1993

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

political events

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 2) initialed in the Kremlin's St. Vladimir Hall at Moscow by Presidents Bush and Yeltsin January 3 calls for mutual reductions of nuclear warheads to 1960s levels by 2003 (see 1992). Long-range arsenals are to be reduced to about one-third their current levels, and land-based, multiple-head warhead missiles are to be eliminated entirely. Yeltsin telephones President-elect Clinton January 4 and invites him to an early summit meeting.

United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opens a Chemical Weapons Convention for signature at Paris January 13 (see Biological Weapons Convention, 1972; anthrax release, 1979; Pasechnik, 1989). Like the BWC, it supplements the 1925 Geneva Protocol, banning development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and providing for their destruction. Article VI requires states party to the convention to allow a degree of verification of chemical industry facilities working with certain "dual-use" chemicals.

CIA director Robert M. Gates resigns January 20 and is succeeded February 5 by Tulsa-born lawyer R. James Woolsey, 51, who will head the agency until early 1995.

The Czech and Slovak republics become officially separate January 1 after 74 years as Czechoslovakia. Prague is capital of the Czech Republic, Bratislava of the Slovak.

Former French prime minister René Pleven dies at Paris January 13 at age 91.

Serbian aggression in Bosnia continues with violence on both sides despite UN efforts to halt the killings and provide humanitarian relief (see 1992). U.S. troops join UN peacekeeping forces in Macedonia in July to help prevent further spread of the conflict (see 1994).

The Russian People's Congress votes 623 to 252 March 11 to impose sharp curbs on the power of President Yeltsin. Communists and other hard-line opponents of Yeltsin's sweeping economic changes have gained control of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament), but Yeltsin shows his defiance March 20 by assuming virtually unlimited power and calling for an April 25 plebiscite. He wins approval in the plebiscite despite continued economic depression and growing social problems connected with inflation, joblessness, and crime. Yeltsin orders disbanding of the Supreme Soviet September 21, the Supreme Soviet tries to depose him, he receives support from world leaders and orders elections to be held in December; when his opponents defy him in an armed uprising he uses tanks and troops who remain loyal to him to crush the rebels, more than 60 are killed in street fighting October 3, tanks shell the Parliament building October 4, setting it afire in what amounts to a small civil war, and about 30 opposition leaders are arrested on orders from Yeltsin. Voters in the December 12 election approve a new constitution that increases presidential powers, but neo-fascist lawyer Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky, 47, leads the right-wing opposition to economic reform and his strength in the polls raises fears that ultra-nationalists may gain power.

Russia's president Boris Yeltsin and Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze conclude an agreement in May calling for a cease-fire in hostilities over Abkhazia (see 1992), but the cease-fire never takes effect, Abkhazians launch another large-scale attack on Sukumi in July, Moscow puts pressure on Georgia to reach a settlement, Georgia agrees to another cease-fire July 27 and withdraws her heavy artillery from Sukumi, Georgia is admitted to the Commonwealth of Independent States, but the government at Tbilisi is dissolved in August after failing three times to pass a draft budget, President Shevardnadze imposes a state of emergency in September, but he retracts it on condition that Parliament take a 3-month recess. Abkhazian forces recapture Sukhumi in late September after fierce fighting with Georgian troops, the Abkhazian leader calls in November for the deployment of United Nations observers along the frontier, a UN-sponsored peace accord signed December 1 guarantees Abkhazian autonomy within Georgia, and prisoner exchanges begin December 19.

Turkey's center-right True Path Party votes June 13 to choose Economic Minister Tansu Ciller, 47, as the successor to Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel, who has resigned in May to succeed the late president Turgut Ozal, who has died in office at Ankara April 17 at age 65 (see 1991). A Yale-educated economist, Ciller promises victory in the March 1994 elections and is considered a certainty to become the nation's first woman prime minister, but a crowd of 200,000 Islamic militants demonstrates against her at Ankara, and she draws criticism for waffling on Turkey's treatment of Kurds (see 1995).

Former Kazakhstan Communist Party first secretary Dinmukhamed A. Kunayev dies outside Alma-Ata August 22 at age 81, having been removed from power in 1986 after 22 years in office.

Poland's Democratic Left Alliance and Polish Peasants Party win in the national elections September 19 as Poles vote to restore former communists, stalling progress toward a full market economy.

Italy's continuing political scandal forces the resignations of key figures in industry and government amidst revelations of corruption, kickbacks, alleged vote-rigging, and assertions that former prime minister Giulio Andreotti and others in the Christian Democratic Party had Mafia connections (see crime, 1992). An April 18-19 referendum shows that 82.7 percent of Italians want electoral reforms that would eliminate small parties and bring more accountability.

Baudoin I, fifth king of the Belgians, dies of a heart attack July 31 at age 62 while vacationing in Spain. He has no direct heir and is succeeded after a 42-year reign by his 59-year-old brother, who will reign as Albert II.

Britain's Parliament ratifies the 1991 Maastricht Treaty in July despite an ongoing court challenge by opponents who charge that the agreement would require an illegal transfer of British sovereignty in matters of defense and foreign policy to the new European Union. The treaty takes effect November 1.

Israel's Supreme Court rules January 28 that the deportation of 415 Palestinians to Lebanon in mid-December was legitimate, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin yields to UN and U.S. pressure and announces February 1 that 100 of the deportees may return to their homes immediately and the rest within the year.

A 1,210-pound bomb packed in a van explodes at New York's World Trade Center February 26, killing six and starting a fire that sends black smoke through the 110-story twin towers, injuring more than 100, and forcing 100,000 to evacuate the premises. Mohammed A. Salameh, 25, is arrested at Jersey City March 4 and proves to be an illegal Jordanian immigrant follower of self-exiled Islamic fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, 55, who is wanted by Egypt for inciting anti-government riots in 1989. FBI agents make further arrests, and in June seize Arab terrorists accused of plotting to blow up the United Nations headquarters and New York's Holland and Lincoln tunnels. U.S. authorities arrest Rahman and imprison him 72 miles northwest of New York on suspicion of complicity in the World Trade Center bombing. Egyptian authorities request extradition of the blind, diabetic cleric; his Islamic supporters threaten retaliation if he is extradited.

India's prime minister P. V. Narasimha Rao works to revive the nation's economy as religious conflict divides her people; he resists advice from security experts that he move troops to the Pakistan border, but does not provide forceful leadership against religious bigotry. New Delhi officials charge that the terrorists were Muslims trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and that Bombay underworld crime boss Dawood Ibrahim carried out the attacks. A large truck bomb explodes in London's financial district April 24, killing one and injuring more than 40.

A suicidal Tamil militant straps explosives to his body at Colombo May 1 and kills Sri Lanka's president Ranasinghe Premadas, 68, along with 23 others (see 1988) Few people turn out for his funeral; although he has torn down slums in the heart of Colombo, mandated free lunches and uniforms for all schoolchildren, and begun an ambitious program to provide jobs for the rural poor in new garment factories, his 4-year rule has been dictatorial, he has been ruthless in treating political opponents, and human rights groups say the country (population 17 million) has had more abductions and disappearances per capita than any other in the world (see 1994).

Pakistan's Parliament reelects former prime minister Benazir Bhutto October 19 after her party wins the national elections.

Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters at Baghdad June 26 following revelations of an Iraqi-engineered plot to assassinate former president George Bush on a visit to Kuwait in mid-April.

Rockets fired by pro-Iranian Hezbollah (Party of God) guerrillas in southern Lebanon kill eight Israeli soldiers in early July (see 1992); Israeli planes and artillery retaliate beginning July 25 in the biggest effort since 1982, forcing hundreds of thousands of Lebanese to flee northward. But secret negotiations between Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization officials have been going on since January under Norwegian auspices outside Oslo, and Israel's cabinet announces September 9 that it has agreed unanimously to recognize the PLO, grant limited self-rule to 770,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip plus 1 million more in the West Bank, beginning with the oasis of Jericho, and to withdraw its occupation forces from those areas in 6 months. The PLO renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel's right to live in peace and security under terms of an accord signed by Prime Minister Rabin and Yasir Arafat September 10. Both are more fearful of right-wing fundamentalists than of each other, and although they come to Washington, D.C., September 13 for a ceremonial signing of the peace agreement, extremists on both sides oppose the deal (see 1994).

South Korean president Kim Young Sam, now 65, takes office February 25 and begins work immediately to clean up the corruption that has characterized previous regimes. The nation's first democratically elected president, he grants amnesty to 41,000 prisoners who include labor activists and pro-democracy demonstrators, expunges the criminal records of those arrested in 1980 pro-democracy demonstrations in Kwangju, orders thousands of government officials to disclose their assets, and orders South Koreans to use their real names in all financial transactions (it has heretofore been legal to use fictitious names, and that has enabled political and business leaders to conceal an estimated $15 billion from tax collectors). Before he is finished, Kim will have had 10 Navy and Air Force generals dismissed from service (they are suspected of having purchased promotions) and two former defense ministers arrested for taking bribes, but critics will complain that he has not been rigorous enough in probing defense contracts awarded during previous administrations or in examining his own campaign financing (see 1996).

Japanese police arrest former Liberal Democratic Party vice president Shin Kanemaru, now 78, March 6 on tax-evasion charges in the nation's biggest political scandal since the arrest of former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka in 1976. Raids on the power broker's home and offices turn up hundreds of pounds of gold bars plus roughly $50 million in cash and securities. Prime Minister Kiichi Myazawa's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is defeated in the June 18 elections and loses power for the first time in 38 years; populist Morihiro Hosokawa, 55, is elected August 6 to head a new coalition government (see 1994).

Cambodia has free elections in May under the aegis of the United Nations Transitional Authority (Untac) (see 1991); 90 percent of eligible voters come to the polls despite threats from Khmer Rouge militants, who boycott the elections, a new government takes power in June, the constitution is revised in September to restore the monarchy, and Prince Norodom Sihanouk, now 70, becomes king September 24. His son Prince Norodom Ranariddh is first prime minister, and Heng Samrin, who led the government installed by Vietnam, second prime minister (see 1994).

Eritrea gains independence as a new nation May 24 (see 1962; 1998).

The Zimbabwe government announces in May that it will expropriate 70 large commercial farms, most of them white owned, for distribution to black peasants as part of a Land Acquisition Act passed by the parliament in March of last year. Whites make up only about 1 percent of Zimbabwe's population but own about one-third of all farmland. President Robert Mugabe threatens August 20 to expel white landowners who object to the expropriation of their property.

Somali guerrillas ambush and kill 24 Pakistani UN troops June 5 as last year's humanitarian aid mission becomes a political disaster. More killings follow, strongman Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, 57, rejects a UN plan for power sharing in the country, the UN offers a $25,000 reward for Adid's capture, and President Clinton sends 400 Army Rangers from Fort Benning, Ga., to Mogadishu beginning August 26 to protect the area from looters, snipers, and Gen. Aidid's militia, but Milwaukee-born U.S. secretary of defense Les Aspin, 54, balks at sending in tanks. U.S. gunships kill at least 80 Somalis October 2 when they fire into a crowd, Aidid's men shoot down a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter with a rocket-launched grenade October 3, killing three G.I.s., and the 15-hour firefight that ensues is the worst since the Vietnam War. Somali militiamen kill 18 Rangers and wound more than 75 as the Americans (part of a United Nations force) try to capture the clan leader. One Malaysian peace-keeper is killed, as are dozens of Somalis. Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, 32, is captured and shown on a videotape being interrogated, a few other Americans are missing in action and presumed to have been captured. A multinational UN group led by Malaysians and Pakistanis extricates the Americans early in the morning of October 4, sustaining casualties (18 dead, 75 wounded), at least 500 Somali are killed and 1,000 wounded, President Aidid says in a radio address October 4 that increasing the UN force would "worsen the situation," urges Somalis to help defend the country against U.S. "colonialism," and refuses to participate in peace talks. President Clinton sends in more troops to augment the 4,500-man force that supports 28,500 UN peacekeepers, but he then withdraws the Rangers and vows to pull out of Somalia by March 31, 1994. The United States spends billions of dollars each year on military preparedness, but the incident in Somalia leaves many at the Pentagon reluctant to risk U.S. forces in any engagement (see Rwanda, 1994).

Nigerians oust Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, now 52, in free elections June 12 but Gen. Babangida annuls the election results, refuses to step down, closes a radio station, and suppresses several newspapers, including one owned by Social Democratic Party leader Moshood Abiola, the apparent election winner. Gen. Babangida turns over power August 26 to an interim government headed by Harvard-educated businessman Ernest Shonekan, 57; Abiola, who left the country August 3, vows to form a new government, and the threat of civil war impels tens of thousands to seek refuge in their tribal homelands.

Burundi's first elected president (and the first president from the Hutu tribe) is assassinated October 21 along with some members of his cabinet as Tutsi troops storm the presidential palace in a coup attempt (see 1962). Ethnic clashes follow the death of the 40-year-old president Melchior Ndadaye, anarchy reigns, and some 800,000 people flee to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zaire, where thousands die of disease and malnutrition in refugee camps while more thousands die in fighting between the Hutu and Tutsi (see 1994).

Angola's civil war kills 1,000 people per day by autumn as Jonas Savimbi's forces prevent government forces from supplying most of the country with food and medical supplies (see 1992). Land mines kill and maim tens of thousands.

The Ivory Coast's first president Félix Houphouët-Boigny dies December 7 at age 88 (95 by some accounts) after a 33-year administration in which his nation's per-capita income has increased from $90 to $900. He has used the force of his personality to keep rival tribes from fighting during his years in office but that peace will unravel in the wake of his death.

Mexico's president Carlos Salinas de Gortari attends a private dinner February 23 that has been held to solicit millions of dollars in political contributions from about 25 of the country's most affluent people to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The solicitations are legal, but disclosure of Salinas's presence by the Mexico City financial daily El Economista February 26, and reports that the prominent businessmen who attended pledged an average of $25 million each, raise doubts about the president's professed commitment to open, competitive elections and raises a furor (Grupo Televíso president Emilio Azcarraga Milmo has reportedly pledged $70 million). Members of the National Action Party (PAN) walk out of electoral-reform talks with federal officials March 4, Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) leader Sen. Porfirio Munoz Ledo declares March 8 that Salinas "doesn't have the slightest intention of carrying out real political changes," Salinas proposes March 9 that a cap be placed on individual contributions to the PRI, and PRI president Genaro Borrego that day announces that the PRI will hereafter accept contributions only from individuals and "social organizations," not from businesses, religious groups, or foreign agencies, and will institute a ceiling of 1 million pesos ($325,000) on contributions.

Paraguay holds the first free elections in her history May 9 (see constitution, 1992). Juan Carlos Wasmosy, 54, wins the presidency, succeeding Gen. Andrés Rodríguez, who has held office since 1989; one of the country's richest businessmen, Wasmosy is a cotton exporter, cattle rancher, and construction magnate who was trained as a civil engineer and whose fortune began with construction contracts for the Itaipu Dam that was completed in 1982. Wasmosy is the nation's first civilian president since 1954, but Paraguay's ruling Colorado Party depends on military strongman Gen. Lino Oviedo for support.

Venezuela's President Perez gives up his office in May to defend himself in impeachment proceedings that have arisen from charges of corruption. The Venezuelan Congress elects Ramon Velazquez to serve as interim president, but he comes in fourth in the December popular election; former president Rafael Caldera will be declared the winner early next year.

Belize's opposition United Democratic Party unseats the ruling People's United Party June 30 by a razor-thin margin in an election that brings out 63 percent of registered voters and returns former prime minister Manuel Esquivel to power (see 1989). Britain has announced May 13 that she would withdraw the troops that have been in Belize since independence in 1981, Prime Minister Price has been unable to persuade London to keep the troops in place, he has negotiated a resolution to the 130-year-old boundary dispute with Guatemala, and although Guatemala has reaffirmed her 1991 agreement to recognize Belize as an independent nation that assurance may have come too late to save Price. The new Esquivel government announces July 19 that it has asked Guatemala to review the pact made by the Price administration in hopes that Guatemala will renounce her claims on Belizean territory: "Too many concessions were made by the previous government in order to reach a speedy conclusion of the matter," says Esquivel, and he insists that no territorial agreement can be valid without approval by a referendum of Belize's electorate.

A plebiscite in Puerto Rico shows that 46.3 percent of the people favor statehood, up from 39 percent in 1967, but only 4.4 percent favor independence.

