Antonio de Chamorro, who opposed the Samoza regime and was shot to death in 1978, the president-elect has no political experience and has gained election with U.S. help.
Former El Salvador president José Napoleon Duarte dies of cancer at his native San Salvador February 23 at age 64; former Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo at Guatemala City October 6 at age 86.
The Surinamese military arrests rebel leader Ronny Brunswijk and 10 of his followers March 26 after a gunfight at Paramaribo (see 1989). Former army sergeant Brunswijk had come to the capital 3 days earlier to discuss ending his 3½-year-old insurgency, but Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse has opposed the civilian government's efforts to make peace and used his 7,000-man army to root out Brunswijk's 300-odd guerrillas. Brunswijk is released March 27, but when Bouterse stops at Amsterdam's Schipol international airport en route to Ghana in early December he is barred by Dutch authorities from giving press interviews. Surinam's civilian president Ransewak Shankar fails to protest, Bouterse resigns as commander of the armed forces December 22, he is replaced by Ivan Graanoogst, and the new commander asks the civilian government to resign in order to avoid bloodshed. The government falls in a bloodless coup December 24, and Graanoogst promises free elections within 100 days (see 1991).
Lima-born agricultural engineer Albert Fujimori, 51, wins Peru's presidency in a run-off election held June 10, having founded the Cambio 90 (Change in 1990) Party and gained working-class support to defeat novelist Maria Vargas Llosa, who beat him in the general election but now loses by a wide margin. Former president García's popularity rating has fallen to 9 percent, he has left the country in early June, and has received political asylum at Bogotá. Inflation has been running at a rate of about 8,000 percent, with an accumulated rate of about 2.5 million percent in the past 5 years; the country's gross national product has fallen below its levels in the mid-1960s, its foreign debt has risen to a crushing $20 billion, an attempt 3 years ago to nationalize the banks has exacerbated the situation, and most of the population has been forced into abject poverty or, at best, is working in the "informal sector" (see 1992).
Uruguay's president Sanguinetti is declared ineligible for reelection in November, having lost popularity among workers who walked off the job in an effort to gain back some of the real wages they lost under the old military regime (see human rights, 1989). The Blanco Party returns to power after 23 years November 26 as Sen. Luis Alberto Lacalle, 48, wins the presidency with a 38 percent plurality in a 12-man race, having called for increased privatization of state-owned industries.
Haiti holds her first free election since 1957 (see 1986). Voters go to the polls December 18 and choose as president radical priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 37, who has denounced the country's military as brutal and corrupt (see 1991).
Nepal has bloody riots beginning early in the year as prodemocracy forces clash with soldiers and police (see 1972). King Birendra bir Bikram Shah Dev removes the ban on political activity April 8 and agrees November 9 to a new constitution that retains his position as chief of state but sanctions multiparty democracy, a separation of powers, and protection for human rights (see 2001).
Singapore's prime minister Lee Kuan Yew resigns November 26 after 31 years of strict rule that have seen the former colonial outpost transformed into a major metropolis (see 1965). His hand-picked successor Goh Chok Tong, 49, takes over but will continue to take orders from Lee, now 67.
Former Malaysian prime minister Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj dies at Kuala Lumpur December 6 at age 87.
South African resistance leader Nelson Mandela, now 71, gains release from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town February 11 with no preconditions after more than 27 years of incarceration on charges of high treason. President F. W. de Klerk asks Mandela to help negotiate a political settlement between whites and blacks. Mandela travels to Canada and the United States in June and addresses both the United Nations General Assembly and Congress. The African National Congress (ANC) agrees August 7 to stop infiltrating trained guerrillas and weapons into South Africa, which agrees to begin a phased release of political prisoners and grant amnesty to some 20,000 ANC exiles, paving the way for negotiating a new constitution based on sharing of power with blacks. But supporters of Zulu prince Mangosuthu Buthelesi attack ANC strongholds in murderous acts of Zulu versus Xhosa tribal violence that disrupt the country.
Namibia achieves independence March 21 after a period of German colonial rule followed by 74 years of South African rule. The new republic begins life as a democracy with onetime railway dining car steward and former South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) leader Sam Daniel Shafiishuna "Sam" Nujoma, 60, as president.
Liberia's president Samuel K. Doe is killed September 9 at age 40 (or 38 or 39) after 10 years of U.S.-subsidized misrule as rival invading forces battle for control. Prince Yealu Johnson declares himself head of state pending elections but is opposed by Charles Ghankay Taylor, 42, as a peacekeeping force sent into the country in August tries to restore order amidst tribal warfare. Doe's troops massacred some 200 civilians July 31 after they sought refuge in a Lutheran mission. Backed by Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, Taylor was a high-level official in Doe's administration who fled to the United States after being charged with embezzling up to $1 million in state funds. He escaped from a Massachusetts jail in 1985 while awaiting extradition and has gained popular support in 8 months since landing in northeastern Liberia with about 100 Libyan-trained troops. An estimated 400,000 Liberians have fled the country, whose civil war will have claimed 150,000 lives by 1993 (see 1997).
"Women in Africa work like beasts of burden, fetching firewood, carrying water, looking after the children, and growing food," reports the June issue of New Internationalist magazine. "They are Africa's main food producers but have little time to devote to the task. Often they are not legally regarded as adults; they frequently have no land rights; and a husband can keep his wife's earnings."
Repeal of South Africa's Separate Amenities Act in October ends any legal basis for segregating community swimming pools, libraries, and other public places.
End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (Ecpat) is founded to fight the sexual exploitation of young girls and boys, notably in India, the Philippines, and Thailand, where organized male tour groups from Japan and other countries come in search of AIDS-free sexual partners (see 1996; Manila, 1992).
Most Western Samoan women gain the right to vote following a national referendum.
Rev. Ralph David Abernathy dies of a heart attack at Atlanta April 17 at age 64, having headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1968 to 1977.
The Americans with Disabilities Act signed into law by President Bush July 26 bans discrimination in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications against the nation's 43 million disabled persons. Polio cost Rexall drug heir Justin Dart Jr., 59, the use of his legs at age 18, he served as commissioner of rehabilitation services in the Reagan administration until 1987, when he was forced to resign for criticizing the Department of Education's management in testimony before Congress, and he is at Bush's side when the law is signed. It also provides new protection for workers with AIDS.