Opponents of Haiti's deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide murder scores of his supporters (see 1991), the UN imposes an embargo, Gen. Cédras agrees in July at Governor's Island in New York Harbor to step down October 30 and let President Aristide resume power in exchange for amnesty and $35 million, but Cédras's thugs and local police block the troopship U.S.S. Harlan County from landing U.S. and 25 Canadian technicians at Port au Prince, Haiti's justice minister is murdered, and a new UN embargo begins October 19. Gen. Cédras continues to defy efforts to restore President Aristide despite dwindling fuel supplies (see 1994).

President Clinton withdraws his nomination of Zoë Baird for attorney general January 22 following her admission that she broke the law by hiring undocumented Peruvian immigrants for domestic help and not paying their Social Security taxes. Thousands of U.S. women employ illegal immigrants for childcare positions, and filing the required tax returns for such help is so complex that many simply ignore the law. Florida state prosecutor Janet Reno, 54, is confirmed March 13; the facts that she is unmarried and has no children stir up resentments that married women with children are at a disadvantage in the professional and business worlds.

Canada's ruling Progressive Conservative Party votes June 13 to make Defense Minister Kim Campbell, 46, the nation's first woman prime minister, succeeding Brian Mulroney, now 53, who has announced his resignation February 24 after nearly 9 years in office. Canadian voters oust the Conservative Party in elections October 25 as recession continues; Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien, 59, becomes prime minister.

Former Texas governor and U.S. secretary of the treasury John Connally Jr. dies of complications from pulmonary fibrosis at Houston June 15 at age 76. Since he was riding in the car with President Kennedy at Dallas in November 1963 and sustained a gunshot sound, assassination researchers ask that bullet fragments be removed from Connally's body, but no such procedure is performed; Gen. James H. Doolittle, U.S. Army Air Force (ret.), dies at Pebble Beach, Calif., September 27 at age 96; former secretary of state Dean Rusk of congestive heart failure at his Athens, Ga., home December 20 at age 85.

human rights, social justice

Former U.S. Supreme Court justice and longtime civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall dies of heart failure at Bethesda, Md., January 24 at age 84.

A federal district judge at Los Angeles rules January 28 that the Pentagon's 11-year-old ban on homosexuals is unconstitutional and permanently enjoins the military from discharging or denying enlistment to gay men or women "in the absence of sexual conduct which interferes with the military mission." President Clinton has campaigned on a promise to reverse the ban and announces January 29 that such discharges are suspended and that recruits will no longer be asked questions about their sexual orientation, but he yields to pressure and authorizes the Pentagon to continue its ban for 6 months pending an executive order, to be drafted by the Defense Department, that would lift the ban. One of the largest civil rights demonstrations ever held at Washington brings out close to 1 million gay men and lesbians April 25.

A report by the Pentagon's inspector general released April 23 finds that 49 civilian women, 22 servicewomen, six female government employees, six wives, and six servicemen were victims of sexual abuse at the navy's 1991 Tailhook convention and recommends that at least 140 officers be referred to the services for possible disciplinary action on charges of assault, indecent exposure, conduct unbecoming an officer, or lying to investigators. The I.G. report also recommends civilian review of cases involving 30 Navy officers above the rank of captain, or flag officers; two Marine Corps general officers; and three Navy Reserve flag officers who attended the convention. The Pentagon announces April 27 that Defense Secretary Les Aspin will order the military to drop most of its restrictions on women in aerial and naval combat, permitting them to fly as fighter and bomber pilots and to serve on many warships.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Washington, D.C., circuit judge Ruth Ginsburg (née Bader), 60, wins confirmation August 3 as the second woman U.S. Supreme Court justice, succeeding Byron White, who has resigned. Her appointment by President Clinton June 14 has cheered many women, who note that Ginsburg argued six women's rights cases before the Court from 1973 to 1976 and won five of them. She was obliged to work as a legal secretary after getting her degree from Columbia Law School because law firms were not hiring women associates.

The Senate Ethics Committee investigates allegations of sexual harassment against Sen. Packwood (see 1992). It winds up deciding not to take any action, enraging many Washington State voters (see 1995).

The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously November 9 in Harris v. Forklift Systems Inc. that plaintiffs in sexual harassment cases need not show that they have sustained severe psychological damage or job impairment. Justice O'Connor's ruling states that federal law against harassment applies when "the [workplace] environment would reasonably be perceived, and is perceived, as hostile or abusive."

The Pentagon issues rules December 22 that permit lesbians and gay men to serve in the military so long as they do not engage in homosexual acts and remain mum about their sexual orientation ("Don't ask, don't tell"), but base and unit commanders will subvert the policy and by 1998 the number of homosexuals being forced out of the military will be 67 percent higher than it is now.

South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani, 50, is murdered April 10 at Johannesburg after a career of opposition to apartheid that has made him a hero to blacks. Police arrest Januzu Jakub Waluz, 40, a Polish-born South African with links to the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, a militant white nationalist group; Clive Derby-Lewis, a leader of the pro-apartheid Conservative Party, is later arrested, and the killing of Hani brings new waves of violence in the racially troubled nation. Former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo dies at Johannesburg April 24 at age 75.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opens April 23 at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place in Washington, D.C., with free admission to exhibits that include films and artifacts relating to the Nazi genocide of the 1930s and '40s.

Neo-Nazi German right-wing extremists attack foreign workers and their families, notably Turks at Mölln and Solingen but also asylum-seekers from Poland, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere, in a surge of xenophobic violence that brings decent Germans to the streets in protest marches. Germany has nearly 1.7 millon Turks, "skin-heads" were held responsible for more than 2,280 racial attacks last year, and Ankara demands something more than apologies.

A Berlin court finds former East German secret police (Stasi) chief Erich Mielke guilty October 26 of having murdered two police officers who were ambushed in 1931 during street fights in the Weimar Republic. Now 85, Mielke fled to the Soviet Union after the so-called Buelowplatz murders and documents from Russia have been used to incriminate him in his 20-month trial. He has allegedly been responsible for giving border guards orders to shoot more than 300 East Germans attempting to flee the country. Judge Theodor Seide sentences Mielke to 6 years' imprisonment, saying that he will "go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century."

Machete-wielding Brazilian gold miners massacre as many as 75 Yanomani men, women, and children in late August, producing international protests.

exploration, colonization

Astronaut Donald K. "Deke" Slayton dies at League City, Texas, June 13 at age 69, but other U.S. astronauts capture the Hubble Space Telescope from December 4 to 10 and repair its optics (see 1990). The mission is a complete success, surprising even the most optimistic scientists at NASA.

commerce

The European Community permits free movement of goods across national borders beginning January 1, but passport controls for travelers remain in effect.

A Family and Medical Leave bill signed by President Clinton February 5 requires employers to permit unpaid leave and not discharge workers who must take time off for such reasons as attending sick family members, but the law applies only to companies with 50 employees or more (most larger companies already have such plans), and it falls far short of legislation in Europe (even Greece, a poor country, provides 15 weeks' paid maternity leave, and a mother is guaranteed her job for a year after giving birth). Critics of the new U.S. law say that while it is well intentioned its effect actually hurts women, thousands of whom are laid off in the weeks before the measure takes effect August 5 as employers rely on part-time or contract workers to keep their full-time staffs below the threshold level of 50.

A fire at a Bangkok doll factory May 10 kills more than 200 Thai workers, most of them young women. Their bodies are found piled up against locked doors or beneath stairways that collapsed as they tried to escape; more than 400 are injured, many seriously, by leaping from high windows. Guards say they were ordered to lock the doors to prevent thefts and keep workers from sneaking out. Although the tragedy is compared to New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, most factories in third-world countries are no safer than the Bangkok doll factory and working conditions for many female employees remain horrendous.

Former Union of Mineworkers president Lord (Joe) Gormley dies at his home in Wigan, England, May 27 at age 75. He was created a life peer in 1982.

Germany's Bonn government announces August 11 that it will begin cutting unemployment and welfare benefits. About 9 percent of the workforce is unemployed, and unemployment benefits are cut by 3 percentage points to 55 or 53 percent of the recipient's last pay, depending on whether he or she has dependents. Costs of rebuilding East Germany, which exceed $60 billion per year, have put severe financial pressure on the reunited nation.

Russia borders on hyperinflation as she tries to adjust to the new economic order imposed by President Yeltsin (see 1992). Having inherited an empty treasury from the former Soviet Union, the government is desperate for money to pay retiree pensions, teacher and physician salaries, and other bills; in return for large instant loans, it offers banks controlling interests in key industrial enterprises, and when the state defaults on the loans next year the banks will take over ownership of the companies (see energy [Yukos], 1996).

IBM announces in January that it lost $4.6 billion last year, the largest operating loss of any company in history. Competitors have taken away the popular personal computer market, leaving Big Blue dominant only in larger, costlier computers that are in less demand. Thomas J. Watson Jr. suffers a stroke and dies at Greenwich, Conn., December 31 at age 79, having moved his company into the new world of computers and PCs.

The Revenue Reconciliation Act signed into law by President Clinton August 10 seeks to reduce by $496 billion the growth in the federal deficit (which has ballooned since 1981) in the fiscal years 1994 through 1998, less than half of it through modest tax increases. Republicans have blasted the measure's tax increases for the most affluent taxpayers, and six Democrats have voted against it, Vice President Albert A. (Arnold) "Al" Gore Jr., 45, cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate at 3 o'clock in the morning June 25, the House gave its approval by a 218-to-216 vote August 5, and Gore cast a second tie-breaking vote August 6. Tax revenues produced by a booming economy in the next 7 years will enable the administration not only to reduce the growth of the staggering budget deficit but actually to produce a substantial surplus while at the same time reducing the number of government employees.

The report "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less" unveiled by President Clinton and Vice President Gore September 7 has some 800 recommendations that would improve performance and save $108 billion in 5 years. Responding to criticisms of "big government," Gore has headed a National Performance Review to "reinvent government," soliciting suggestions from thousands of federal employees for ways to increase productivity, improve overall efficiency by eliminating or consolidating programs, and improve technology with a vie to serving consumers better.

A Central American Free Trade Zone is established under agreements signed by Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador (but not by Costa Rica). The Central American Common Market created in 1960 began to fall apart in 1969, when Honduras and El Salvador broke off commercial and diplomatic relations in the so-called "soccer war," Honduras imposed tariffs on the other members beginning early in 1971, Guatemala imposed restrictions in 1983, and the new agreements pledge the members to reduce their tariffs on intra-regional trade over a period of several years.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed into law by President Clinton December 8 provides for a phasing out of all intraregional tariffs and other trade barriers by Canada, Mexico, and the United States over a 14-year period. The Bush administration negotiated the agreement, labor unions have opposed it, Ross Perot has preyed upon fears that U.S. jobs will be lost, protectionists and some environmentalists have fought it, but Clinton has pulled out all stops to win support, mostly from Republicans, and Congress has voted its approval 234 to 200 November 17.

Median U.S. household incomes, adjusted for inflation, fall to $31,241, down from $33,585 in 1989, as technological changes, lack of training, Federal Reserve Board policies designed to fight inflation, and competition from lower-paid (but well-educated) workers in foreign countries combine to put pressure on middle-class wage-earners' ability to maintain earning power even with two members of the family employed.

Statistician-quality control expert W. Edwards Deming dies of cancer at Washington, D.C., December 20 at age 93. Little known in his own country, his name is revered in Japan, where Deming Prizes continue to be awarded each year as they have been since 1951.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at a record high of 3794.33 December 29 and closes December 31 at 3654.09, up from its 1992 year-end close of 3301.11. The Nasdaq closes at a record 787.42 October 15 and closes December 31 at 477.13, up 16.3 percent for the year.

retail, trade

Sears Roebuck announces January 25 that it will discontinue its 97-year-old general merchandise catalogue and close 113 "unprofitable" stores, moves that will eliminate 50,000 jobs. Sears catalogues once offered everything from groceries to houses to tombstones; they went out to 14 million Americans in 1992 and catalogue sales totaled $3.3 billion, but the operation has been losing money (see Lands' End, 2002).

Costco Wholesale Corp. is created late in the year by a merger of San Diego's 17-year-old Price Co. and Seattle's 10-year-old Costco Inc. By the end of the decade the membership warehouse club will be operating 331 no-frills, self-serve warehouses in 28 states and seven countries, with 80,000 employees worldwide, offering a limited selection of nationally branded and selected private label merchandise in a wide range of categories, all at very low prices.

energy

The 10 Commonwealth of Independent States join with Azerbaijan and Georgia March 2 to form an OPEC-style cartel to revive the Russian Federation's declining petroleum industry. Azerbaijan and Turkey agree March 9 to build a $1.4 billion, 665-mile pipeline from the Baku oilfields to Western markets via Iran and an existing pipeline (now closed) between Ceyhan and Mosul, in Iraq. Russia and the World Bank complete negotiations for a $500 million loan to improve Western Siberian oil fields.

The petroleum giant Yukos founded by a decree of the Russian government April 15 combines the Yuganskneftegas oil producer in western Siberia with the KuibyshevnefteOrgSintez refining and petrochemical company outside Samara on the Volga River. Many of its state-owned entities are inefficient, overstaffed, and unprofitable (see privatization, 1996).

The new Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act signed into law by President Clinton August 10 raises gasoline taxes, but Americans continue to pay far less for gasoline than Asians or Europeans.

transportation

The Miami-bound Amtrak Sunset Limited from Los Angeles hurtles off a 12-foot-high trestle September 22, plunges into Alabama's Big Bayou Canot north of Mobile at 70 miles per hour, and catches fire, killing 47, including many of the train's 189 sleeping passengers and several of its 17 crew members. A barge loaded with cement and coal has broken loose from a tow and collided with the trestle, weakening it just before the accident.

Amtrak bans smoking on most of its trains.

The first bus to be powered by a fuel cell goes into service (see energy, 1959), but fuel-cell technology remains in its infancy (see Daimler Benz, Toyota, 1997).

technology

Intel introduces the 3.1 million-transistor Pentium microchip, which runs about four times faster than Intel's 1.18 million-transistor 486, which was two to five times faster than its 32-bit, 275,000-transistor 386. The Pentium chip increases the speed of computers beyond anything yet known (see 1995).

Motorola ships its RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) PowerPC chip to give Intel lively competition.

Microsoft launches Windows NT, an operating system designed primarily for business uses. The Federal Trade Commission finds itself deadlocked in July over the question of whether to file a formal complaint against Microsoft on charges of monopolizing the market for personal computer operating systems (see 1988). The Department of Justice and some European antitrust investigators begin independent inquiries (see 1994).

Finnish computer programmer Linus Torvalds, 25, at the University of Helsinki launches the Linux (Linn-ux) operating system free on the Internet. Unable as an undergraduate to afford the Unix operating system that is popular in academic and commercial circles (it cost several thousand dollars), Torvalds invented a skeletal code of his own. Stanford University-trained electrical engineer Larry M. (Mark) Augustin, 31, puts up a Web page in November, finds partners, and cofounds VA Linux to promote the new "open-source" system. Torvalds has no connection to the new company, which establishes a light-hearted news site (see IBM, 2000).

Apple Computer introduces the hand-held Newton computer.

science

Virginia-born medical geneticist Francis S. (Sellers) Collins, 43, is named director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Health's part of the Human Genome Project (see 1992). He and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina have discovered the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and neurofibromatosis, his new position requires him to coordinate NIH scientists' research programs with those proceeding at Baylor College of Medicine at Houston, Washington University at St. Louis, the Whitehead Institute at Cambridge, Mass., and elsewhere, while coordinating policy with the London-based Wellcome Trust, which finances one-third of the project (see 1995).

Nobel physicist Polykarp Kusch dies at Dallas March 20 at age 81; nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo at Dubna, Russia, September 25 at age 80; Nobel molecular biologist Severo Ochoa of pneumonia at Madrid November 1 at age 88.

French researchers announce December 15 that they have completed a roughly accurate map of the human genome, a first step toward more detailed and accurate genetic blueprints of the 100,000 genes within human cells. Scientists from several nations have been working at the Paris genetics laboratory Centre d'Etude du Polymorphismie Humain (CEPH) in collaboration with the Human Genome Project. They have cut apart chromosomes that were split into thousands of segments, duplicated them in a yeast culture, catalogued them, looked for places where the regrown duplicates would overlap, and thereby found a way to put the pieces back together and form whole chromosomes; their findings are reported in Nature December 16.

medicine

The FDA begins January 5 to evaluate the safety of breast implants containing saline (see 1992). Author Betty Rollin has dismissed alarms about such implants ("If they break, it's only water") and said that plastic surgeons resist using them only because they are more difficult to insert, but others have questioned their safety.

Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer that kills an estimated 3,000 nonsmokers per year, the Environmental Protection Agency announces January 7 (EPA administrator William K. Reilly says 434,000 Americans die from diseases caused, or aggravated, by smoking, including 140,000 lung cancer victims). Based on a 4-year report which the tobacco industry challenges as inconclusive, the EPA statement calls second-hand smoke a Class A carcinogen and blames indirect smoking for increasing the severity of symptoms in 200,000 to 1 million child asthmatics and causing 150,000 to 300,000 cases of respiratory infections (e.g., bronchitis, pneumonia), in infants under 18 months of age (see 1994).

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton receives an office in the West Wing of the White House and the president appoints her January 25 to head a commission charged with creating a health plan for the nation in fulfillment of his 1992 campaign promise. Given the most influential position a U.S. president's wife has ever had, she bans smoking in the White House February 1, but little or no opprobrium attaches to smoking in most parts of the world (see health plan, 1994).

President Clinton appoints the head of the Arkansas Health Department to the post of U.S. Surgeon General. Joycelyn Elders, MD, 58, has crusaded for the reduction of teenage pregnancy, saying that a poor adolescent with a baby is "captive to a slavery the Thirteenth Amendment did not anticipate." Abortion opponents and religious evangelicals have attacked her, saying that her school-based sex education clinics promote abortion.

President Clinton lashes out at the pharmaceutical drug industry February 12, charging drug makers with pursuing "profits at the expense of our children." Comparing prices of the same drugs in America and abroad, he says, "Our prices are shocking. The pharmaceutical industry is spending $1 billion more each year on advertising and lobbying than it does on developing new and better drugs. Meanwhile, its profits are rising at four times the rate of the average Fortune 500 company."

A paper by Austrian researchers published in a February issue of New England Journal of Medicine supports the theory advanced in 1983 by Australian gastroenterologist Barry J. Marshall, now 41, relating Helicobacter pylori infection to gastritis and recurrent duodenal ulcer. Antibiotics can wipe out the infection, cure ulcers, and generally prevent their recurrence, say the Austrians. Marshall says antibiotic treatment can cure ulcers at a total cost of $650, whereas it costs $1,200 per year for a standard regimen of Glaxo's Zantac (rinitidine), now the world's leading prescription drug.

Poliomyelitis vaccine inventor Albert B. Sabin dies of congestive heart failure at Washington, D.C., March 3 at age 86; surgeon and medical researcher Denis Burkitt in England March 23 at age 82.

The Centers for Disease Control at Atlanta receives reports beginning in May of a mysterious disease outbreak in New Mexico: flu-like symptoms quickly escalate into adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The first death has occurred in March; by June 9 the disease has claimed 14 lives, the victims have died from lack of oxygen; most were young, healthy, and lived within or adjacent to the 25,000-square-mile Navajo reservation in New Mexico and northern Arizona, federal. State officials say in early June that they believe a deadly virus in rodent urine and fecal droppings is responsible. Heavy rains have kept the ground relatively soft, food supplies for field mice, prairie dogs, and other rodents have been plentiful, their populations have increased, and their excretions evidently release the Hantaan virus that is common in China and Korea. Health officials begin trapping rodents in an effort to make positive identification of the virus, but as of June 24 the disease has killed at least 19 people, and the death toll continues to climb. Public health officials note that increased jet-air travel has made it easy for viruses to spread from one part of the world to another.

A U.S. health-cost study released in May finds that more than 16 percent of hysterectomies performed at health maintenance organizations are inappropriate and an additional 25 percent are of questionable benefit. This finding challenges the view that HMOs contain costs by limiting unnecessary care.

The World Health Organization declares a global tuberculosis emergency in April; the WHO says November 15 that TB threatens to kill 30 million people in the next 10 years and could become incurable if efforts are not increased to control the disease. Populations in developing countries are most at risk, and drug-resistant strains are multiplying in those countries, but even in the United States some 15 million people are infected, says the WHO.

religion

The Branch Davidian fundamentalist religious cult led by "prophet" David Koresh (Vernon Howell), 33, in a spinoff from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, stockpiles an arsenal in its Mount Carmel compound outside Waco, Texas, and comes under scrutiny of the Treasury Department's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Unit after reports of child abuse. Four ATF officers are killed February 28, Koresh is wounded and at least two of his followers killed, a 51-day standoff ensues between the Branch Davidians and law-enforcement officers, the FBI takes over and moves in with tear gas April 19 (see Ruby Ridge, 1992). Members of the cult set fire to their compound, killing more than 80, including 24 children. FBI agents will deny having fired pyrotechnic devices at any part of the compound, it will turn out that they lied, and a 1999 Time magazine poll will show that 61 percent of Americans believe that the agents started the fire and were responsible for the deaths (but see 2000; Oklahoma City, 1995).

Bomb explosions at Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta March 12 to 19 kill 317, injure more than 1,100, and create severe property damage in India's largest wave of criminal violence ever as Hindu nationalists wrangle with Muslims (see 1992): the 13 bombs in Bombay's financial district kill 232, and police initially blame "Tiger" (Ibrahim Abdul Razaq Memon), a reputed drug dealer who has fled to Dubai, but many believe Muslims have planted the bombs to retaliate for violence against them in January. Police file formal charges March 15 against a 26-year-old Hindu (Mangesh Pawar) and a 30-year-old Muslim (Piloo Khan); enlightened Hindus who act to protect Muslims are themselves targets of violence, which is encouraged by the 40,000 activists of the Maharashtra state party Shiv Sena.

Roman Catholic religious orders decline in number worldwide as fewer young women opt for chastity, celibacy, and devotion. U.S. convents dwindle in size and some close down as the number of American nuns in all orders combined falls to 94,000, down from 178,000 in 1968.

A History of God by English author Karen Armstrong, 48, is based on the idea that the deity is a product of creative human imagination. A former nun who has become an honorary member of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, Armstrong teaches at London's Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism.

Church of Scientology officials sign a 76-page agreement with the Internal Revenue Service October 1 after 25 years of refusal by the IRS to grant Scientology the blanket tax exemption accorded traditional religious faiths (see 1968). The organization's leader David Miscavige tells 10,000 cheering members at Los Angeles October 8 that the exemptions have been granted and, "The war is over." The IRS announces the exemptions for about 150 Scientology entities October 13 at Washington, D.C., having contended up to now that Scientology was operated as a for-profit business ("auditing" sessions can cost thousands of dollars per hour); Scientologists have retaliated by filing 1,200 lawsuits, singling out individual IRS officials as well as the federal government; details of the controversial agreement will remain secret until December 1997, but it requires payment of $12.5 million by the end of 1997 (plus penalties totaling as much as $50 million if money is spent repeatedly for noncharitable purposes) but wipes out as much as $1 billion in back-tax liabilities, allows Scientologists tax deductions for auditing-session costs, and will save the organization tens of millions of dollars in future taxes while facilitating its efforts to gain acceptance worldwide.

Former New York Marble Collegiate Church pastor Norman Vincent Peale suffers a stroke and dies at Pawling, N.Y., December 24 at age 95.

education

The British Lingua English language coaching school founded at Patna, Bihar, by Brahmin entrepreneur Birbal Jha, 21, helps Hindi men who want to enter the army or police force, Muslim women who want civil service jobs, housewives who want to understand English-language television programs, and other Indians who simply want to improve their social status (see communications, 1950). Within a decade there will be an estimated 150 such centers at Patna alone, and hundreds more elsewhere in India (see communications [AOL], 2003).

President Clinton outlines a plan March 1 at Rutgers University that would establish an Americorps, allowing students to earn their college tuition by filling community-service jobs.

The Chicago Board of Education announces June 25 that it has selected New York's deputy school chancellor Argie K. Johnson, 54, as general superintendent of its school system, the sixth person to have that job in 13 years. The decentralized Chicago district has been called the worst in the nation, but Johnson says she believes in the reforms underway and wants to be a part of them.

Enrollment in U.S. women's colleges reaches a 14-year high, partly out of concern that women at coeducational schools may be treated differently from men, partly because women fear sexual harassment.

Philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg announces that he is giving $120 million to the University of Pennsylvania, $120 million to the University of Southern California, and $25 million to Harvard. Annenberg announces December 17 that he is giving $500 million to help reform public schools.

communications, media

Fox Broadcasting is created January 20. Created by media magnate Rupert Murdoch and former Twentieth Century-Fox CEO Barry Diller, it becomes the first new national U.S. television network since the 1950s.

The Mexican government sells its television channels to private owners, they form TV Azteca, but government regulation of the industry will be lax, and by the end of the century TV Azteca's market share will be only 10 percent while in peak time periods Televísa will have nearly 98 percent. The family of the late Emilio Azcárraga Vidauretta will own 62 percent of Televísa, which will not only be the Spanish-speaking world's largest television producer but will also produce more programming than ABC, CBS, NBC, Columbia, Disney, King World, Universal, and Warner combined.

Pocket-size telephones become commonplace in cities worldwide. U.S. telephone and media companies work to structure multi-billion-dollar megadeals with a view to creating a huge information superhighway offering on-demand video, telephone calls on cable, and TV programming on phone lines.

Excite is founded February 28 at Redwood City, Calif., where five computer hackers and Stanford political science majors meet at Rosita's Taqueria and devise plans for a pioneer Internet search engine. They will sell the idea to America OnLine (AOL) (see 1995; Yahoo!, 1994).

Researchers at the University of Illinois National Center for Computing Applications (NCSA) post a new user-friendly point-and-click software program on the Internet in April and make it available for "browsing" the Web, which up to now has been accessible only through crude, text-only interfaces (see Berners-Lee, 1991). Cedar Rapids, Iowa-born undergraduate Marc Andreesen, 21, took a programming job with the NCSA last year at $6.85 per hour hour, saw potential in an easy-to-use Internet browser, teamed up with university software programmer Eric Bina, 30, and in 6 weeks produced the first graphical user interface (GUI) Web browser. Andreesen and Bina work with some NCSA colleagues to build a fully-functioning browser with pictures and sound as well as text, offer it free over the Internet, meet with Tim Berners-Lee, and annoy him by suggesting that the Web be renamed Mosaic. Within a year more than 2 million copies of the program will be downloaded and 6 months later it will have 75 percent of the market with 600,000 new users signing on each month (see Netscape, 1994).

The New York Times acquires the Boston Globe October 1 for $1.1 billion.

literature

Nonfiction: At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War by Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott; Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who says the United Nations should play a larger role in world affairs. The United States must curb the proliferation of sex and violence in her mass media, he says, provide universal health care, improve education, and increase taxation of the rich to narrow the growing gap between America and her global partners; Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq by U.S. journalist Alan Friedman; How Are We to Live? by philosopher Peter Singer; The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion by Stephen L. Carter; The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus by Princeton graduate student Katie Roiphe, 25, who says mass hysteria has exaggerated and even invented male sexual assault. She takes issue with crusades against pornography; Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape by New York prosecutor Linda A. Fairstein, 46, who disputes the radical feminist view that rape has nothing to do with sexuality; Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years by Mount Vernon, N.Y., retirees Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany, 104, and Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany, 102, whose father was born into slavery but whose white grandfather told them, "Don't ever be afraid to look somebody in the eye. You're just as good as anybody." Bessie earned her DDS from Columbia University in 1923 and started a dental practice in Harlem, becoming the second licensed black female dentist; Sadie earned a master's degree in education at Columbia in 1925 and became the first black home economics teacher in a New York City high school.

Economist-author Eliot Janeway dies at his native New York February 8 at age 80; political scientist C. Northcote Parkinson near his home at Canterbury March 9 at age 83; author-film critic Penelope Gilliatt at her London home May 9 at age 61; travel writer Freya Stark at Asola, Italy, May 9 at age 100; journalist-author Harrison E. Salisbury near Providence, R.I., July 5 at age 84; social historian and political activist E. P. Thompson at Upper Wick, Worcester, August 28 at age 69; man of letters Sir Peter Courtney Quennell at London October 27 at age 88; feminist author Jill Tweedie of motor neurone disease at Holloway November 12 at age 59; journalist-author William L. Shirer of heart disease at Boston December 28 at age 89.

Fiction: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx; The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields; The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood; The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien by Oscar Hijuelos; Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes) by Mario Vargas Llosa; Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth; Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines; The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch; Cleopatra's Sister by Penelope Lively; The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende; The Client by John Grisham; Everywhere that Mary Went by Philadelphia-born lawyer-turned-novelist Lisa Scottoline, 37, who writes in the present tense (as does John Grisham) and whose protagonist is the corporate lawyer Mary DiNunzio; Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King; Along Came a Spider by Newburgh, N.Y.-born J. Walter Thompson chairman and novelist James (B.) Patterson, 46, introduces the black Washington, D.C., police psychologist Alex Cross; The Night Manager by John le Carré.

Novelist Juan Benet Goita dies at his native Madrid January 5 at age 65; novelist-playwright Kobo Abe at his native Tokyo January 22 at age 68; Eleanor Hibbert in her 80s January 18 on a cruise ship between Athens and Port Said (she has written more than 200 novels under the names Philippa Carr, Victoria Holt, and Jean Plaidy); John Hersey dies of cancer at his Key West, Fla., home March 24 at age 78; Wallace Stegner at Santa Fe, N.M., April 13 at age 84 of injuries sustained in a car accident March 28; Leslie Charteris at Windsor, Berkshire, April 15 at age 85; Sir William Golding of a heart attack at his home near Truro, Cornwall, June 19 at age 81; Masuji Ibuse at Tokyo July 10 at age 95; novelist-editor Peter De Vries of pneumonia at Norwalk, Conn., September 28 at age 83; Anthony Burgess of cancer at London November 22 at age 76.

Poetry: Firefall by Mona Van Duyn; Small Congregations by Thylias Moss.

An Islamic fundamentalist group calls for the execution of Bengladashi poet and political activist Sufia Kamal, 82, who has denounced fundamentalist treatment of women. Her compatriot Taslima Nareen has fled the country for fear of reprisals, but Kamal opts for quiet resistance.

Juvenile: Ship by David A. Macaulay; I Want to Be by poet Thylias Moss with illustrations by Jerry Pinkney; Stellaluna by St. Paul, Minn.-born author-illustrator Janell Cannon, 35; The Name of the Game Was Murder by Joan Lowery Gibson; The Giver by Honolulu-born author-photographer Lois Lowry, 56; Goosebumps by R. L. Stine.

Writer-illustrator William Pène du Bois dies of a stroke at Nice, France, February 5 at age 76.

art

President Clinton names actress Jane Alexander, now 53, to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. Announcing the appointment in August, he says, "The endowment's mission of fostering and preserving our nation's cultural heritage is too important to remain mired in the problems of the past. [Alexander] will be a tireless and articulate spokesperson for the value of bringing art into the lives of all Americans."

Painter Richard Diebenkorn dies of respiratory failure at Berkeley, Calif., March 30 at age 70. A 2-month Whitney Museum exhibit entitled "The Subject of Rape" opens at New York June 23 with text and graphic displays.

Sculpture: Intersection II (hot-rolled steel) by Richard Serra.

photography

Photographs: Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age by photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, whose portrait of the working class wins the Arles International Festival award for best photography book of the year and whose retrospective exhibition In Human Effort is mounted at Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art.

theater, film

Theater: The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein 3/18 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn, Robert Klein, 556 perfs.; The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett 4/1 at London's Lyttleton National Theatre, with Nigel Hawthorne; Arcadia by Tom Stoppard 4/13 at London's Lyttleton National Theatre, with Felicity Kendal, Harriet Walter, Rufus Sewell, Bill Nighy; The Treatment by British playwright Martin (Andrew) Crimp, 36, 4/15 at London's Royal Court Theatre; Lion in the Streets by Montreal-born playwright Judith (Clare Francesca) Thompson, 38, 4/19 at London's Hampstead Theatre; Playboy of the West Indies by Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura 5/9 at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater; A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally 6/27 at New York's Manhattan Theater Club, with Frances Sternhagen, Zoë Caldwell; Wonderful Tennessee by Brian Friel 6/30 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, with Donal McCann; Beautiful Thing by English playwright Jonathan Harvey, 55, 7/28 at London's Bush Theatre.

Playwright-TV series writer Sumner Arthur Long dies of cancer at Los Angeles January 6 at age 71; actress Joyce Carey at London February 28 at age 94; Helen Hayes at Nyack, N.Y., March 17 at age 92; Kate Reid of cancer at Stratford, Ont., March 27 at age 62; Eugenia Leontovich at New York April 2 at age 93; playwright Maxine Wood of congestive heart failure at Oakland, Calif., April 7 at age 87; actress Gusti Huber at Mount Kisco, N.Y., July 12 at age 78; former circus magnate Henry Ringling North outside Geneva, Switzerland, October 2 at age 83; actor Cyril Cusack at his London home October 7 at age 82; actor River Phoenix at Los Angeles October 31 at age 23 after suffering a seizure outside a nightclub; actress Janet Margolin of ovarian cancer at Los Angeles December 17 at age 50; Sam Wanamaker of cancer at London December 18 at age 74 (he has led a drive to rebuild London's Globe Theater; see 1996).

Television: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman 1/2 on CBS with Jane Seymour as Dr. Mike Quinn (to 5/16/1998); Homicide: Life on the Street 1/31 on NBC with Richard Belzer (as disgraced former police officer Mike Kellerman), Yaphet Kotto, Ned Beatty in a show created by Paul Altamasio based on a non-fiction book by David Simon about Baltimore crime (to 8/1999); The Nanny 4/3 on CBS with Queens, N.Y., actress-writer Fran Drescher, 36, as a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman who becomes governess for New York widower Maxfield Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) (to 6/1999); Walker, Texas Ranger 4/21 on CBS with Oklahoma-born karate expert Chuck (originally Carlos Ray) Norris, now 53, Clarence Gilyard, Sheree J. Wilson (to 5/19/2001); Peak Practice on BBC with Amanda Burton and Kevin Whately in a medical drama set in Derbyshire in the heart of England's Peak District (to 12/13/2001); Beavis and Butt-Head (animated) 5/17 on MTV with all voice overs by creator-writer Mike Judge (to 11/28/1997); The X-Files 9/10 on Fox with David Duchovny, 32, Gillian Anderson, 24, as FBI agents investigating occult and paranormal incidents (the series has been created by Chris Carter, 35) (to 5/9/2002); Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman 9/12 on ABC with Dean Cain, 27, as Clark Kent, Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane (to 6/14/1997); Frasier 9/16 on NBC with former Cheers player Kelsey Grammer as Seattle radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane, David Hyde Pierce as his psychiatrist brother Niles (to 5/13/2004); Dave's World 9/20 on CBS with Harry Anderson as Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry, DeLane Matthews as his wife, Beth (to 5/1998); Grace under Fire 9/29 on ABC with stand-up comic Brett Butler, 35, as a Southern wife with three children who leaves a disastrous marriage to become a single working mother (to 2/17/1998); Diagnosis Murder 10/29 on CBS with Dick Van Dyke as crime-solving medic Mark Sloan, MD, his son Barry Van Dyke as police inspector Steve Sloan (to 5/11/2001).

Actor Fred Gwynne dies of pancreatic cancer at Tarrytown, Md., July 2 at age 66; Raymond Burr of renal cancer at his home outside Healdsburg, Calif., September 12 at age 76; former TV personality Garry Moore of throat cancer at Hilton Head, S.C., November 29 at age 78.

Films: Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List with Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Embeth Davidtz. Also: Maggie Greenwald's The Ballad of Little Jo with Suzy Amis as Josephine Monaghan; Claude Sautet's Un Coeur en Hiver with Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Héart, André Dussolier; Chen Kaige's Farewell, My Concubine (Bawang bieji) with Gong Li, Leslie Cheung (the Chinese government has permitted a censored version to be exhibited for 2 weeks at Shanghai but bans it in July after a single showing at Beijing, citing homosexual conduct as the reason); Andrew Davis's The Fugitive with Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Fort Bragg, N.C.-born actress Julianne Moore (originally Julie Anne Smith), 32; Ronald Maxwell's Gettysburg with Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen; Wolfgang Petersen's In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood, Burbank, Calif.-born ex-model Rene Russo, 39; Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father with Daniel Day-Lewis, Neil Postelthwaite; Wayne Wang's The Joy Luck Club with Tsai Chin, Tamlyn Tomita; Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, fake dinosaurs; Steven Soderberg's King of the Hill with Jesse Bradford, Jeroen Krabbe, Lisa Eichhorn; Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado about Nothing with Emma Thompson, Branagh, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton; Jane Campion's The Piano with Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel; James Ivory's The Remains of the Day with Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson; Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands with Debra Winger, Anthony Hopkins; Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine with Kitano; Ross McElwee's Time Indefinite with McElwee, Marilyn Levine; Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet with Winston Chao, May Chin; Brian Gibson's What's Love Got to Do with It? with Angela Basset as singer Tina Turner, Laurence Fishburne.

Audrey Hepburn dies of colon cancer at Tolocherraz, Switzerland, January 20 at age 63; director-screenwriter-producer Joseph Mankiewicz of heart failure at Mount Kisco, N.Y., February 5 at age 83; Lillian Gish of heart failure at Nyack, N.Y., February 28 at age 99; Cantinflas of lung cancer at his Mexico City home April 20 at age 81; Ann Todd at London May 6 at age 82 following a stroke; director James Bridges of kidney failure at Los Angeles June 6 at age 57; actress Alexis Smith of cancer at Los Angeles June 9 at age 72; former "Our Gang" child star George R. P. "Spanky" McFarland of cardiac arrest at Grapevine, Texas, outside Dallas June 30 at age 64; director Federico Fellini of cardio-respiratory failure after a heart attack at Rome October 31 at age 73; Don Ameche of prostate cancer at Scottsdale, Ariz., December 6 at age 85; Myrna Loy while undergoing surgery for cancer at New York December 14 at age 88; Moses Gunn of asthma complications at his Guilford, Conn., home December 17 at age 64; Don De Fore of a heart attack at Los Angeles December 22 at age 80; director Alexander Mackendrick of pneumonia at Los Angeles December 22 at age 81; Jeff Morrow at Canoga Park, Calif., December 26 at age 86.

music

Hollywood musical: Agnieszka Holland's The Secret Garden with Kate Maberly, Heydon Prowse, Maggie Smith, music by Zbigniew Preisner.

Stage musicals: The Who's Tommy 4/23 at New York's St. James Theater, with Michael Cerveris, Buddy Smith, Paul Kandel, music by Peter Townshend, who has recycled songs from a 1969 rock opera by The Who, 899 perfs.; Kiss of the Spider Woman 5/3 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Brent Carver, Anthony Crivello, Chita Rivera, now 60, who sings and dances despite a recent auto accident in which one leg was smashed, music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, 904 perfs.; Sunset Boulevard 7/12 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with Kevin Anderson, Patti LuPone, Betty Schaefer, music by Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black.

Ruby Keeler dies of cancer at her Palm Springs, Calif., home February 28 at age 82.

Guitarist-composer Carlos Montoya dies at Wainscott, L.I., March 3 at age 89; conductor Erich Leinsdorf at Zürich September 11 at age 81; electronic music pioneer Leon Theremin (Lev Sergeyevich Termen) at Moscow November 3 at age 97.

Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev dies at Paris January 6 at age 54 of complications resulting from AIDS; choreographer Agnes de Mille dies of a stroke in her Greenwich Village, New York, apartment October 7 at age 88, having written, "The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie."

Popular songs: "If You Asked Me To" and The Colour of My Love (CD) by Canadian pop singer Celine Dion, 24, who spoke only French until age 19; "Loser" by the 23-year-old Los Angeles-born songwriter-instrumentalist Beck (originally Beck Campell, he has adopted his mother's maiden name Hansen but records under his first name); the dance number "Macarena" by the Spanish guitarists Los Del Rio (Antonio Romero and Rafael Ruiz) released in April will be remixed by the Miami group Bayside Boys; In Utero (CD) by the Seattle trio Nirvana (singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Dave Grohl); Zooropa (CD) by U2 includes the singles "Numb" and "The First Time"; Toni Braxton (CD) by Maryland-born rhythm and blues vocalist-songwriter Toni Braxton, 25, includes "Another Sad Love Song"; "That's the Way Love Goes" by Janet Jackson, James Harris 3rd, Terry Lewis; Tuesday Night Music Club (CD) by Missouri-born vocalist Sheryl Crow, 31; River of Dreams (CD) by Billy Joel; Siamese Dream (CD) by the rock group Smashing Pumpkins (singer-guitarist-songwriter William Patrick "Billy" Corgan, Jr., 26; drummer James Joseph "Jimmy" Chamberlin, 29; bassist D'Arcy [Elizabeth] Wretzky, 25; James [Yoshinobu] Iha, 25; keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin, 31); Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (CD) by Sarah McLachlan; Music Box and Merry Christmas (CDs) by Long Island-born singer-songwriter Mariah Carey, 23, whose previous albums Mariah, Emotions, and Unplugged have sold in the millions and earned a fortune (she marries 43-year-old Sony Corp. record producer Tommy Mottola but the marriage will end in March 1998); Mi Tierra (CD) by Cuban-born rock singer Gloria Estefan, 35, who has been a star of the Miami Sound Machine; Doggystyle (CD) by Long Beach, Calif.,-born rap artist Snoop Doggy Dogg (Calvin Broadus), 20.

Cuban singer Albita (Rodriguez), 30, and her band defect, cross from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, into El Paso in the spring, arrive at Miami, and begin a new career, reinvigorating the local musical scene.

The London-based music company PolyGram agrees August 3 to buy Motown Record Co. for $301 million (PolyGram is controlled by the Dutch electronics giant Philips).

Dizzy Gillespie dies of pancreatic cancer at Englewood, N.J., January 6 at age 75; gospel music creator Thomas A. Dorsey of Alzheimer's disease at his Chicago home January 23 at age 93, having written about 1,000 gospel songs; gospel singer Willie Mae Ford "Mother" Smith dies of heart failure at St. Louis February 2 at age 89; jazz pianist Art Hodes at Harvey, Ill., March 4 at age 88; lyricist Mitchell Paris at New York March 31 following a stroke at age 92; jazz guitarist Joe Pass (Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua) of liver cancer at Los Angeles May 23 at age 65; salsa singer Hector Lavoe of cardiac arrest at New York June 29 at age 46; zydeco (Cajun rhythm and blues) accordionist Rockin' Dopsie (Alton Rubin Sr.) after a heart attack at Opelousas, La., August 26 at age 61; singer Helen O'Connell of cancer at San Diego September 9 at age 73; jazz trumpeter and bandleader Erskine Hawkins of heart failure at Willingboro, N.J., November 11 at age 79; blues guitarist Albert Collins of lung cancer at Las Vegas November 24 at age 61.

sports

Dallas beats Buffalo 52 to 17 at Pasadena January 31 in Super Bowl XXVII.

Britain's Grand National Handicap Steeplechase at Aintree April 3 is cancelled after two false starts. About 30 animal-rights demonstrators have rushed onto the course just before the first start, an official waving a red flag to abort the second start is taken for a demonstrator, and the general confusion convinces many that the nation's aristocratic class is inept.

Jockey Julie Krone, 29, rides Colonial Affair to victory in the Belmont Stakes June 5, becoming the first woman to win any horserace in America's Triple Crown of turf classics. Three other female jockeys—Patti Cooksey, Diane Crump, and Andrea Seefeldt—have failed in three Kentucky Derby races and one Preakness, and no woman has ever before ridden in the grueling 1½-mile Belmont. It is Krone's third Belmont attempt (she has also ridden in a Kentucky Derby); she won her first race in February 1981 and by the time she retires in 1999 she will have won 3,549.

Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan leads his team to its third consecutive NBA title June 20, defeating the Phoenix Suns 99 to 98 in the sixth game of the finals. Jordan announces his retirement from basketball October 6, he will play minor-league baseball next year, the Bulls will retire his No. 23 jersey November 1, 1994, but Jordan will return (see 1995).

Tennis great Arthur Ashe dies of AIDS-related pneumonia at New York February 6 at age 49.

The Women's Tennis Council announces that it will not renew its sponsorship with Philip Morris after the expiration of its agreement next year and will seek a different sponsor for what has been called the Virginia Slims championships. Health groups announce that they will continue to demonstrate at every Virginia Slims event until the contracts expire.

Pete Sampras wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow, Steffi Graf in women's singles (Monica Seles has been stabbed in mid-match April 30 by a fanatical Graf supporter at Hamburg).

The Florida Marlins (Miami) and Colorado Rockies (Denver) play their first seasons. Both are National League extension teams.

Major League Baseball suspends Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for the season following complaints that she has made bigoted remarks about players (see 1984).

The Toronto Blue Jays win the World Series, beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 2.

Former St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, and New York Yankees infielder Johnny Mize dies at his native Demorest, Ga., June 2 at age 80; former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale of a heart attack at Montreal July 3 at age 56; former Yankee pitcher Allie Reynolds of complications from lymphoma and diabetes at Oklahoma City December 27 at age 79.

Evander Holyfield regains his heavyweight boxing title November 6, winning a 12-round decision over Riddick Bowe at Las Vegas.

everyday life

Japan's Crown Prince Naruhito, 33, is married at Tokyo June 9 to Harvard- and Oxford-educated commoner Masako Owada, 29, a former Foreign Ministry star who until January was involved in shuttle diplomacy with Washington on such issues as semiconductor trade talks and Japan's refusal to accept foreign lawyers. The couple arrives by train at Ise June 25 and makes a ceremonial report of their marriage the following day to the sun goddess Amaterasu.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports in July that there has been a sharp increase in the number of women who become mothers without marrying, especially among educated professionals. Nearly one-fourth of the nation's unmarried women become mothers, an increase of 60 percent over 1982. Among white women who have attended college, the number has nearly doubled; among women with professional or managerial jobs, it has nearly tripled. Overall, about one-fourth of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock, and among single women aged 18 to 44 who have never married, 24 percent have become mothers, up from 15 percent in 1982; the rate among those who had at least one year of college has risen to 11.3 percent, up from 5.5 percent; among managerial and professional women it has risen from 3.1 percent to 8.3 percent, and although it has risen from 49 percent to 56 percent among black women (two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock) and from 23 percent to 33 percent among Hispanic women, the increase in those groups has been much slower than among white women, where the rate has risen from 7 percent to 15 percent. Many of these women, although unmarried, are living with partners when they give birth.

Beanie Babies are introduced by Chicago entrepreneur H. Ty Warner, 48, whose Ty, Inc. promotes its small, soft, colorful dolls with names such as Canyon the cougar, Mystic the unicorn, Nibbler the rabbit, Pati the platypus, and Smoochy the frog, using heart-shaped tags, Internet sites, and commercial tie-ins.

Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgar, 16, defeats veteran Boris Spassky, now 56, in a 10-game exhibition match at Budapest in February. She wins $110,000 of the $200,000 purse.

Scrabble inventor Alfred M. Butts dies April 4 at age 93.

The Jaguar introduced by Atari is the world's first 64-bit video game and sells for just $250, as compared with $699 for the 3DO game which has only a 32-bit processor, but no games are available that take full advantage of the Jaguar's hardware capabilities. Sony and Sega soon come out with superior systems.

The computer game Doom released at midnight December 10 via the University of Wisconsin's computer system causes the entire fledgling Internet to crash as 1,500 users try to download the virtual-reality game simultaneously. Mesquita, Texas-based id Software will make a fortune from the product.

Las Vegas hails the opening of four new hotel-casinos, including the $375-million pyramid-shaped Luxor with a huge Sphinx at its entrance and the $475-million Treasure Island (where a mock sea battle between "pirates" and a "British frigate" is staged every 90 minutes). A new $1 billion MGM Grand replaces the MGM Grand that was damaged by fire in 1980; the world's largest hotel, it has 5,005 rooms, 97 elevators, and requires 39 armored cars and 2 nights to bring in 3.5 million quarters for its slot machines. Caesars Palace opens in December with 10,000-square-foot suites that cost $6 million each to build (and have their own private lap pools, putting greens, pianos, personal butlers and private chefs) but are free to the biggest high rollers. The city's "strip" more and more resembles Disneyland, but with 24-hour action as each new casino-hotel takes on the look of a Hollywood movie set.

crime

Robbers get into a Brinks warehouse at Rochester, N.Y., January 5 and take $7.4 million. More than $2 million will be recovered from a New York City apartment after FBI agents arrest a retired Rochester police officer, a priest, and an Irish Republican Army arms smuggler.

Italian carabinieri arrest Mafia boss Salvatore "Totó" Riina in downtown Palermo January 15 (see 1992). He has been a fugitive for 23 years.

Liverpool toddler James Bulgur, 2, disappears from a local shopping center February 10, his disfigured body is found 2 days later, two 10-year-old boys are charged with his murder (they are convicted in November), and the incident raises alarms of moral and social decline in a nation struggling with economic recession.

Ecuadorian-born Virginia manicurist Lorena L. Bobbitt, 24, cuts off two-thirds of the penis of her sleeping husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, 26, after an alleged sexual assault June 23, the organ is reattached in 9 hours of microsurgery, a jury of nine women and three men acquit the husband of marital sexual assault November 10, and Mrs. Bobbitt will be acquitted early next year of malicious assault.