Salvadoran leftist guerrillas and government negotiators agree July 26 to let a United Nations team verify and publicize human rights abuses in the event of a cease-fire. Some 40,000 civilians have allegedly been killed by the army and government death squads but killings have dropped dramatically in the past 6 years; no officer has ever been convicted of any rights abuse.
The People's Republic of China sends up its first non-Chinese commercial satellite payload April 7 (see 1984). Asiastat 1 was originally launched as Westar 6 from a U.S. space shuttle 6 years ago, it was stranded when a booster rocket failed, and it was sold to Asiastat after being rescued by a subsequent U.S. shuttle. The Chinese CZ-2E launched July 16 is capable of placing nearly 10 tons into low Earth orbit, and experts predict that it will be used to put Chinese astronauts into orbit (see 1996).
Astronauts aboard the U.S. space shuttle Discovery place the Hubble Space Telescope into Earth orbit April 25, but astronomers realize almost immediately that its mirror has the wrong shape (see 1993); the Soviet Union's Kristall technological module docks with the Mir space station June 10, bringing equipment for biological and materials processing, two solar arrays, and a docking port for space shuttles (see 1989; 1995); the U.S. radar mapping probe Magellan begins to orbit Venus August 10, relaying images of its surface and other data back to Earth.
Poland institutes free-market rules January 1, creating a glut of food and consumer goods but at prices few can afford. Warsaw University economist Leszek Balcerowicz, 43, and Detroit-born Harvard economics professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, 34, have been the leading architect of the "shock therapy," which Polish voters reject in the November elections and some other Eastern bloc nations adopt late in the year as they struggle to change from decades of state-run economies with artificial prices and wages.
The Soviet Parliament approves a property law March 6, voting 350 to 3 to give private citizens the right to own the means of production—or at least small factories and other business enterprises—for the first time since the early 1920s. President Gorbachev comes under increasing attack as Soviet citizens try to cope with shortages. The Parliament virtually gives him free rein September 25 to decontrol the economy, but Gorbachev moves cautiously and prices escalate.
East German Ostmarks become convertible to West German marks July 1 as the prosperous Federal Republic finances economic union with the ailing Democratic Republic. Most GDR enterprises fail by year's end, producing massive unemployment.
A new British taxation law takes effect in April, providing for married women to be taxed separately from their husbands.
"Junk bond" king Michael Milken pleads guilty to insider trading April 24 at Federal District Court in New York (see 1989). He agrees to pay a record $200 million fine and $400 million in restitution and is sentenced November 21 to 10 years in prison. The sentence will be reduced to 3 years.
President Bush concedes June 26 that "tax revenue increases" are needed along with spending cuts to reduce a projected $160 billion budget deficit—19 months after winning election on a pledge of "no new taxes." Congress rejects a budget reconciliation measure October 5, federal employees are furloughed briefly for lack of money, and a compromise tax bill is not signed until November. Some Republican losses in the polls are blamed on Bush's flip-flop, and he then repeats his "no new taxes" pledge despite growing evidence that the "supply-side" economic experiment of the 1980s has served only to pile up a massive national debt.
America's record 8-year economic boom ends in July as the country goes into recession. Britain and France also slump, while Germany and Japan remain economically robust.
The Federal Reserve Board acts September 20 to authorize J. P. Morgan & Co. to underwrite stocks, giving a bank that power for the first time since the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (see 1999).
Some 200,000 U.S. households have annual incomes of $1 million or more, up from 17,000 in 1980. U.S. women earn on average 67 cents for every dollar earned by men doing comparable work, and while this is up from 57 cents in 1970 it remains a source of clear inequality.
Longtime longshoremen's union leader Harry Bridges dies at San Francisco March 30 at age 88; entrepreneur and art collector Armand Hammer at Los Angeles December 10 at age 92. Having made and lost vast fortunes, he leaves an estate of about $40 million.
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks at Brussels collapse December 11 over the issue of farm subsidies. Farm products account for 14 percent of world trade.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average ends the year at 2633.66, down from 2763.20 at the end of 1989. It closed at 2999.75 July 16 and 17, fell to 2365.10 in early October, and rebounded somewhat, but a new stock-market boom has begun October 11, and by the fall of 2000 the total value of all U.S. stocks will have soared from $3 trillion to $15 trillion (see 1991). Tokyo's Nikkei index closes the year at 2384.87, down 39 percent from its 1988 close, having been down nearly 50 percent in late September.
Oil prices soar following Iraq's seizure of Kuwait. Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in oil reserves, and with Kuwait controls nearly 20 percent of world oil. Iraq has blamed Kuwait for a fall in oil prices, Kuwait has rebuffed demands that she reduce pumping from a disputed oil field and discuss sharing the field with Baghdad. Iraq's pipelines through Turkey and Saudi Arabia are shut down and the world boycotts Iraqi oil.
Gasoline (petrol, essence, benzene) prices per gallon as of August 25: Italy $4.92, Sweden $4.85, Denmark $4.46, France $4.37, Switzerland $3.87, Belgium, $3.80, Britain $3.56, Spain $3.14, West Germany $3.05, Japan $3.01, Brazil $2.28, Australia $2.20, Kenya $1.81, the United States $1.33.
New York City transit fares increase January 1 to $1.15, but the subways are now graffiti-free and 94 percent of the 6,200 cars are air-conditioned.
Air France bans smoking on all domestic flights and on most flights within Europe (see 1992). Smoking is banned on virtually all U.S. domestic flights February 25 by act of Congress (see 1988). Interstate buses also become smoke-free.
Aviation pioneer C. R. Smith dies of cardiac arrest at Annapolis, Md., April 4 at age 90, having headed American Airlines from 1934 to 1968.
An Indian Airlines A320 Airbus crashes February 14 at Bangalore, killing 92 of the 146 aboard; a Chinese Boeing 737 is hijacked October 2 and crashes on landing at Guangzhou (Canton) into another 737, killing 120; an Aeroflot Ilyushin-62 crashes at Yakutsk November 21, killing all 176 aboard.
The Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle (SUV) introduced in March has a high center of gravity that makes it prone to roll over. Warned by engineers of its instability, it has gone into production nevertheless, Ford executives deciding that a delay would jeopardize the company's $500 million investment. The new car gains immediate popularity, despite its high gasoline consumption, and will remain the best-selling SUV worldwide for more than a decade. It is equipped with Firestone steel-radial tires that will come under attack as a factor in giving it a relatively poor safety record (see tire recall, 2000).
The Saturn motorcar introduced by General Motors in October challenges Japanese automakers, who have taken one third of the U.S. market while GM's share has fallen from 45 percent to 35. Made at Spring Hill, Tenn., the three plastic-bodied Saturn models have no GM identification.
Microsoft Corp. introduces Windows 3.0 May 22, having solved many of the problems in its 1986 Windows program (see 1988). Bill Gates has helped IBM engineers develop OS/2 as an alternative to Microsoft's MS-DOS but OS/2 is failing in the marketplace. The Federal Trade Commission begins an investigation in June following charges by competitors that Microsoft is monopolizing the market for personal computer operating systems (see 1993).
Integrated circuit co-inventor and Intel cofounder Robert Noyce dies of a heart attack during a morning swim at Austin, Texas, June 3 at age 62, having agreed to take over the government-sponsored semiconductor research institute Sematech.
Nobel physicist Pavel A. Cherenkov dies in the Soviet Union January 6 at age 85; Nobel optical and nuclear physicist Ilya M. Frank in the Soviet Union June 22 at age 81; Novel physicist Robert Hofstadter of heart disease at his Stanford, Calif., home November 17 at age 75.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 25 that a state may sustain the life of a comatose patient in the absence of "clear and convincing evidence" that the patient would have wanted treatment stopped (see Quinlan, 1985).
Pyroelectric ear thermometers begin to save time in U.S. hospitals and doctors' offices. Invented by San Diego biomedical electronics engineer Jacob Fraden, the device has a probe which is inserted into the ear canal near the hypothalamus, that area of the brain which regulates body temperature (in addition to its other functions); when a button is pressed, the probe's shutter snaps open, infrared heat from the eardrum and its surrounding tissue reaches the pyroelectric sensor, which sends an electric signal indicating the amount of heat to a circuit board, which amplifies it, converts it into a digital signal, and sends it to a microprocessor, which gives a fairly accurate readout in just seconds; because it saves so much time, the ear thermometer will gradually replace oral and rectal mercury thermometers (see 1866).
The incidence of breast cancer in the United States is 105 per 100,000, up from 59 in 1940 when life expectancy was lower. If a woman lives to age 85, she has a one in nine chance of contracting breast cancer, up from a lifetime risk of one in 20 half a century ago, but her chances of having osteoporosis or a fatal heart attack are far higher.
Nurse-midwives attend the deliveries of nearly 142,000 infants in U.S. hospitals, up from fewer than 20,000 in 1975 (see 1971). While this is still only 3 to 4 percent of hospital births, nurse-midwives attend roughly one-third of deliveries at free-standing birth centers.
U.S. surgeons perform about 590,000 hysterectomies, down from a peak of about 750,000 in 1980, but critics say the number is still far too high, given the fact that cheaper and less hazardous remedies are available for uterine fibroids (leiomyomas), which commonly shrink after menopause; abnormal uterine bleeding; endometriosis; genital prolapse; and chronic pelvic pain.
Psychiatrist Karl Menninger dies of cancer at Topeka, Kansas, July 18 at age 96.
Muslim pilgrims visiting Mecca on a hajj July 2 jam a pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites, the ventilating system fails, and 1,426—many of them Malaysians, Indonesians, and Pakistanis—are trampled to death or die of suffocation in the ensuing stampede (see 1994).
The Supreme Soviet ends decades of religious repression September 26, forbidding government interference in religious activities and giving citizens the right to study religion in homes and private schools.
Some 50 heavily veiled Saudi women gather in front of a Riyadh supermarket November 6, dismiss their chauffeurs, take the wheels of their own cars, and drive in a convoy in defiance of the strict Islamic law that forbids them to drive automobiles in public. Police soon stop and detain them, six are suspended from their teaching jobs at King Saud University, and the government announces that it remains impermissible for women to drive cars on pain of punishment. While women in other Muslim countries are free to drive cars, in Saudi Arabia they must be driven by male chauffeurs. Kuwaiti women do not wear veils in public and drive high-priced cars on the nation's freeways while chatting on cellular telephones, but they are not allowed to vote, and although a Kuwaiti labor code adopted in 1964 provides that "a female laborer shall be granted a wage similar to that of a man if she carries out the same work," the law exempts domestic servants. Women in Kuwait employ maids, often from the Philippines or Sri Lanka; paid 30 to 45 dinars per month (the minimum wage is 170 dinars), they commonly work 18 hours per day 7 days per week and are frequently abused, beaten, even raped.
Educator Myles Horton of Highlander Folk School fame dies of a brain tumor at New Market, Tenn., January 19 at age 84.
Tuition at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Vassar, Wellesley, and other top U.S. colleges tops $14,000 per year, total expenses exceed $20,000, but 80 percent of undergraduates attend public universities, where tuition averages less than $2,000 per year, another 16 percent go to private colleges, where tuition is below $10,000, scarcely 4 percent pay more, and up to two-thirds of these receive scholarships, subsidized loans, or both.
Channel One News debuts in 400 U.S. high schools March 5: the 12-minute newscast created by media entrepreneur Christopher Whittle draws criticism by including 2 minutes of commercials for products such as Pepsi-Cola and Reebok shoes (some states, such as New York, refuse to air it), but it will grow in 6 years to reach 8 million students in 12,000 secondary schools—40 percent of all teenagers and five times the number of teens who watch newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN combined—with a mix of rock music, MTV-style graphics, and on-air pop quizzes. After beginning with a format that stresses sports and celebrities, it will shift emphasis to social issues, sending correspondents aged 18 to 28 on global assignments (see Edison Project, 1991).
Wisconsin introduces a voucher program September 4 that permits 400 low-income Milwaukee schoolchildren to begin attending private schools with the state paying their tuition.
Entertainment Weekly begins publication February 12. Time Warner spends $150 million to launch its first new magazine since People in 1974.