Long Island, N.Y., police notice a pickup truck without a license plate on the Southern State Parkway at 3:28 in the morning of June 28, chase the driver for 20 minutes until he crashes into a light pole on Old Country Road at Mineola, and discover a woman's body in the back of the truck. Unemployed landscape gardener Joel Rifkin, 34, takes police to the bodies of other women and claims to have had sex with 17 prostitutes before murdering them.

North Carolina becomes the 50th state in which marital rape is a felony under legislation enacted July 1, although some states have exceptions to their laws.

Los Angeles police arrest Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, 27, in August, shutting down a 3-year-old prostitution ring that has attracted some of the biggest names in the film colony (at $1,500 a night) and made Fleiss rich.

Petaluma, Calif., schoolgirl Polly Klaas, 12, is murdered October 1; parolee Richard Allen Davis, 39, confesses to the crime in late November. Washington State voters give overwhelming approval in a November referendum to a "three strikes" or "three-time-loser" law that would mandate long prison sentences to anyone convicted of a felony after two previous felony convictions (see California law, 1994).

Austin leatherwork artist Elizabeth Xan Wilson, 26, identifies herself in court May 14 as the accuser of convicted rapist Joel Rene Valdez, 28, who is sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment for a September 16, 1992, sexual assault on Wilson, whose insistence that he wear a condom to protect her from AIDS raised questions about her possible complicity (a grand jury refused to indict him but a second grand jury did). The lawyer for Valdez has told the court that his client had the I.Q. of a 7-year-old and was drunk. Wilson has testified that she acted to save her life from AIDS and that self-defense did not equal consent.

Russia and Poland experience a frightening upsurge in crime, with organized mobs committing acts of violence. Many associate the crime wave with the revival of capitalism (many Russians call it "gangster capitalism").

The "Brady Bill" signed into law by President Clinton November 30 requires a 5-day waiting period for handgun purchases (it is named for former president Ronald Reagan's press secretary James Brady who was so severely wounded by a would-be presidential assassin in early 1981 that he was left a paraplegic). The U.S. Senate has voted November 17 to ban the sale and manufacture of most assault rifles, this despite opposition from the National Rifle Association, which insists that widespread ownership of such weapons does not contribute to the nation's soaring homicide rate (see 1998). The Brady Bill does not require gun sellers to retain records of purchases for any extended period (the FBI will require that they keep records for up to 180 days, and it contains no provision barring people who have been involuntarily confined in mental hospitals from buying firearms (advocates of the mentally ill and gun fanciers have both opposed any such provision, albeit for different reasons), but demands for federal licensing of handguns, steep taxes on ammunition, etc. rise after a gunman massacres passengers aboard a Long Island Rail Road commuter train December 7, killing five and wounding 18. Police arrest Jamaican-born Colin Ferguson, 35, and charge him with the murders.

Billionaire Colombian drug king Pablo Escobar is shot dead at age 44 by police at a Medellín shopping center December 2, 16 months after escaping from a maximum-security prison (see 1991). The Cali Cartel is far more sophisticated than the Medellín Cartel and continues to pour cocaine and heroin into the United States and Europe, using intermediaries in Mexico and elsewhere to facilitate their enormous trade.

environment

The worst storm to hit the eastern United States in 17 years roars up from Cuba to Canada March 12 to 13 with winds of 70 miles per hour, dropping temperatures to 2° F. in Birmingham, Ala., covering that area with 13 inches of snow, depositing up to 60 inches in the mountains of North Carolina, more than 40 inches in upstate New York, killing at least 240, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.

Freakish weather throughout the world is blamed as it was in 1983 and some previous years on El Niño—the phenomenon that creates warmer water in the Pacific and disrupts normal weather patterns.

The Mississippi and Missouri rivers rise along with their tributaries beginning in April and flood their banks in July and early August, breaching levees, halting barge traffic, killing 50, inundating vast areas of eight Midwestern states, and causing an estimated $12 billion in crop and property damage in the worst such flooding ever seen. The southeastern United States has a withering drought.

Monsoon rains in northern India, Bangladesh, and Nepal swell rivers, cause massive landslides, wash away railroads, kill more than 2,000, leave tens of thousands homeless, and destroy millions of acres of wheat and rice crops in Punjab, Haryana, and elsewhere. Flooding of the Jamuna-Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Padma-Ganges, Surma-Meghna, and Karnaphuli river systems is not uncommon, but this year's floods are especially severe.

An pre-dawn earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale rocks central India September 29, killing 9,478.

Groundbreaking begins in China on the massive Three Gorges Dam intended to control the 3,915-mile Yangzi (Yangtze) River (third longest in the world), whose flooding has killed hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries. A force of 40,000 is put to work on the project, which will span 6,864 feet, rise 610 feet, create a lake 375 miles long and nearly 600 feet deep, allow freighters to reach 1,500 miles inland to Chongging (now China's largest city), and power generators that will produce 84 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, but critics complain that the project will inundate 13 major cities, force as many as 1.9 million people to move, destroy scenic and archaeological sites, and create a cesspool that will threaten water supplies and breed disease.

marine resources

Russian officials halt pollock fishing June 15 in their 200-mile-wide territorial zone in the Sea of Okhotsk, but while Japan agrees to join in a 3-year moratorium on fishing in a 35- by 300-mile area of converging boundaries, Poland, South Korea, and China question whether pollock stocks are in peril. They announce in late July that they will reduce their fishing activities in the area by 25 percent.

The U.S. cod catch falls to 49 million pounds, down 19 percent from last year and the lowest figure since 1973. Cod fishing has been banned on Newfoundland's Grand Banks, and spawning stocks from the Grand Banks south to the Georges Bank off Massachusetts are at an historic low (see 1994; Canada, 1992).

Alaska fishermen harvest a record 191 million salmon, including 40 million sockeye salmon from Bristol Bay, and—despite salmon mortality caused by dams on the Columbia River—deliver 854 million pounds of wild Pacific salmon to supplement the fish produced on salmon farms in Chile, Norway, and elsewhere.

U.S. seafood consumption reaches new heights, having climbed 25 percent in just 5 years.

agriculture

National Farm Workers organizer César Chavez is found dead at San Luis, Arizona, April 23 at age 66. He has been warning about the dangers of pesticide residues on produce.

Farmers in India storm Cargill headquarters there in January and in July destroy the company's $2.3 million seed-processing center. New patenting laws under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT; see commerce, 1994) have threatened to raise prices as much as 60-fold on seed, and former president George Bush refused to sign a Biodiversity Treaty at a Rio de Janeiro environmental conference last year because of a clause that would block such patenting laws. The hybrids in question have in many cases been developed by modifying one or two genes out of 23,000 in seeds that are native to India.

The People's Republic of China exports 12 million metric tons of corn, 1.4 million of rice, 1 million of soybeans, and 500,000 of sorghum. Beijing imports 6 million metric tons of wheat, but only because it is often easier to supply coastal areas with imported wheat than to ship it vast distances from other parts of China. The People's Republic is the world's largest producer of wheat and rice, second-largest of corn (see 1986), and fourth largest of soybeans. Chinese wheat stocks at year's end exceed 20 million metric tons for at least the 12th straight year, and total grain stockpiles are about 500 million metric tons.

Russia harvests 99.1 million metric tons of grain and imports another 11 million tons to prevent shortages (see 1994).

Raw sugar prices jump when Cuba's harvest comes in at only 4.28 million metric tons, the smallest in 30 years. Heavy rains have turned fields to mud, slowing machines and workers trying to cut cane when its sugar content is highest, fuel is short because Russian oil imports have ended, and the lack of convertible currency obliges antiquated sugar mills to make their own replacement parts when anything breaks. Sugar represents more than 60 percent of Cuban export, and the small crop is a blow to the nation's economy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives approval November 5 to bovine somatropin (BST), a genetically engineered synthetic hormone intended to increase the amount of milk produced by dairy cows. Overproduction of milk has depressed prices, forcing many small family dairy farmers out of business; agricultural economists say widespread use of BST will mean a further reduction in the number of cows and dairy farms, but Monsanto's efforts to market BST will run into stiff resistance from dairymen sensitive to consumer objections.

The Flavr Savr tomato awaiting FDA approval is the first genetically altered food plant. Created by U.S. molecular biologists using recombinant DNA, the new tomato encounters opposition from opponents who encourage restaurateurs to insist on "natural" tomatoes.

food availability

More than 10 percent of Americans—26.6 million people—rely on food stamps in January to help them get enough to eat. It is the highest number since the program began in 1964 and an indication that while the nation may be emerging from recession the economy is not generating enough new jobs. A national study released in mid-November by the Urban Institute shows that 12 percent of older Americans sometimes go hungry or must choose between paying rent and eating, or between buying their prescribed medicine and eating.

Rains return to sub-Sahara Africa in April, reversing the effects of the century's worst drought and helping some countries recover from devastating famine. But civil war continues to disrupt agriculture in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan, where some 15 million tons of grain are needed to relieve hunger. Mozambique's 16-year bush war is declared over in October, but people in drought-stricken rebel territory, waiting for Red Cross food, do not know that a cease-fire has been signed at Rome. At least 1 million have died, and survivors are at the mercy of bands of armed soldiers roving the countryside out of control. Fertile land has prevented mass starvation on the scale of Somalia, where famine has killed more than 300,000 and where armed thugs prevent world food aid from relieving starvation. Television shows the victims of starvation in Somalia but not in Angola, Mozambique, or Sudan, and little food relief for those countries is forthcoming from the West.

Japan has a poor rice crop and agrees in December to accept rice imports and gradually reduce tariffs, despite vehement political opposition from rice farmers (see 1994).

nutrition

Nutritionist (and Tufts University chancellor) Jean Mayer dies of a heart attack at Sarasota, Fla., January 1 at age 72.

The Food and Drug Administration gains authority to regulate marketing claims by the $4 billion U.S. dietary-supplement industry for its vitamins, minerals, and herbs (see 1992). The moratorium for application of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, granted by Congress last year, expires December 18 but the Senate has voted in November to delay further any implementation of the FDA's authority. The industry has gained support from libertarians and flooded Congress with mail, persuading Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. Utah), Rep. Bill Richardson (D. N.M.), and others that curbs on its claims will hamper discussion of vitamins' and minerals' potential health benefits; the FDA insists that it is not trying to interfere with consumers who want to buy dietary supplements but merely to keep the supplements from being sold with false or unproven claims, and it has the support of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, many consumer groups, the food industry, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D. Mass), and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D. Calif.). Under its powers to pursue unsubstantiated claims on a case-by-case basis, the FDA has taken action against marketers of 188 dietary supplements in the past 3 years, sometimes seizing products and giving the industry and its customers an excuse for charging that they have been the victims of persecution (see 1994).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture finds that the average school lunch served under the School Lunch Act of 1946 contains 25 percent more total fat and 50 percent more saturated fat than recommended in dietary guidelines (see 1994).

consumer protection

Riley Detweiler, 16 months old, of Bellingham, Wash., dies of food poisoning in January after eating hamburger at a Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant; at least 300 people, mostly children in the Seattle area, are stricken, and some in Idaho; 143 are hospitalized for as long as 25 weeks, some will develop diabetes, and at least one will need a kidney transplant. Escherichia coli 0157:H7 bacteria are found in the restaurant's hamburgers, which turn out not to have been cooked to the 155° F. temperature required by state law. (McDonald's says it has always required that its hamburgers be cooked to 157° and federal officials consider boosting the national standard above the usual 140° level.) The Jack in the Box episode raises questions about federal meat inspection practices, which still rely on looking for discoloration and feeling for the disease; the new Clinton administration proposes to overhaul inspection by using scientific techniques and monitoring equipment to discover hazardous microorganisms (see 1996).

The USDA requires all raw meat and poultry to be labeled with cooking and handling instructions in response to the Jack in the Box tainted hamburger episode. It extends the October 15 deadline for such labeling to mid-April of next year on everything but ground and chopped meat, and a federal judge rules in mid-October that the Department has not observed requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act with regard to public notice of its action and allowing time for comment. Many meat packers say they will comply anyway.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest issues a report showing high levels of sodium, fat, and cholesterol in 15 popular Chinese-restaurant dishes. Many Chinese restaurants in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., report that sales have dropped by as much as 35 percent; devotees of true Chinese food say that diets in rural China consist 70 percent of carbohydrates, only 10 percent of fat.

food and drink

Average annual per-capita U.S. beef consumption declines to 65.1 pounds, down from 80.7 in 1973 (when high feed prices led to large-scale slaughtering of cattle herds and low beef prices), but average consumption of ground beef (hamburger) rises to 26.6 pounds, up from 21.9 in 1973, as Americans eat 29 billion hamburger portions—nearly 120 per man, woman, and child. Pork consumption rises to 52.3 pounds per capita, up from 49. Lamb consumption falls to 1.3 pounds, down from 2.4; veal to .9 pounds, down from 1.4.

Average annual per-capita U.S. wheat-flour consumption rises to 140 pounds, the highest level since 1947 (when it was about 144 pounds). Per-capita flour consumption approached 200 pounds early in the century, when life required more physical effort and larger caloric intake; it peaked at 166 pounds in 1943 during World War II (when other foods were rationed), sank to all-time lows of 110 pounds in 1971 and 1972, but has increased 59 percent since 1970. Wholesale bakers account for about half the flour used, with pasta manufacturers using 11 percent.

Average annual per-capita U.S. egg consumption falls to 232, down from 321 in 1960, as concerns about blood-serum cholesterol levels continue to discourage egg eating, even though some studies show that cholesterol levels are related far more to dietary fats and saturated fats than to intake of dietary cholesterol.

Average per-capita Japanese rice consumption falls to 143 pounds, down from about 260 pounds in 1962 (see 1994).

Russian bread prices rise October 15 as government subsidies end. The new price varies from 90 to 190 rubles per kilo, depending on variety, up from 13 to 25 in September of last year, and reaches close to 300 by year's end. Instead of subsidizing inefficient collective farmers and making bread so cheap that it was fed to animals, the government now subsidizes people receiving the minimum pension (14,620, or $12.18, per month), children under age 16, and students under age 18. The average monthly pension is about 24,000 rubles, the average monthly wage about 60,000 ($50).

The Food Network launched August 19 on cable television features chefs, cookbook authors, and other authorities in half-hour programs that will reach 32 million U.S. and Canadian homes by 1998. CNN originator Reese Schoenfeld has started the New York-based enterprise.

The Italian dairy giant Parmalat SpA purchases worldwide rights to the Dasi UHT (Ultra High Temperature) aseptic processing system for shelf-stable milk (see 1963). Invented in the early 1980s but never fully developed or implemented, the Dasi system heats milk to a temperature of more than 280° F. for about 3 seconds (as compared to about 170° F. for 15 to 20 seconds in the case of regular pasteurized milk), not letting it touch any hot surface, and then cools it quickly before its taste can be "bruised." Parmalat also buys a 49 percent interest in Dasi Products of Decatur, Ala., which has been used to co-pack extended shelf-life milk in bag-in-box packs for institutional use. Available for some years in Europe, South America, and parts of Asia, the aseptically-packaged milk comes in a package unlike any milk carton, has a shelf-life of about 6 months without refrigeration before it is opened, tastes exactly like fresh milk, sells at a premium price, and will be available in whole milk, low-fat 2 percent, and lowfat 2 percent chocolate-milk versions in almost every state east of the Mississippi by 1995 (see 2003).

restaurants

Wendy's opens 330 new outlets, bringing its total to 4,200 worldwide (two-thirds of them franchise restaurants), and adds 15,000 new employees (see 1969).

Americans spend 29.4 percent of their food dollars on restaurant meals, up from 21.7 percent in 1978 (the portion spent in food stores falls to 50.6 percent, down from 59.3 percent, according to the Chicago food consulting firm Technomic, Inc.).

Los Angeles bans smoking in all city restaurants.

population

President Clinton marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade January 22 by signing memoranda that reverse abortion restrictions imposed by the Reagan and Bush administrations. Federally-financed clinics are free to provide abortion counseling, military hospitals may perform abortions, federally-financed research may use fetal tissue, foreign aid may be given to international family-planning programs that include abortion-related activities, and the policy against importing the abortifacient drug RU-486 for personal use should be reviewed. Clinton favors approval of RU-486 for use in the United States (see 1994).

President Lech Walesa signs legislation in February that makes Poland one of Europe's most restrictive nations with regard to abortion (see 1992). Abortions may be performed only in cases of rape or incest, when the mother's health is seriously endangered, or where tests have revealed serious fetal defects.

Pope John Paul II sends a letter February 26 imploring the 50,000 Bosnian rape victims not to abort fetuses conceived in the Serbian program of "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims (and in some cases by Muslims against Serbian women) (see 1992).