The Internet created by the National Science Foundation in 1985 replaces the military network begun in 1969. America Online (AOL) will manage the NSF's Internet, and other commercial Internet services start up as companies see new uses for a network that links computers (see AOL, 1987). British researcher Tim Berners-Lee, 35, at the European nuclear physics laboratory CERN outside Geneva, creates the first Web Server and has it running on his own desktop computer by December 25. Working as a consulting physicist at CERN in 1980, Berners-Lee became frustrated with existing methods for finding and transferring information, wrote a program containing a series of links for keeping track of information on one CERN computer, called it Enquire (taking the name from the title of a Victorian book, Enquire within upon Everything, which had fascinated him as a child), gave the eight-inch disk containing the program to someone when he left CERN at the end of his consulting contract, and has been working since his return to CERN on a way to approach documents associatively, much as the human brain works. His new program is based on hypertext—a nonsequential layering of information whereby words and phrases in a document can be highlighted so that a reader may skip from one source to another rather than read in a traditional linear manner, with each document having an address by which it can be referenced. He has written the code for a trio of protocols and named them HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), HTML (hypertext markup language), and UDIs (universal document identifiers), which will later become URLs (uniform resource locators; see World Wide Web, 1991).
Xerox Corp. introduces the first digital copier; its Docutech 135 can be attached to a computer network, permitting it to print documents as well as reproduce them. U.S. sales of all copiers will reach 1.75 million machines by 1997, up from 1.15 million in 1987.
The world has 5 million "fax" machines by year's end, up from 500,000 in 1985, as use of electronic mail gains (see plain-paper facsimile machine, 1975), but communication via the Internet will soon be growing even faster.
Former television news anchorman Douglas Edwards dies of cancer at Sarasota, Fla., October 13 at age 73.
Nonfiction: The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s by MIT economics professor Paul R. (Robin) Krugman, 37; The Politics of Rich and Poor by Kevin Phillips; What I Saw at the Revolution by presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan (see politics, 1988); The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America by Chicago-born California English professor Shelby Steele, 44; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (essays) by Cambridge, Mass.-born University of California (Berkeley) English professor Stephen J. (Jay) Greenblatt, 46; The Great Terror by Robert Conquest elaborates on the system that has been at the heart of the Soviet regime since 1917; The Japan that Can Say No by Japanese pundit Shintaro Ishihara, 57, with Sony cofounder Akio Morita; Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Endicott, N.Y.-born literary scholar Camille Paglia, 43, who stirs up passions with attacks on "whining" feminists whose scholars "can't think their way out of a wet paper bag"; You Just Don't Understand by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah F. (Frances) Tannen, 44.
Philosopher R. B. Braithwaite dies at Cambridge, Cambridgshire, April 21 at age 90; historian A. J. P. Taylor at London September 7 at age 84; author Marya Mannes suffers a stroke at San Francisco and dies there September 13 at age 85.
Fiction: Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate) by Mexico City-born screenwriter-novelist Laura Esquivel, 39; At Full-Length (De cuerpo entero) by Luis Zapata; Vertigo (Schwindel, Gefühle) by German-born novelist-scholar W. G. (Winfried Georg) Sebald, 46, who emigrated to England in 1966 and has been professor of English literature at East Anglia University in Norwich since 1970; Possession by A. S. Byatt; Immortality (Nesmrtelnost) by Milan Kundera; Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler; Middle Passage by Evanston, Ill.-born novelist Charles (Richard) Johnson, 42; Vineland by Thomas Pynchon; Rabbit at Rest by John Updike; Affliction by Russell Banks; A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham; My Son's Story by Nadine Gordimer; In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa; Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid; Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry; London Fields by Martin Amis; Age of Iron by J. M. Coetzee is about a woman academic dying of cancer at Cape Town; Mother Earth Father Sky by Lansing, Mich.-born novelist Sue Harrison (née McHaney), 40, is about an Aleutian girl during the Ice Age; Dance Dance Dance (Dansu dansu dansu) by Haruki Murakami; The Raphael Affair by English novelist Iain (George) Pears, 35, introduces the art dealer Jonathan Argyll who will figure in future Pears mysteries involving art fraud, theft, and murder; Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard; American Psycho by Los Angeles-born novelist Bret Eston Ellis, 26, is about a serial killer; L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy; The Burden of Proof by Scott Turow; Devil in a Blue Dress by Los Angeles-born computer programmer-turned-novelist Walter Mosley, 39, features the black detective Easy Rawlins.
Novelist Rosamond Lehmann dies at London March 12 at age 89; Walker Percy of cancer at his Covington, La., home May 10 at age 74; Irving Wallace of pancreatic cancer at Los Angeles June 29 at age 74; Manuel Puig of a heart attack following gall bladder surgery at Cuernevaca July 22 at age 57; Olivia Manning at Ryde, Isle of Wight, July 23 at age 69; Alberto Moravia of a heart attack at his home in Rome September 26 at age 82; Lawrence Durrell of emphysema at Sommières, France, November 7 at age 78; Anya Seton of heart failure at Old Greenwich, Conn., November 8 at age 86; Roald Dahl of myelodisplastic anemia at Oxford November 23 at age 74; Reinaldo Arenas commits suicide at New York December 7 at age 47 (he has been suffering from AIDS); Kay Boyle dies of cancer and heart disease at Mill Valley, Calif., December 27 at age 90.
Poetry: Omeros by Derek Walcott; The Want Bone by Robert Pinsky; Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn; Summmer Snow by Ruth Padel.
Juvenile: Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, who remains in hiding in Britain under an Iranian death threat; Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett; The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman; Mississippi Bridge and The Road to Memphis by Mildred Taylor; Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss, now 86.
Lucy Boston dies at Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, May 25 at age 97.
Painting: Reflections on Girl and Reflections on Thud by Roy Lichtenstein. Painter Keith Haring dies of AIDS at New York February 16 at age 31. Having begun as a graffiti artist, the prolifically creative Haring leaves an estate valued at $25 million.
Thieves break into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum March 18 and steal 13 works of art, including a Vermeer (The Concert), three Rembrandts (The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, A Lady and Gentleman in Black, and a self-portrait), a Manet (Chez Tortoni), and five works by Degas, valued at up to $500 million; it is the largest art theft in history.