Pensacola, Fla., physician David Gunn dies March 10 at age 47 while undergoing surgery at a local hospital, having been shot three times in the back during a demonstration outside his Women's Medical Services Clinic. Other abortion clinics in Florida and Texas have been burned by arsonists or sprayed with noxious chemicals, but Gunn's murder is the first of its kind (see 1994).

Germany's Constitutional Court rules May 28 that abortion violates a constitutional provision requiring the state to protect human life. While abortions are therefore illegal, the high court says that women who undergo abortions in their first trimesters should not be prosecuted, nor should their doctors. But since they are illegal, health insurance plans will not pay for abortions, and state-supported hospitals will stop performing them. Bishops hail the judicial ruling, but Brandenburg's minister for social affairs Regine Hildebrandt calls it "a return to the Middle Ages." Parliament senior member Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul says it effectively legalizes abortion for women who can pay $200 to $650 but puts abortion beyond the reach of poorer women; protesters at Cologne, Potsdam, and other cities take to the streets to demonstrate against the ruling.

The New England Journal of Medicine publishes a paper in May by endocrinologist Etienne-Emile Baulieu and his French colleagues describing successful tests of an RU-486 pill. Beaulieu invented the abortifacient (also called mifepristone), and a Journal editorial calls efforts to block use of the drug in America a "disgrace" (see 1995).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives approval May 10 to the first female condom; it is less effective than latex male condoms in protecting women against pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases but has the advantage of putting women in control of contraception.

Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg says in her Senate Committee hearings July 21, "It is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision maker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex. The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality."

U.S. immigration authorities try to stem the influx of illegal aliens, including potential terrorists. Chinese smuggling gangs cram would-be émigrés into freighter holds and try to get them into the United States; most are from Fujian Province, and some die when 200 jump into the water from a grounded freighter off Long Island June 6.

The El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol redeploys its agents to stem illegal immigration from Mexico; from September 19 to October 2 it closes several breaches in the fence through which people have been coming into the United States, and it stations 400 of its 650 agents along the borderline itself instead of having them chase illegals after they cross over. Operation Hold the Line reduces arrests for illegal entry to about 150 per day, down from an average of 800 to 1,000, but mistaken arrests bring an increase in lawsuits.

The new Czech Republic has a population of about 10 million, Slovakia about 5 million. The 12 European Economic Community countries have knocked down barriers to trade in goods as of January 1 but continue to resist immigration of Eastern Europeans, Turks, Algerians, Moroccans, Pakistanis, and other foreigners lest they compete for jobs and force reductions in wage scales. France's foreign population (6 percent) is no greater than in 1931, but Paris sets a goal of "zero immigration" in June. Germany stops hearing new pleas for asylum as of July 1.

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

Anthropology

Meave Leakey and Alan Walker discover fossils in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya that they identify as a new species of early hominid. They name it Australopithecus anamensis ("australopithecine from the lake"). The fossils date from about 4,200,000 years bp. See also 1983 Anthropology.

Images from the space probe Galileo reveal the first known satellite of an asteroid, which orbits the asteroid 243 Ida. The small satellite is named Dactyl. See also 1991 Astronomy; 1995 Astronomy.

On February 20 the Japanese satellite ASCA (a.k.a. Astro D) is launched. It is a space-based X-ray telescope. See also 1990 Astronomy.

In May the Keck I telescope on the island of Hawaii begins regular operation, becoming the largest optical telescope. Its mirror consists of 36 segments, each 1.8 m (6 ft) across. See also 1948 Astronomy; 1996 Astronomy.

On December 2 astronauts Thomas Akers, Kenneth Bowersox, Richard Covey, Jeffrey Hoffman, Story Musgrave, Kathryn Thornton, and Claude Nicollier (from Switzerland) are launched on the space shuttle Endeavour. In space, they successfully retrieve the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and install a corrective lens for the main mirror, which has a serious defect. They then relaunch HST, where it functions as originally intended. See also 1990 Astronomy.

On May 29 radio astronomers begin observing with the complete Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), also known as the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory. A network of ten radio telescopes at widely separated locations uses interferometry to achieve angular resolutions 500 times better than the finest optical telescopes. The sites, all in the United States, range from the Virgin Islands to Hawaii. Each has a steerable dish antenna that is 25 m (82 ft) in diameter. The baseline extends about 8600 km (5000 mi), giving a resolution equal to reading newspaper type from 5000 km (3000 mi) away. Parts of the VLBA had been in operation since 1986. See also 1980 Astronomy; 1997 Astronomy.

Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery in 1974 of the first binary pulsar, which furnished indirect proof of the existence of gravity waves. See also 1974 Astronomy.

The Ebola virus genome is sequenced. See also 1992 Biology; 1995 Biology.

Vu Van Dung, John MacKinnon, and coworkers announce the identification from recent horns and skins of the "Vu Quang bovid." A large goatlike mammal from the forests of Vietnam, it replaces the kouprey, found in Vietnam in 1937, as the most recently discovered large mammal, weighing about 100 kg (220 lb). The Vu Quang bovid is later recognized by its native name of saola (a.k.a. forest goat) and given the scientific name Pseudoryx nghetinhensis. See also 1994 Biology.

Richard Roberts and Phillip Sharp are awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering "split genes"; genes in many organisms are not unbroken strands of DNA but instead are fragmented by stretches of unrelated DNA (these noncoding segments are now called introns). See also 1977 Biology.

Kary Mullis is a cowinner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in 1983, a technique for making millions of copies of a specified fragment of DNA. The other winner is Michael Smith [b. Blackpool, England, April 26, 1932, d. Vancouver, Canada, October 4, 2000] for development of an oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis, which is used to alter specific coding sites on DNA. See also 1983 Biology.

In a demonstration on January 28 of the first system for telephonic simultaneous translation, Japanese researcher Toshiyuki Takezawa speaks the word "Moshimoshi" in Kyoto; his word is translated into Japanese text by one computer, which then passes it on to another computer that translates it into English text and sends it via a modem and telephone lines to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where yet another computer reads the text and synthesizes the English word "Hello"; the process takes 12 seconds.

In response to a rival picture-transmitting telephone from MCI Communications, AT&T announces that it will cut the price of its Videophone 2500 from $1500 to $1000 a set. MCI sells its version for $750. See also 1927 Communication; 1992 Communication.

In the United States, FM radio stations begin to use a system already in place in Europe to transmit digital data along with the signal used to produce sound. The radio data system (RDS) is used to transmit messages that appear on a small display screen and for such purposes as replacing checks on the U.S. emergency broadcasting system. See also 1986 Communication.

A team led by Harry Jordan and Vincent Heuring at the University of Colorado unveils on January 12 the first general-purpose all-optical computer capable of being programmed and manipulating instructions internally. See also 1990 Electronics.

The Apple IIe, last in the upgrades of the Apple II computer to be manufactured, goes out of production in November. The first Apple II had been displayed in April 1977.

Apple introduces the Newton, the first version of the first personal digital assistant (PDA). It is not very successful.

Ice cores from Greenland and from Antarctica reveal the record of Earth's climate for the past 250,000 years.

Weather scientists discover unexpected, but short-lived, displays of electromagnetism in Earth's upper atmosphere above thunderstorms. These are termed sprites, blue jets, and ELVES.

On February 9 the Brazilian satellite Pegasus 3 is launched by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Fairfax, Virginia. The mission of the satellite is to study changes in the environment of the Amazon basin.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announces a National Biological Survey to catalog all of the estimated 650,000 species living in the United States and describe their living conditions.

Shuji Nakamura develops the first blue light-emitting diode (LED) suitable for commercial applications. He had developed his first blue LED two years earlier, making the highest crystal quality attained to that time. See also 1990 Electronics; 1995 Energy.

Fujitsu in Japan introduces a 256-megabit memory chip. See also 1991 Electronics.

Intel Corp announces on March 22 that it is shipping its Pentium microprocessor to computer manufacturers. Pentium is the fifth generation of the basic chip that powers IBM computers and their clones. The Pentium chip contains 3,100,000 transistors and operates twice as fast as the best fourth-generation Intel chip, the 486DX2. See also 1990 Electronics.

Calgene Inc. announces that it will apply for food-additive status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the marker gene, known as kan'r, in its genetically altered tomato termed the Flavr Savr. The Flavr Savr will be approved by the FDA in 1994, but it will not become a commercial success and will be taken off the market in mid-1996. See also 1980 Biology; 2000 Food & agriculture.

In Iraq the Third River Canal between the Tigris and Euphrates is completed, primarily to provide water to wash salt out of the soil, salt that had been introduced by irrigation practices of the past; it would also drain large areas of marshland, making them suitable for conventional farming. The canal runs from Mahmudiya, near Baghdad, to Basra on the Persian Gulf, a distance of 560 km (350 mi). See also 1258 Food & agriculture.

A team of scientists from Catalytica Inc. in Mountain View, California, announces that they have discovered a way to make methanol from methane that is cheap and that works at a low temperature. The input is methane and air, catalyzed by ionized mercury, and the products are methanol and carbon dioxide. See also 1928 Materials.

Scientists at Harvard create a thin film of a carbon-nitrogen compound that is believed to be harder than diamond. In another approach, Patricia Bianconi and student Glenn Visscher produce a diamondlike film from a polyacetylene plastic.

Andrew Wiles provides a first proof of Fermat's "Last Theorem," the statement that for n > 2 and nonzero integral a, b, and c, there is no true statement of the form a + b= c . See also 1988 Mathematics; 1995 Mathematics. (See biography.)

Susan Perrine and coworkers discover that administration of butyrate, a naturally occurring fatty acid, can successfully treat anemias caused by deformed hemoglobin, such as sickle cell anemia. Butyrate in the bloodstream promotes the development of fetal-type hemoglobin, which, because the fetal type is directed by different genes from adult hemoglobin, is not affected by genetic diseases of normal hemoglobin. See also 1934 Medicine & health.

Apple Computer becomes the first company to offer a split computer keyboard for reduction of repetitive stress hand injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. The keyboard has been designed without reference to an earlier version patented by Tony Hodges, according to Apple. See also 1986 Medicine & health.

Yvonne Bryson, Steven Miles, Erin Balden, and coworkers announce development of a fast and effective way to detect AIDS in newborns and infants. AIDS may be contracted in the womb, which can be detected at birth, or during birth, which before the new test could not be determined until four to six weeks later.

Scientists recognize a newly found disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which kills several Americans who have become infected from contact with dust infected by rodent dung.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declares that environmental tobacco smoke, known as secondhand smoke, is a lung carcinogen and poses a serious respiratory problem for infants and young children. See also 1988 Medicine & health.

Adam Software Inc. announces on April 7 the availability of its CD-ROM called Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine (ADAM), a virtual reality version of a cadaver. It is complete with all the organs that could be virtually dissected by a medical student. See also 1832 Medicine & health.

A review of twin and adoption studies indicates that there is a significant genetic component in homosexuality.

Colossal magnetoresistance (more powerful than the previously known giant magnetoresistance), the phenomenon that electrical resistance in certain metallic multilayers changes over a factor of ten when placed in a magnetic field, is discovered. See also 1988 Physics.

The NIST-7 atomic clock, based on laser beams that guide streams of atoms, becomes the most accurate clock ever made; the new clock, based on the standard of 9,192,631,770 vibrations of a cesium atom as the measure of a second, is calculated to stay within 1 second of accuracy per 3,000,000 years of operation. See also 1989 Physics.

Early in the year scientists from MIT launch in Antarctic waters the inexpensive tetherless (autonomous) robot submersible Odyssey, designed by James G. Bellingham and coworkers. The 2-m (7-ft) robot can to dive to ocean depths as great as 5 km (3 mi). Because Odyssey costs about a hundredth as much as the first significant robot submersible, Jason, and a thousandth as much as the human-piloted Alvin, it is thought to inaugurate a new era of cheap robots for undersea exploration. See also 1962 Tools.

In March a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution launches off Bermuda the Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE), a tetherless robot submersible designed to sink to ocean depths as great as 6 km (4 mi) and stay there for as long as a year if needed, observing for scientists on the ocean's surface. The 2-m (6-ft) ABE was designed by Albert M. Bradley and coworkers. See also 1962 Tools.

Drama and Theater

• Frank D. Gilroy: Any Given Day. Gilroy revisits the family he dealt with in his most famous play, The Subject Was Roses (1964), in action predating the original, at the outbreak of World War II.
• Steve Martin (b. 1945): Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein meet in a Paris bar in this witty comedy by the popular comedian and actor. The play has little plot, but critics find it provocative for its treatment of both men as young geniuses and for its depiction of life in the early twentieth century, full of optimism and a sense of being on the verge of great discoveries.
• Arthur Miller: The Last Yankee. This one-act play had debuted in 1991; revised and expanded, it runs at New York's Manhattan Theatre Club. Miller's drama is set in a mental hospital and deals with two woman suffering from clinical depression who are visited by their husbands.
• Paul Rudnick: Jeffrey. Praised by critics as a master of light comedy, Rudnick presents the subject of AIDS in humorous and affirmative terms. His finely realized gay and straight characters are integrated into a complex view of sex, which abjures abstinence but also counsels caution. According to this play, sex is an eruptive force that simply cannot be denied.
• Neil Simon: Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Simon's play hilariously re-creates the atmosphere of early 1950s television. The scene is the writers' room of the Sid Caesar Show. Simon, one of Caesar's writers and a mainstay of other comedy shows, writes with nostalgia and sensitivity about this era. In the play a group of writers compete against one another but also share the joy of participating in a new medium that can still be bent to their will.
• Robert M. Wilson: The Black Rider. Wilson collaborates with singer-composer Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs for this reworking of Karl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter, 1821), about an aspiring marksman's bargain with the devil. Considered Wilson's most accessible work, it is commended by reviewer Charles Michener for confirming that Wilson is "not only a high-minded mystifier but a real, low-down entertainer."