Former Steuben Glass head Amory Houghton Jr. dies at Venice, Fla., April 3 at age 83; fashion illustrator-costume designer-sculptor Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) at Paris April 21 at age 97.
Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center opens an exhibition April 6 of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe (see 1989); visitors line up in the rain and wind to see the images, some of which include depictions of sadomasochistic homosexual acts and pictures of nude children, but the center's director Dennis Barrie, 42, is fired April 7. Law-enforcement officers arrive in midafternoon, clear the museum of some 500 visitors, shut it down long enough to videotape the exhibition, and arrest Barrie, who is indicted along with the center on obscenity charges.
Photographs: An Uncertain Grace by photojournalist Sebastião Salgado includes photographs of mud-covered workers at Brazil's Serra Pelada gold mine.
Adobe Systems introduces Photoshop, a personal computer program that will soon become its most successful product (see Adobe Illustrator, 1987). It enables computer users to retouch digitized images and has an "open architecture" interface that permits outside developers to make new features available through plug-ins within the main program (see Adobe Premier, 1991).
Eastman Kodak Co. develops a Photo CD system and proposes "the first worldwide standard for defining color in the digital environment of computers and computer peripherals" (see 1987). Eastman next year will equip a Nikon F-3 camera with its 1.3 megapixel sensor and introduce the first professional digital camera system for photojournalists (see 1991).
Photographer Eliot Porter dies at Santa Fe., N.M., November 2 at age 88.
Theater: Racing Demon by David Hare 2/8 at London's Cottesloe Theatre, with Michael Bryant, Richard Pasco; Man of the Moment by Alan Ayckbourn 2/14 at London's Globe Theatre, with Michael Gambon, London-born actor Peter Bowles, 53; Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel 4/24 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, with Gerard McSorley, Frances Tomelty, Paul Herzberg, Catherine Byrne, Barry McGovern; Prelude to a Kiss by New York playwright Craig Lucas, 38, 5/1 at New York's Helen Hayes Theater, with Barnard Hughes, South Carolina-born actress Mary-Louise Parker, 25, Timothy Hutton, is (fancifully) about AIDS, 440 perfs.; Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare 6/14 at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, with Washington, D.C.-born actor James McDaniel, 32, New York-born actress Stockard Channing (Susan Stockard), 46, John Cunningham, 485 perfs.
Actor Arthur Kennedy dies of cancer at Branford, Conn., January 5 at age 75; playwright Arnaud d'Usseau of complications from stomach cancer surgery at New York January 29 at age 73. Blacklisted for refusing to answer questions related to Communist Party membership in the 1950s, he has taught writing at NYU and the School for Visual Arts since his return from self-imposed exile in Europe; actor Albert Salmi commits suicide at Spokane, Wash., April 23 at age 62; playwright Belle Spewack dies at New York April 27 at age 90; actor Jack Gilford at his native New York June 2 at age 81.
Public Theater director Joseph Papp rejects a National Endowment for the Arts grant to protest an anti-obscenity clause in the NEA's charter.
Television: Mr. Bean 1/1 on BBC with comedian Rowan Atkinson (to 10/3/1995); The Simpsons 1/14 on Fox with animation by Matt Groening, whose nuclear-plant worker Homer Simpson, wife Marge, and children Bart, Lisa, and Maggie began as a sketch on the Tracey Ullman Show; Twin Peaks 4/80 on ABC with Kyle MacLachlan as special agent Dale Cooper, Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry S. Truman, Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer (to 6/10/1991); Wings 4/19 on NBC with Steven Weber, Timothy Daly as owners of a one-plane airline (to 5/21/1997); Seinfeld 5/31 on NBC with New York-born stand-up comic Jerry Seinfeld, 36, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Culver City, Calif.-born actor Michael Richards, 41, Jason Alexander (to 5/14/1998); Keeping Up Appearances on BBC-1 with Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!), Clive Swift; One Foot in the Grave on BBC-1 with Richard Wilson, Annette Crosbie; Waiting for God on BBC-1 with Graham Crowden, David Hill, Stephanie Cole; Have I Got News for You? (comedy quiz show) on BBC-2; Drop the Dead Donkey on Britain's C4 with Robert Duncan, Jeff Rawle, David Swift, Victoria Wicks, Stephen Tomkinson; Northern Exposure 7/19 on CBS with New Rochelle, N.Y.-born actor Rob Morrow, 27, as New York-bred medical intern in Cicely, Alaska, Lincoln, Neb.-born actress Janine Turner (Janine Gauntt), 27, as courier-pilot Maggie O'Connell (to 7/26/1995; 110 episodes); The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 9/10 on NBC with Philadelphia-born rap artist Will Smith, 22, as a West Philadelphia youth taken in by rich Los Angeles relatives; Karyn Parsons, 23, as Hilary Banks (to 5/20/1996); Law & Order 9/13 on ABC with German-born actor George Dzundza, 45, as New York detective Max Greevey, Madison, Wis.-born actor Chris Noth, 35, as his partner Mike Logan, Michael Moriarty as Assistant D.A. Ben Stone, Seattle-born actor Steven Hill (Solomon Krakovsky), 68, as D.A. Adam Schiff (to 5/26/1999); Beverly Hills, 90210 10/4 on Fox with California-born actress Tori Spelling, 17, Ohio-born actor Luke Perry, 26, Vancouver, B.C.-born actor Jason Priestley, 21, Shannon Doherty, 19, and Los Angeles-born actor Brian Austin Green, 17, in a series about teenagers created by Darren Starr, 28 (panned by critics, the show will soon have more than half the teenaged Thursday evening audience) (to 5/10/2000).
Muppets creator Jim Henson dies of streptococcal pneumonia at New York May 16 at age 53.
Films: Stephen Frears's The Grifters with Anjelica Huston, Evanston, Ill.-born actor John Cusack, 24, Annette Bening; Fred Schepisi's The Russia House with Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer. Also: Barbara Kopple's documentary American Dream about meat packers; Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table with Kerry Fox as New Zealand poet-novelist Janet Frame; Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Cyrano de Bergerac with Gerard Depardieu; Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves with Costner; Jerry Zucker's Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Roswell, N.M.-born actress Demi Moore (Demi Guynes), 27, Whoopi Goldberg; Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas with Robert De Niro, Brooklyn, N.Y.-born actor Paul Sorvino, 51, Newark, N.J.-born actor Joe Pesci, 47; Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet with Peekskill, N.Y.-born actor Mel Gibson, 34, Glenn Close, Alan Bates, Paul Scofield; Philip Kaufman's Henry & June with Fred Ward, Maria de Medeiros; John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer with Michael Rooker as Henry Lee Lucas; Xavier Koller's documentary Journey of Hope about Kurds seeking emigration to Switzerland; Whit Stillman's Metropolitan with Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina; James Ivory's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward; Bob Rafelson's Mountains of the Moon with Patrick Bergin as explorer Richard Burton, Iain Glen as John Speke; Michael Verhoeven's The Nasty Girl with Lena Tolze; Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman with Georgia-born actress Julia Roberts, 23, Philadelphia-born actor Richard Gere, 41, Ralph Bellamy; Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune with Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Ron Silver.
Actor Ian Charleson dies of AIDS at London January 6 at age 40; comedian Terry-Thomas at Godalming, Surrey, January 8 at age 78; Barbara Stanwyck of congestive heart failure at Santa Monica January 20 at age 82 after a career in which she made made than 80 films; Ava Gardner dies of pneumonia at her London home January 25 at age 67 following a stroke; Gary Merrill of lung cancer at his Falmouth, Me., home March 5 at age 74; Greta Garbo at New York April 15 at age 84 (she has not made a film since 1941); Paulette Goddard dies of heart failure at her Ronco, Switzerland, home April 23 at age 84; Charles Farrell at Palm Springs, Calif., May 6 at age 88; Margaret Lockwood at London July 15 at age 73; Irene Dunne of heart failure at her Holmby Hills, Calif., home September 4 at age 92; Joel McCrea of a lung ailment at Los Angeles October 20 at age 84; director Jacques Demy of a brain hemorrhage brought on by leukemia at Paris October 27 at age 59; Eve Arden of cancer at her Beverly Hills home November 12 at age 83; Robert Cummings of kidney failure at Woodland Hills, Calif., December 2 at age 82; Joan Bennett of a heart attack at Scarsdale, N.Y., December 7 at age 80; director Martin Ritt of heart disease at Santa Monica December 8 at age 76.
Stage musicals: Once on This Island 10/18 at New York's Booth Theater, with La Chanze, Jerry Dixon, music by Stephen Flaherty, book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, choreography by Graciela Daniele, 489 perfs.; Five Guys Named Moe by U.S. actor Clarke Peters, 38, 12/14 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Peters in a revue featuring songs ("There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," "Messy Bessy," etc.) written or popularized by jazzman Louis Jordan (1909-1975), 445 perfs.; Assassins 12/18 at New York's Playwrights Horizons Theater, with Victor Garber (as John Wilkes Booth), Jonathan Hadary (as Charles Guiteau), Terence Mann (as Leon Gzolgosz), Jace Alexander (as Lee Harvey Oswald), book by John Weidman, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, 71 perfs.
Sammy Davis Jr. dies of throat cancer at his Los Angeles home May 16 at age 64; London-born Hollywood composer David Rose of heart disease complications at Burbank August 23 at age 80; choreographer Hermes Pan of heart failure at his Beverly Hills home September 19 at age 79; Mary Martin of cancer at her Rancho Mirage, Calif., home November 3 at age 76.
The White Oak Dance Project is founded by Mark Morris (see 1980) and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris has won a MacArthur Award and worked since 1988 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, but he will return to New York next year and gain a reputation for his iconoclastic choreography and musicality.
Former Metropolitan Opera soprano Eleanor Steber dies of heart failure at Langhorne, Pa., October 3 at age 76; composer Aaron Copland of respiratory failure at North Tarrytown, N.Y., December 2 at age 90.
Popular songs: "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins; Back on the Block (CD) by Quincy Jones; Time's Up (CD) by the rock group Living Colour; Goo (CD) by the rock group Sonic Youth; World Clique (CD) by the group Deee-Lite; Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (CD) by George Michael; "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" by Stephen Sondheim (for the film Dick Tracy); I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (CD) by Dublin-born vocalist Sinéad O'Connor, 23, includes the single "Nothing Compares 2U" by Prince; I'm Your Baby Tonight (CD) by Whitney Houston includes "All the Man That I Need"; Shooting Straight in the Dark (CD) by Mary-Chapin Carpenter includes "You Win Again," "Going Out Tonight," "Right Now," and the Cajun stomp "Down at the Twist and Shout;" Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em (CD) by Oakland, Calif.-born rap artist M. C. Hammer (Stanley Kirk Burrell), 28, includes the single "U Can't Touch This."
Vocalist Sarah Vaughan dies of lung cancer at her suburban Los Angeles home April 3 at age 66; singer-entertainer Pearl Bailey of an apparent heart attack at Philadelphia August 17 at age 72; drummer-bandleader Art Blakey (Abdullah Ibn Buhaina) of lung cancer at New York October 16 at age 71.
San Francisco beats Denver 55 to 10 at New Orleans January 28 in Super Bowl XXIV. Miami Dolphins owner Joseph Robbie has died at a Miami area hospital January 7 at age 73.
Columbus, Ohio-born journeyman boxer James "Buster" Douglas, 29, wins the world heavyweight crown February 10 at Tokyo, knocking out Mike Tyson in the 10th round. Douglas loses the title October 25 at Las Vegas to Alabama-born boxer Evander Holyfield, 28.
Stefan Edberg wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Martina Navratilova wins her ninth women's singles title (a record). Pete Sampras, 19, (U.S.) wins in U.S. Open men's singles, Gabriela Sabatini, 20, (Arg) in women's singles.
The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, defeating the Oakland A's 4 games to 0.
West Germany wins in World Cup football (soccer), defeating Argentina 1 to 0 at Rome.
The Gillette Sensor razor introduced in January represents the first significant mechanical advance in razor design in years. Released after 10 years of development that has cost $200 million, it has laser-welded twin blades, mounted on springs, that hug the face more closely than conventional blades ever did. The SensorExcel will be launched in a few years to provide even better performance (and see Mach III, 1998).
Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles are a worldwide toy-industry sensation (see 1984).