Fiction

• Walter Abish: Eclipse Fever. Abish's third novel concerns a Mexican literary critic's suspicions that his wife is unfaithful. It is praised by critic Harold Bloom: "At once disturbing and wildly entertaining, this ironic novel may well be one of the handful of essential American works emanating from the decade preceding the end of the second millennium."
• Sherman Alexie (b. 1966): The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. The Native American writer's first collection of stories treats, in the words of reviewer Brian Schneider, "the nation-within-a-nation status of American Indians and the contradictions such a status provides." The book wins the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first book of fiction. Born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, Alexie is the author of the novel Indian Killer (1996).
• Frederick Barthelme: The Brothers. Barthelme's novel presents newly divorced Del Tribute's stay at his brother's house and his infatuation with his sister-in-law. Del's career would be continued in Painted Desert (1995).
• Paul Bowles: Too Far from Home. This omnibus collection of Bowles's writings, including travel essays, parts of a memoir, letters, and journals, is most notable for its inclusion of several highly regarded short stories and the complete text of the 1949 novel that is Bowles's masterpiece, The Sheltering Sky.
• T. Coraghessan Boyle: The Road to Wellville. The novel is a send-up of the nineteenth-century craze for physical and spiritual self-improvement. Set in Dr. John Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan, sanatorium, the story concerns inmates who are subjected to bizarre diet and physical regimens.
• Rita Mae Brown: Venus Envy. Brown's social satire looks at what happens when thirty-five-year-old Mary Armstrong, diagnosed with a terminal illness, writes letters to her family and friends, telling them what she thinks of them and informing them that she is a lesbian--only to learn that she will live after all.
• Frank Conroy: Body & Soul. Conroy's first novel concerns the transformation of a child piano prodigy into a mature and accomplished composer.
• Harriet Doerr: Consider This, Señora. The octogenarian author returns to the scene of her earlier success, Stones for Ibarra (1984), with a story of American expatriates in Mexico. The novel gains favorable notices, including that of New York Times Book Review critic Sandra Scofield, who writes that the novel "captures a time and place as surely as a jeweler sets a stone."
• Stanley Elkin: Van Gogh's Room at Arles. The book contains three comic novellas: the title work, about a community-college professor's dealing with Vincent van Gogh's bedroom; Her Sense of Timing, about a wheelchair-bound professor whose wife leaves him; and Town Crier Exclusive..., which comically attacks the tabloid press and the fascination with British royalty.
• Jeffrey Eugenides (b. 1960): The Virgin Suicides. Eugenides gains critical acclaim for his first novel, about five teenagers living in an affluent suburb in the 1970s who kill themselves. The Michigan-born writer would win the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (2002).
• Albert French (b. 1943): Billy. French's debut novel is a fictional re-creation of the accidental killing of a white girl and the resulting trial of a black boy that took place in rural Mississippi in 1937. Some reviewers state that French, a photographer by trade, has created a classic American tragedy out of this mix of death, racial tension, and injustice. French, a Vietnam veteran, is the author of a memoir, Patches of Fire: A Story of War and Redemption (1996), and the novels Holly (1995) and I Can't Wait on God (1998).
• Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying. Set in 1948 in the pre-civil rights South, this is the story of the education of an African American man unjustly condemned to die. His journal drives home the failure of democratic ideals in a place and time in which racism was the de facto law of the land.
• John Hawkes: Sweet William: A Memoir of Old Horse. Hawkes continues his equine theme begun in Whistlejacket (1988) with this autobiography of a racehorse.
• Oscar Hijuelos: The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien. A succession of female narrators provides a wide-ranging history of an Irish Cuban family in Pennsylvania over the course of the twentieth century. It would be followed by Mr. Ives' Christmas (1995).
• Thom Jones (b. 1945): The Pugilist at Rest. The stories in Jones's first collection focus primarily on the Vietnam War and its aftermath and constitute what critic Mary Park calls "the darkest, funniest, most urgent fictional debut in years." The Illinois-born writer was a boxer. The collections Cold Snap (1995) and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (1999) would follow.
• Barbara Kingsolver: Pigs in Heaven. Kingsolver returns to the characters and settings that made her first novel, The Bean Trees (1987), so memorable, putting her heroine, Taylor Greer, in the middle of a custody battle over a part-Cherokee child.
• David Leavitt: While England Sleeps. Leavitt's historical novel is criticized for its unacknowledged use of English poet Stephen Spender's memoirs of the Spanish Civil War. The controversy brings Leavitt's book into the spotlight, however, as does his candid writing about homosexual love.
• Bobbie Ann Mason: Feather Crown. Set in 1900, Mason's novel describes the impact on a Kentucky family when a woman gives birth to quintuplets. As the author explains, "It's about being faced with a bewildering set of circumstances. She tries to make sense of it all and tries to rise above it and be herself, a survivor. I think that's also the challenge for us in this part of the twentieth century."
• Bharati Mukherjee: The Holder of the World. Mukherjee's novel connects the world of Puritan New England in the seventeenth century with India in an ingenious multicultural repossession of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
• Richard Powers: Operation Wandering Soul. Nominated for a National Book Award, Powers's novel concerns a pediatrics ward in inner-city modern Los Angeles.
• E. Annie Proulx: The Shipping News. Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, about a down-on-his-luck newspaperman who travels with his young daughters to his ancestral home in Newfoundland, is praised for its humor, eccentricity, and careful observation of the telling detail. Before writing it, Proulx had made several trips to the Newfoundland coast--a far-flung place she knew nothing of--simply to soak up the atmosphere.
• James Redfield (b. 1950): The Celestine Prophecy. Redfield's novel about the quest for enlightenment had been rejected by a number of publishers, and he initially self-published it. Its popularity among New Age devotees causes it to become a publishing marvel. As of 1996 it had sold 5.8 million copies and held the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for 116 weeks. Redfield's best-selling follow-ups include The Tenth Insight (1996) and The Secret of Shambhala (1999). The Alabama writer worked previously as a counselor for abused children.
• Ishmael Reed: Japanese by Spring. An African American professor at a predominantly white liberal arts college suddenly becomes the academic dean, with the power to settle old scores. Reed critiques contemporary academic culture, political correctness, and multiculturalism as the story progresses.
• Philip Roth: Operation Shylock: A Confession. Roth formulates a new genre--the quasi-autobiographical novel--by inventing a novelist named Philip Roth who, in the midst of a breakdown, learns that an imposter using his name is promoting "Diasporism," Jewish resettlement in Europe as an antidote to Zionism. As Harold Bloom observes, "What fascinates about Operation Shylock is the degree of the author's experimentation in shifting the boundaries between his life and his work."
• Richard Russo (b. 1949): Nobody's Fool. Like his previous two novels--Mohawk (1986) and The Risk Pool (1988)--Russo's novel treats blue-collar inhabitants of an upstate New York town. It gains the writer increased attention as well as praise from writer E. Annie Proulx as a "rude, comic, harsh, galloping story of four generations of small-town losers, the best literary portrait of the backwater burg since Main Street." The Johnstown, New York, native would win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Empire Falls (2001).
• Cathleen Schine (b. 1953): Rameau's Niece. The novel centers on a female writer who translates a response to the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot's 1805 work, Rameau's Nephew. Schine's frankly sexual reply to Diderot is inventive and decidedly postmodern, resulting in a satisfyingly moral tale that reviewers compare with the novels of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen. Schine's other books include Alice in Bed (1983), The Love Letter (1995), and The Evolution of Jane (1998).
• Bob Shacochis (b. 1951): Swimming in the Volcano. Nominated for the National Book Award, this is an ambitious first novel by an author known for his short fiction. The novel's mix of sexual intrigue, politics, and volcanoes invites comparisons with Susan Sontag's best-selling novel The Volcano Lover. Shacochis's other books include Easy in the Islands (1985), The Next New World (1989), and The Immaculate Invasion (1999).

Literary Criticism and Scholarship

• Allan Bloom: Love and Friendship. In his last published work Bloom attempts to dissect and destroy modern attitudes toward personal relationships with the same sharp scalpel he had used to carve up higher education in his controversial work The Closing of the American Mind (1987). He uses as his standard for comparison classic literary works by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
• E. L. Doctorow: Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution. Doctorow's first essay collection consists of literary criticism, political insights, and historical meditations.
• Adrienne Rich: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. Rich collects her literary criticism, devoted mainly to commentary on newer, mainly female writers.

Nonfiction

• James E. B. Breslin (1935-1996): Mark Rothko. Breslin, an English professor, is criticized for venturing outside of his field with this biography, the first full-length treatment of one of the twentieth century's most significant painters. The work also receives a full measure of praise, both for its analysis of Rothko and its presentation of the New York art scene at midcentury.
• Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946): Road Scholar. Rumanian-born poet Codrescu recounts his participation in a quintessentially American adventure, the long road trip, wending his way from Greenwich Village (where he receives Allen Ginsberg's blessing before setting off to San Francisco) to the West. Along the way Codrescu's discerning eye discovers the offbeat contradictions essential to the form, but he also realizes that "paradoxically, the most materialistic country in the world is also the most spiritual."
• Sarah Delany (1889-1999) and Elizabeth Delany (1891-1995): Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years. The African American sisters' view of their long lives becomes a bestseller and would be adapted as a play by Emily Mann in 1996.
• Martin Duberman: Stonewall. Duberman's groundbreaking study explores the history of the gay rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, sparked by the 1969 riot at New York's Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in which patrons protested police harassment.
• Betty Friedan: The Fountain of Age. Friedan shifts her focus from feminism to gerontology, challenging the pervasive "age mystique" in American culture.
• Donald Hall: Life Work. Hall's memoir begins as a meditation on the writing life but changes directions halfway through when he discovers that he has life-threatening liver cancer. The work is praised by many critics, who see it as an enlightening look into the habits and work ethic of a distinguished American poet and author.
• Erica Jong: The Devil at Large. Jong's critical biography of Henry Miller, in part the product of a six-year friendship with Miller, is an unacademic look at an author long considered antifeminist.
• David Levering Lewis (b. 1936): W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919. The award-winning biography by the professor of history at Rutgers is quickly hailed as the standard reference source not only for the life of the civil rights leader but for the period of American social history covered by this first installment of a two-volume biography (completed in 2000).
• Alan Lomax: The Land Where the Blues Began. Lomax, long a collector and popularizer of indigenous American music, publishes the fruits of his search "from the Brazos bottoms of Texas to the tidewater country of Virginia" for the roots of an American art form.
• Wilma Mankiller (b. 1945): Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. Both an autobiography and a history of the Cherokee people, Mankiller's book describes her grim childhood and youth in California and in Oklahoma, her years of poverty and struggle with racism, and her gradual overcoming of obstacles to obtain a college degree and eventually--through her work as a community development director--her selection as the first woman chief of her people.
• John McPhee: Assembling California. A geological history of a state notorious for earthquakes is the result of fifteen years of field research conducted with tectonicists and sedimentologists. McPhee assembles their arcane knowledge into readable and beautifully crafted prose.
• David Remnick (b. 1958): Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book grew out of Remnick's coverage of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union for the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal compares the fruit of Remnick's reportage with John Reed's influential eyewitness account of the formation of the Soviet Union, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919).
• Tina Rosenberg (b. 1960): The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism. Rosenberg wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for her study of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the former East Germany. Reviewer David Rieff calls it the "definitive account of what the transition away from communism in Eastern Europe has meant in moral terms."
• Richard Slotkin: Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. This volume completes Slotkin's highly acclaimed trilogy about the impact of the West on the American imagination, following Regeneration Through Violence (1973) and The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1985).
• Page Smith (1917-1995): Rediscovering Christianity: A History of Modern Democracy and the Christian Ethic. Smith traces the relationship between Christianity and fundamental American notions of law and justice, putting the lie to sociologist Max Weber's notion of the "Protestant ethic," which equates democracy and Christianity with capitalism.
• Diana Trilling: The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. Diana Trilling's memoir bears witness to her contention, as she once told an interviewer, that the headline on her obituary would read as follows: "Diana Trilling Dies at 150. Widow of Distinguished Professor and Literary Critic Lionel Trilling". While distinguished in her own right as a social and literary critic, Diana Trilling is obliged to write not a personal memoir but a portrait of her marriage.
• Gore Vidal: United States: Essays, 1952-1992. This collection of essays ranges in subject matter from politics (Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy) to sociology (feminism, American attitudes toward sex) to literature (Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder).
• Cornel West (b. 1953): Race Matters. West, a professor of religion and director of African American studies at Princeton, exhibits an impressive range in essays such as "Nihilism in Black America," "The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning," "The Crisis of Black Leadership," "Demystifying the New Black Conservatism," "Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity," "On Black Jewish Relations," "Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject," and "Malcolm X and Black Rage."
• Edmund White: Genet. The novelist's lengthy biography of the French novelist and playwright Jean Genet (1910-1986) is deemed by more than one critic to be definitive--perhaps even exhaustive. Despite its length and surfeit of detail, the biography is widely reviewed and wins numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography.
• Edmund Wilson: The Sixties. The final installment of Wilson's published journals ends with an entry written the day before he died. The volume is controversial for its candor about sexual matters and Wilson's misanthropy.

Poetry

• A. R. Ammons: Garbage. This National Book Award-winning collection is an eighteen-section, 2,200-line poem composed on adding machine tape and constituting a meditation on the implications of trash, that is, the remains of all life-forms.
• Maya Angelou: "On the Pulse of Morning." Angelou reads this poem at Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration. She is the first African American woman to be asked to compose and deliver an inaugural poem for a president.
• Mark Doty: My Alexandra. Doty becomes the first American to win the prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, for this collection offering various responses to the AIDS crisis. Atlantis (1995) and Sweet Machine (1998) would follow.
• Carolyn Forché: Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Forché edits this important collection of poems written by more than 140 poets from five continents, covering topics as diverse as human rights, genocide, war, and political repression. Selections include poems on the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the Spanish Civil War. In the New York Review of Books, critic John Bayley calls the collection a "remarkable book. Not only in itself and for the poems it contains, but for the ideas that lie behind their selection."
• Donald Hall: The Museum of Clear Ideas. The title poem in Hall's collection is an imitation of Horace, but other verse is concerned with one of Hall's favorite topics, baseball.
• Donald HallDaniel Halpern (b. 1945) Inferno. Halpern, the editor in chief and cofounder of Ecco Press, edits a new version of Dante's poem in which twenty-one contemporary poets--ranging from Richard Howard to Amy Clampitt--produce their own distinctive versions of the classic cantos.
• Linda Hogan: The Book of Medicines. Hogan's collection draws on Native American folklore and ritual to address the spiritual and moral failures of the modern world. It is praised by reviewer Robert L. Benner as "a significant step, indeed a great stride, in the development of a major American poet."
• Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947): Neon Vernacular. Komunyakaa's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection concerns his life as an African American growing up in Louisiana and serving in the Vietnam War. The poems are written in simple language and short lines, which critics agree help to revive the moribund Deep Image poetry movement, which emphasizes psychological symbolism. Born in Louisiana, Komunyakaa teaches at Indiana University. His other books include Copacetic (1984), Magic City (1992), and Thieves of Paradise (1998).
• Sharon Olds: The Father. This collection, a great critical success, treats Olds's father's death from cancer and how she came to an understanding with him near the end of his life. Told with unsparing candor, the poetry penetrates the core of the writer's private life, her sense of grievance and her grieving, making her father come painfully alive so that the writing seems, as reviewers note, an act of atonement.
• Robert Pack: Fathering the Map: New and Selected Poems. Pack brings together new works with selections from his previous five volumes--The Irony of Joy (1955), A Stranger's Privilege (1959), Guarded by Women (1963), Home from the Cemetery (1969), Nothing but Light (1972), and Keeping Watch (1976). Included is "Wild Turkey in Paradise," which has been called Pack's best single work.
• Mark Strand: Dark Harbor. This long poem in forty-five parts recounts an episodic journey into old age and a twilight land full of mystery and menace.
• John Updike: Collected Poems. The volume collects 350 poems, many of them hitherto unpublished, in which Updike tackles home life, sex, daily life, travel, and religion with the gusto, wit, and humor associated with his novels. Critics admire his deft handling of verse forms, especially the sonnet.
• Mona Van Duyn: Firefall. Van Duyn's collection of meditations, occasional poems, and "minimalist sonnets" prompts reviewer Ellen Kaufman to call the poet laureate "perhaps the most beloved American poet writing today."

Publications and Events

• Mona Van DuynPoet laureate of the United States. Rita Dove becomes the first African American to be named poet laureate. She asserts that her appointment is significant "in terms of the message it sends about the diversity of our culture and our literature."

For a complete list, see Category:1993 births.

For a complete list, see Category:1993 deaths.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1960s  1970s  1980s  – 1990s –  2000s  2010s  2020s
Years:	1990 1991 1992 – 1993 – 1994 1995 1996

1993 by topic
Subject: Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Aviation – Film – Home video – Literature (Poetry) – Meteorology – Music (Country, Metal) – Rail transport – Radio – Science – Spaceflight – Sports – Television – Video gaming
Countries: Australia – Canada – Ecuador – France – India – Ireland – Italy – Luxembourg – Malaysia – New Zealand – Norway – Pakistan – Philippines – Singapore – South Africa – UK – USA – Zimbabwe
Leaders: Sovereign states – State leaders – Religious leaders – Law
Categories: Births – Deaths – Works – Introductions – Establishments – Disestablishments – Awards
v • d • e

1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year that started on a Friday. In the Gregorian calendar, it was the 1993rd year in the Common Era, or of Anno Domini; the 993rd year of the 2nd millennium; the 93rd year of the 20th century; and the 4th of the 1990s.

Contents:
Events of 1993 -  Jan. . Feb. . March . April -  May . June . July  .  Aug. -  Sept. . Oct. . Nov. .  Dec. -  Undated . Ongoing Births Deaths  -  Templeton Prize Nobel prizes Ship events See also -  Notes -  External links

Events of 1993

January

January
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

• January 1 – Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: Slovakia and the Czech Republic separate in the so-called Velvet Divorce.
• January 1 – The European Community eliminates trade barriers and creates a European single market.
• January 1 – EuroNews is launched in Europe.
• January 1 – ITV companies GMTV, Carlton Television, Meridian Broadcasting and Westcountry Television start broadcasting, replacing TV-am, Thames Television, TVS and TSW respectively.
• January 3 – In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
• January 5 – The state of Washington executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).

Bill Clinton inaugurated as President of the United States.

• January 5 – $7.4 million USD is stolen from Brinks Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York in the 5th largest robbery in U.S. history. Four men, Samuel Millar, Father Patrick Moloney, former Rochester Police officer Thomas O'Connor, and Charles McCormick, all of whom have ties to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, are accused.
• January 5 – M/V Braer, a Liberian oil tanker, runs aground off the Scottish island of Mainland, causing a massive oil spill.
• January 6 – Douglas Hurd is the first high-ranking British official to visit Argentina since the Falklands War.
• January 6–20 – The Bombay Riots take place in the city now known as Mumbai.
• January 7 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated, with Jerry Rawlings as president.
• January 14 – The Polish ferry M/S Jan Heweliusz sinks off the coast of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, killing 54 people.
• January 15 – Salvatore Riina, the Mafia boss known as 'The Beast', is arrested in Palermo, Sicily after 23 years as a fugitive.
• January 19 – Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) signed.
• January 19 – IBM announces a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history to date.
• January 19 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq refuses to allow UNSCOM inspectors to use its own aircraft to fly into Iraq, and begins military operations in the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait, and the northern Iraqi no-fly zones. U.S. forces fire approximately 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Baghdad factories linked to Iraq's illegal nuclear weapons program. Iraq then informs UNSCOM that it will be able to resume its flights.
• January 20 – Bill Clinton succeeds George H.W. Bush as the 42nd President of the United States.
• January 24 – In Turkey, thousands protest the murder of journalist Uğur Mumcu.
• January 25 – Mir Aimal Kasi fires a rifle and kills 2 employees outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
• January 25 – Social democrat Poul Nyrup Rasmussen succeeds conservative Poul Schlüter as Prime Minister of Denmark.
• January 26 – Václav Havel is elected President of the Czech Republic.
• January 31 – Super Bowl XXVII: The Buffalo Bills become the first team to lose 3 consecutive Super Bowls as they are defeated by the Dallas Cowboys, 52–17.