Las Vegas continues its hotel-casino-building boom with the completion of the 1,000-room Excalibur, whose theme-park design evokes Arthurian legend.
Velcro fastener inventor Georges de Mestral dies of bronchitis and other lung problems at his home in Commugny, Switzerland, February 8 at age 82; tennis fashion designer Theodore "Ted" Tinling of a respiratory ailment at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, May 23 at age 79; Frederick's of Hollywood founder Frederick Mellinger of pneumonia at his Los Angeles home June 2 at age 76, having retired in 1984 after starting a nationwide chain of retail lingerie stores to supplement his mail-order business.
New York has its worst conflagration since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911, when flames engulf an illegal social club in the Bronx March 25, killing 87. A Cuban immigrant was rejected by the club's hatcheck girl and set the fire in retaliation; he is charged with 87 counts of murder.
Colombia's president Virgilio Barco Vargas overrules the nation's courts and orders the extradition of some major drug lords to the United States following the assassinations of three presidential candidates who had denounced drug traffickers (see 1989). Drug lord Pablo Escobar Gaviria orders a campaign of violence in retribution for Barco's action (see 1991).
U.S. prisons have 1.3 million inmates (51 percent non-white), twice as many as in 1980 and more than in the Soviet Union or any other country, yet crime rates remain undiminished. It costs more per year to maintain a prisoner than to send him to Harvard, but construction of jail cells continues at the expense of education, health care, and other budget items.
The Schengen Agreement signed June 19 empowers police of the five signatory nations (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and West Germany) to pursue suspects up to 10 kilometers into other nations, and although foreign police will not have authority to make arrests inside France the countries agree to share access to an electronic crime data-bank at Strasbourg in order to protect against terrorists, drug dealers, and other criminals.
Washington's National Cathedral (Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul) is completed after 80 years of construction. Designed by Philip Hubert Frohman, the Gothic structure rises above Mount St. Albans.
Tokyo's 48-story twin-tower City Hall is completed in the Shinjuku section to designs by architect Kenzo Tange.
Architect Gordon Bunshaft dies of cardiovascular arrest at his New York home August 6 at age 81.
Hurricane-force winds batter Britain and the Continent January 25, February 3, and February 26, uprooting trees, overturning trucks, blowing off roofs, killing more than 140, and causing about $1 billion in damage.
Earthquakes in northern Iran June 20 and 24 register 7.7 on the Richter scale, kill 40,000 to 50,000, injure 200,000, and leave 500,000 homeless; a quake on Luzon in the Philippines July 16 registers 7.8 and kills 1,621; Costa Rica has a quake December 22.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acts June 22 to put the Northern spotted owl on the Endangered Species List but delays implementation of rules that would stop logging on federal land in the owl's Pacific Northwest habitat, areas that timber companies have been stripping of old-growth Douglas firs, redwoods, spruce, and hemlock—the oldest trees on earth. Woodsmen complain that a halt in tree-cutting will cost nearly 30,000 jobs in the next decade; environmentalists counter that destroying the last great American forests would end the jobs anyway. President Bush acts June 26 to delay any halt in logging on the federal lands.
President Bush breaks a long deadlock with Congress June 26 and makes sharp reductions in offshore acreage available for oil and gas drilling until at least the year 2000. The Oil Pollution Act signed into law by Bush August 18 is the first major legislation of its kind in years, but the president deplores its inclusion of a moratorium on exploration for oil and gas 38 miles off the coast of North Carolina.
Yosemite National Park closes to visitors August 9 for the first time in its century-old history as forest fires destroy 22,000 acres of parkland. Nearly 300,000 acres of woodlands are destroyed elsewhere in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, most of them caused by lightning, but the damage at Yosemite is far less than that at Yellowstone 2 years ago. The park reopens August 20.
Clean Air Act amendments signed into law by President Bush November 15 phase in new tailpipe emission standards, require special gasoline pump nozzles to reduce smog-related fumes in nearly 60 areas, require automakers to begin producing cars that will run on alternative fuels by 1995 and to install gauges that will alert drivers to problems in pollution-control equipment, mandate cleaner-burning, reformulated gasoline that will cut emissions of hydrocarbons and toxic pollutants, require utilities to cut nitrogen-oxide emissions, etc.
U.S. and Soviet leaders oppose demands by environmental ministers meeting at Geneva in November that all nations burn less oil to avert global warning. The United States accounts for 24 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
Maine fishermen trap 28 million pounds of lobster, topping the 1885 record of 24 million pounds.
Hudson River fishermen find their nets filled with PCB-contaminated striped bass. PCB has been banned since 1976, but the substance released in earlier years by plants on the estuary remain (the anadromous shad spend so little time in the Hudson that they are not affected).
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and his cabinet approve a plan May 22 to double food prices as part of a gradual 5-year transition to a "regulated market economy." The plan calls for tripling the price of bread starting July 1, the first increase in 30 years, and raising other food prices beginning January 1 of next year. The government announces that it will continue to regulate prices of staples and subsidize low-income families, but the move toward a market economy sets off panic buying and hoarding. Authorities limit food sales to residents, frustrating millions of buyers who travel to cities in quest of foodstuffs that are scarcer elsewhere. Heavy subsidies to farmers end, and there are widespread protests in Ukraine and elsewhere. The disintegrating Soviet Union falls seriously behind on grain shipments to Cuba, forcing Premier Castro to cut government bread rations in early February and increase some food prices. Cuba has fallen behind on shipments of citrus fruit to the Russians.
Bumper wheat crops in America, China, and the USSR force the world price down from last year's $3.72 per bushel to a mere $2.20.
A bumper Soviet potato crop rots in the fields amidst economic wrangles and political charges and counter-charges. Moscow and Leningrad stores run out of bread and state food stocks fall so low as to raise a threat of famine. Muscovites and Leningraders complain in November that food-supply conditions are the worst since World War II (see 1991).
Former Rockefeller Foundation plant breeder John S. Niederhauser, 74, wins the World Food Prize. His invention of disease-resistant potatoes is credited with having saved millions from starvation in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Economic Community ministers agree November 7 to reduce farm subsidies and other barriers to agricultural trade, but collapse of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks in December threatens to reduce the subsidy cuts by nearly half.
Ethiopia avoids the worst effects of famine despite civil war as Western relief agencies find ways to deliver food and supply monthly rations to some 3 million people in the northern part of the country, saving them from starvation. Civil wars in Sudan and Mozambique create food shortages that lead to famine, and the United States announces in early October that no more food will be sent to Sudan because her fundamentalist government has blocked or diverted aid intended for hungry people in the rebellious south, confiscated 40,000 tons of U.S. grain, and repeatedly bombed towns where United Nations and Red Cross relief efforts were in progress. Lieut. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir says he will not change his government's handling of humanitarian aid despite the U.S. threat.
Roughly half of the states in the United States respond to unexpectedly higher prices for milk, orange juice, cereal, and infant formula by cutting allotments to poor women and children under the $2.1 billion federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, but about a dozen states contribute their own money to maintain the allotments, recognizing that the program (which was spared by the Reagan administration) is effective in saving money (as well as lives) by improving health and thus cutting Medicaid costs. Congress acts in late June to restore food allotments for poor women and children who have been cut from federal nutrition programs; the legislation permits borrowing of up to 3 percent of funds allocated for the fiscal 1991 program to make up for this year's shortfall; Bush administration officials say that they hope the bill will not set a precedent for such borrowing in future years.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine questions the value of oat bran in reducing blood serum cholesterol. Sales of cereals such as Common Sense Oat Bran (see 1988) plummet as a result.
The Bush administration announces March 6 that it is proposing a plan for mandatory nutrition labeling on all packaged food—the first substantial change in 17 years. Calling the current system misleading, confusing, and lacking in vital information, administration officials say the new labels would have to give vital facts on amounts of fat, fiber, cholesterol, and calories that come from fat. Only 30 percent of labels are now required to have such information, and although 30 percent of packaged food is labeled voluntarily, the remaining 40 percent is not labeled. The new labels would have to meet new definitions for phrases such as "low fat" and "high fiber," whose definitions are now decided by manufacturers themselves. Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter opposes the plan and calls for less labeling (see 1994).
Hematologist William B. Castle dies at Boston August 9 at age 92, having shown the importance in 1929 of intrinsic factor to preventing pernicious anemia and contributing also to the understanding of other diseases.
New York-born pediatrician David A. Kessler, 39, is appointed commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and orders Procter & Gamble to withdraw 40,000 gallons of its Citrus Hill orange juice from the market because containers were erroneously labeled "fresh" (see 1991).
U.S. tortilla sales reach 1.5 billion, up from 300 million in 1980, as the nation's Hispanic population swells and as non-Hispanic Americans turn increasingly to Mexican-style foods (see salsa sales, 1991).
Americans spend at least $225 billion at grocery stores and supermarkets, an average of $46 per week per household.
The Le Pain Quotidien bakery-café chain has its beginnings at Brussels, where French-trained Belgian chef Alain Coumont, 31, starts baking his own bread because he cannot find any he likes enough for his kitchen. Having studied under Michel Guérard, he will get backing from investors and go on to champion artisinal bread as he opens cafés serving breakfast, lunch, and light suppers elsewhere in Europe and in Japan before entering the U.S. market.
Ice cream merchant Tom Carvel is found dead at his Pine Plains, N.Y., home October 21 at age 84. He sold his 700-store chain last year for more than $80 million.
A U.S. Census Bureau survey of 57,400 housing units conducted in March reveals that only one family in four is "traditional" in the sense of having two parents with children, but the number of such families has declined since the 1970s, when it dropped sharply. The size of the average household is 2.63 people, down from 2.76 in 1980, 3.14 in 1976, and 3.57 in 1945. The census reveals that America's 11.5 million widows range in age mostly from 30 to 70, with a median age of 56. Fifty percent of all U.S. women over age 65 are widows.
The Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 25 in Hodgson v. Minnesota that a state may require a pregnant girl to inform both her parents before having an abortion.
Ortho Pharmaceuticals reports that 15 percent of U.S. girls aged 15 to 17 are on The Pill, 49 percent of women aged 18 to 24, 38 percent of those between 25 and 29, 28 percent between 30 and 34, 10 percent between 35 and 39, 4 percent between 40 and 44.
Roussel Uclaf expands marketing of its abortifacient drug RU-486 (mifepristone) to Britain (see 1988), but political opposition blocks efforts to market the pills in China, the USSR, Scandinavia, and the United States (see Sweden, 1992).
The Norplant contraceptive system (Levonorgestrel implants) approved by the FDA December 10 is the first really new birth-control measure since The Pill of the mid-1960s. Devised by Rockefeller Foundation researcher Sheldon J. Segal, now 64, it has been tested in 14 other countries: six thin capsules are surgically implanted under the skin of a woman's upper arm and slowly release a synthetic version of the female hormone progestin over a 5-year period. By the end of 1992 more than 500,000 American women, many of them on Medicaid, will have been implanted, but while reversible and more effective than most other contraceptives, Norplant is also more expensive, and reported side-effects will include disturbed menstrual cycles, severe headaches and nausea, weight gain or weight loss, depression, dizziness, facial hair growth, vaginitis, breast discharge, and ovarian cysts; judges in some states will nevertheless give women convicted of child abuse or drug use during pregnancy a "choice" between Norplant implantation and prison sentences, a practice that the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, Segal, and civil liberties groups will all condemn.
The world's population reaches 5.5 billion, up from 4.5 billion in 1981. Cities worldwide grow to unwieldy size. The Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area has 27 million, Mexico City 23, São Paulo 18, Seoul 16, Greater New York 14, Istanbul, Bombay (Mumbai), and Calcutta 12 each, Buenos Aires 11.5, Rio 11, Moscow and Los Angeles about 10 each, Cairo 9.8, Teheran 9.3, London 9, Paris 8.7.
A new immigration bill signed into law by President Bush November 29 permits entry of more people who have no family ties to U.S. citizens, increases the number of slots available to skilled workers, and raises the overall ceiling of legal immigrants to 675,000 per year (special exemptions will actually permit the total to range between 700,000 and 900,000 per year). The law provides a safe haven for 18 months for Salvadorans who have entered the country illegally while fleeing for their lives from the military in their homeland, and Washington agrees December 19 to grant temporary legal status to an estimated 500,000 undocumented Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants pending a review of their request for political asylum.
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