February

February
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
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22	23	24	25	26	27	28

The aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing.

• February 4 – Members of the right-wing Austrian FPÖ split to form the Liberal Forum in protest against the increasing nationalistic bent of the party.
• February 5 – Belgium becomes a federal state rather than a kingdom.
• February 8 – General Motors Corporation sues NBC, after Dateline NBC allegedly rigged 2 crashes showing that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the following day.
• February 10 – Lien Chan is named by Lee Teng-Hui to succeed Hau Pei-tsun as Premier of the Republic of China.
• February 10 – Mani Pulite scandal: Italian legislator Claudio Martelli resigns, followed by various politicians over the next 2 weeks.
• February 11 – Janet Reno is selected by President Clinton as Attorney General of the United States.
• February 14 – Glafkos Klerides defeats incumbent George Vasiliou in the Cypriot presidential election.
• February 14 – Albert Zafy defeats Didier Ratsiraka in the Madagascar presidential election.
• February 17 – A ferry sinks in Haiti, killing approximately 1,215 out of 1,500 passengers.
• February 22 – UN Security Council Resolution 808 is voted on, deciding that "an international tribunal shall be established" to prosecute violations of international law in Yugoslavia. The tribunal will is established on May 25 by Resolution 827.
• February 24 – Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney resigns amidst political and economic turmoil. Kim Campbell, his successor, becomes Canada's first female Prime Minister.
• February 26 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over 1,000.
• February 28 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, with a warrant to arrest leader David Koresh on federal firearms violations. Four agents and 5 Davidians die in the raid and a 51-day standoff begins.

March

March
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

• March 4 – Authorities announce the capture of suspected World Trade Center bombing conspirator Mohammad Salameh.
• March 5 – A Macedonian Palair Flight 301, a F-100 on a flight to Zurich, crashes shortly after take-off from Skopje killing 83 of the 97 on board.
• March 9 – Rodney King testifies at the federal trial of 4 Los Angeles, California police officers accused of violating his civil rights when they beat him during an arrest.
• March 11 – Janet Reno is confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States.
• March 12 – 1993 Bombay bombings: Several bombs explode in Bombay, India, killing 257 and injuring hundreds more.
• March 12 – North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea announces that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites.
• March 13–14 – The Great Blizzard of 1993 strikes the eastern U.S., bringing record snowfall and other severe weather all the way from Cuba to Quebec; it reportedly kills 184.
• March 13 – Australian federal election, 1993: The Australian Labor Party stays in power despite poor economic results.
• March 17 – The PKK announces a unilateral ceasefire in Iraq.
• March 20 – Warrington bomb attacks: An IRA bomb explodes in Warrington Town Centre and kills 2 children, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry.
• March 22 – The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips.
• March 24 – The Israeli Knesset elects Ezer Weizman as President of Israel.
• March 24 – South Africa officially abandons its nuclear weapons programme. President de Klerk announces that the country's 6 warheads had already been dismantled in 1990.
• March 27 – Jiang Zemin becomes President of the People's Republic of China.
• March 27 – Following a rash of integrist murders, Algeria breaks diplomatic relations with Iran, accusing the country of interfering in its interior affairs.
• March 27 – Mahamane Ousmane is elected president of Nigeria.
• March 28 – French legislative election, 1993: Gaullists win a majority and Édouard Balladur becomes Prime Minister.
• March 29 – The 65th Academy Awards, hosted by Billy Crystal, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California, with Unforgiven winning Best Picture.

April

April
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			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

• April – The Kuwaiti government claims to uncover an Iraqi assassination plot against former U.S. President George H.W. Bush shortly after his visit to Kuwait. Two Iraqi nationals confess to driving a car-bomb into Kuwait on behalf of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.^[1]
• April 1 – The Vatican orders the moving of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz.
• April 6 – A nuclear accident occurs at Tomsk 7 in Russia.
• April 8 – The Republic of Macedonia is admitted to the United Nations.
• April 9 – The rock band Nirvana plays a benefit concert for the Bosnian rape victims at San Francisco's Cow Palace
• April 10 – African National Congress activist Chris Hani is assassinated in South Africa.
• April 16 – Bosnian War: Srebrenica falls.
• April 17 – Laurence Powell and Stacey Koon are found guilty in the second Rodney King trial.
• April 19 – A 51-day stand-off at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ends with a fire that kills 76 people, including David Koresh.
• April 22 – In Washington, DC, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated.
• April 22 – 18-year-old student Stephen Lawrence is stabbed to death in London, England; the attack is believed to have been racially motivated.
• April 23 – The World Health Organization declares tuberculosis a Global Emergency.
• April 23 – Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
• April 26 – Oscar Luigi Scalfaro appoints Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Prime Minister of Italy.
• April 27 – Yemeni parliamentary election, 1993: The General People's Congress wins a plurality of 121 seats.
• April 27 – All members of the Zambia national football team die in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon in route to Dakar, Senegal.
• April 28 – An executive order requires the United States Air Force to allow women to fly war planes.
• April 30 – Tennis star Monica Seles is stabbed in the back by an obsessed fan of rival Steffi Graf at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany.

May

May
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3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

• May 1 – Pierre Bérégovoy, former prime minister of France, commits suicide.
• May 1 – A Tamil Tigers suicide bomber assassinates President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka.
• May 4 – UNOSOM II assumes the Somalian duties of the dissolved UNITAF.
• May 9 – Juan Carlos Wasmosy becomes the first democratically elected President of Paraguay in nearly 40 years.
• May 15 – Niamh Kavanagh wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland with "In Your Eyes."
• May 16 – The Grand National Assembly of Turkey elects Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel as President of Turkey.
• May 16 – After Demirel becomes the president the acting prime minister of Turkey is Erdal İnönü of SHP for 40 days.
• May 16 – Marseille defeats A.C. Milan in the UEFA Champions League Final.
• May 24 – Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia.
• May 27 – A car bomb at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence kills 5; the Mafia is suspected.
• May 28 – Eritrea and Monaco gain entry to the United Nations.

June

June
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21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

• June 1 – Large protests erupt against Slobodan Milošević's regime in Belgrade; opposition leader Vuk Drašković and his wife Danica are arrested.
• June 1 – President of Guatemala Jorge Serrano Elías is forced to flee the country after an attempted self-coup.
• June 1 – Burundian presidential election, 1993: The first multiparty elections in Burundi since the country's independence lead to the election of Melchior Ndadaye, leader of the Front for Democracy in Burundi. The next day's legislative election sees his party win with an overwhelming majority.
• June 5 – The National Assembly of Venezuela designates Ramón José Velásquez as successor of suspended President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
• June 5 – 24 Pakistani troops in the UN forces are killed in Mogadishu, Somalia.
• June 5 – Minnesota v. Dickerson: The United States Supreme Court rules that the seizure of evidence during a pat-down search is unconstitutional.
• June 6 – Following the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement's victory, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada becomes president of Bolivia.
• June 6 – Mongolia holds its first direct presidential elections.
• June 8 – In Paris, Christian Didier breaks into the home of René Bousquet, banker and former Vichy France administrator, and shoots him dead.
• June 8 – The PKK-declared ceasefire ends in Iraq.
• June 9 – The Montreal Canadiens win their 24th Stanley Cup, defeating the Los Angeles Kings in the Finals.
• June 14 – Multipartyists win a referendum on the future of the one-party system in Malawi.
• June 18 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq refuses to allow UNSCOM weapons inspectors to install remote-controlled monitoring cameras at 2 missile engine test stands.
• June 20 – A 7.5 earthquake hits Japan, killing 385 people.
• June 20 – John Paxson's 3-point shot in Game 6 of the NBA Finals helps the Chicago Bulls secure a 99–98 win over the Phoenix Suns, and their third consecutive championship.
• June 22 – Japan's New Party Sakigake breaks away from the Liberal Democratic Party.
• June 23 – In Manassas, Virginia, Lorena Bobbitt cuts off the penis of her husband John Wayne Bobbitt.
• June 24 – A Unabomber bomb injures computer scientist David Gelernter at Yale University.
• June 24 – Andrew Wiles wins worldwide fame after presenting his solution for Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that has been unsolved for more than 3 centuries.
• June 25 – Kim Campbell becomes the 19th, and first female, Prime Minister of Canada.
• June 25 – Tansu Çiller of DYP forms the new government of Turkey.
• June 25 – Zoran Lilić succeeds Dobrica Ćosić as President of Yugoslavia.
• June 25 – The litas is introduced in Lithuania.
• June 25 – Jacques Attali resigns as President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
• June 26–28 – Typhoon Koryn causes important damages in the Philippines, China and Macau.
• June 27 – U.S. President Bill Clinton orders a cruise missile attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters in the Al-Mansur District of Baghdad, in response to the attempted assassination of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait in mid-April.
• June 27 – In Bad Kleinen, Germany, GSG 9 troopers arrest terrorists Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Grams.

July

July
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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

August
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9	10	11	12	13	14	15
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23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

• July 2 – An integrist mob sets fire to the hotel where The Satanic Verses translator Aziz Nesin resides in Sivas, Turkey, killing 37.
• July 5 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN inspection teams leave Iraq. Iraq then agrees to UNSCOM demands and the inspection teams return.
• July 7–9 – The 19th G7 summit is held in Tokyo, Japan.
• July 7 – Hurricane Calvin lands in Mexico. It is the second Pacific hurricane on record to land in Mexico in July, and kills 34.
• July 12 – A magnitude 7.8 earthquake off Hokkaidō, Japan launches a devastating tsunami that kills 202 on the small island of Okushiri, Hokkaido.
• July 16–17 – In Estonia, the majority Russian cities of Narva and Sillamäe organize illegal referendums on "territorial autonomy" to protest new citizenship laws.
• July 19 – Japanese general election, 1993: The loss of majority of the Liberal Democratic Party results in a coalition taking power.
• July 19 – U.S. President Bill Clinton announces his 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy regarding gays in the American military.
• July 20 – White House deputy counsel Vince Foster commits suicide in Virginia.
• July 23 – Candelária massacre: Brazilian police officers kill 8 street kids in Rio de Janeiro.
• July 26 – Miguel Indurain wins the 1993 Tour de France.
• July 26 – Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashes into Mt. Ungeo in Haenam, South Korea; 68 die.
• July 27 – Windows NT 3.1, the first version of Microsoft's line of Windows NT operating systems, is released to manufacturing.
• July 29 – The Israeli Supreme Court acquits accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges and he is set free.

August

• August 4 – A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.
• August 4 – The Japanese government issues the Kono Statement, acknowledging the comfort women's deportation.
• August 5 – The discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, the first archaeological confirmation of the existence of the Davidic line, is announced.
• August 6 – According to Japanese government and TBS networks reports, torrential rain and mudslides kill 72 in Kagoshima, Japan.
• August 9 – King Albert II of Belgium is sworn into office 9 days after the death of his brother, King Baudouin I.
• August 13 – Over 130 die in the collapse of Royal Plaza Hotel at Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand's worst hotel disaster.
• August 17 – For the first time, the public is allowed inside Buckingham Palace.
• August 19 – In Norway, Varg Vikernes is arrested and charged with the murder of Øystein Aarseth, of Mayhem; he receives a 21-year sentence for this and other crimes.
• August 21 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Observer orbiter 3 days before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Mars.
• August 28 – Ong Teng Cheong becomes the first President of Singapore elected by the population.
• August 30 – Russia completes removing its troops from Lithuania.

September

September
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
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6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, with US President, Bill Clinton.

• September 6 – Canadian software specialist Peter de Jager publishes in Computerworld U.S. weekly magazine an article Doomsday 2000, which is the first known reference to Y2K – the 2000 Year problem.
• September 13 – Norwegian parliamentary election, 1993: The Labour Party wins a plurality of the seats, and Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland retains office.
• September 13 – PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shake hands in Washington D.C., after signing a peace accord.
• September 15–21 – Hurricane Gert (1993) crosses from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through Central America and Mexico.
• September 17 – Russian troops withdraw from Poland.
• September 19 – Polish parliamentary election, 1993: A coalition of the Democratic Left Alliance and the Polish People's Party lead by Waldemar Pawlak comes into power.
• September 22 – Big Bayou Canot train disaster: A bridge collpases as the Sunset Limited crosses it, killing 47.
• September 23 – The International Olympic Committee selects Sydney, Australia to host the 2000 Summer Olympics.
• September 24 – The Cambodian monarchy is restored, with Norodom Sihanouk as king.
• September 26 – The first mission in Biosphere 2 ends after 2 years.
• September 26 – PoSAT-1 (the first Portuguese satellite) is launched on board French rocket Ariane 4.
• September 27 – War in Abkhazia – Fall of Sukhumi: Eduard Shevardnadze accuses Russia of passive complicity.
• September 30 – An earthquake centered in Killari, Maharashtra, India kills over 10,000.

October

October
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4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

• October 2–5 – The Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 culminates with Russian military and security forces clearing the White House of Russia Parliament building by force, squashing a mass uprising against President Boris Yeltsin.
• October 3 – A large scale battle erupts between U.S. forces and local militia in Mogadishu, Somalia; 18 Americans and over 1,000 Somalis are killed.
• October 5 – China performs a nuclear test, ending a worldwide de facto moratorium.
• October 5 – The papal encyclical Veritatis Splendor is promulgated.
• October 8 – David Miscavige announces the IRS has granted full tax exemption to the Church of Scientology International and affiliated churches and organizations, ending the Church's 40-year battle with the IRS and resulting in religious recognition in the United States.
• October 10 – 292 are killed when the South Korean ferry Seohae capsizes off Pusan, South Korea.
• October 11–28 – The UNMIH is prevented from entering Haiti. On October 18, economic sanctions (abolished in August) are reinstated.
• October 13 – Greek legislative election, 1993: Andreas Papandreou begins his second term as Prime Minister of Greece.
• October 13 – The fifth summit of the Francophonie opens in Mauritius.
• October 19 – Benazir Bhutto becomes the first elected woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, in Pakistan.
• October 21 – A coup in Burundi results in the death of president Melchior Ndadaye and sparks the Burundi Civil War.
• October 25 – Canadian federal election, 1993: Jean Chrétien and his Liberal Party defeat the governing Progressive Conservative Party, which falls to an historic low of 2 seats.

November

November
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

• November 1 – The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.
• November 5 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Railways Act, setting out the procedures for privatisation of British Rail.
• November 9 – Bosnian Croat forces destroy the Stari most, or Old Bridge of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by tank fire.
• November 11 – Microsoft releases Windows 3.11 for Workgroups to manufacturing.
• November 11 – Sri Lankan civil war – Battle of Pooneryn: Over 400 Sri Lankan military are killed.
• November 12 – London Convention: Marine dumping of radioactive waste is outlawed.
• November 18 – In a status referendum, Puerto Rico residents vote with a slim margin to maintain Commonwealth status.
• November 17–22 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)passes the legislative houses in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
• November 18 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution.
• November 18 – The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation opens in Seattle.
• November 20 – Savings and loan crisis: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his dealings with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.
• November 20 – An Avioimpex Yakovlev Yak-42D crashes into Mount Trojani near Ohrid, Macedonia. The aircraft was on a flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Skopje, but had been diverted to Ohrid due to poor weather conditions at the Skopje airport. All 8 crew members and 115 of the 116 passengers are killed.
• November 28 – The Observer reveals that a channel of communications has existed between the IRA and the British government, despite the government's persistent denials.
• November 30 – Agreement establishing the Permanent Commission for East African Co-operation signed.

December

December
Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
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6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

• December 1 – A train crash at Tattenham Corner railway station lead to the introduction of the current drugs and alcohol policy for railways in the UK.
• December 2 – STS-61: NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair an optical flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.
• December 2 – War on Drugs: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín Cartel, is gunned down in Medellín when police try to arrest him.
• December 2 – The September 6 merger between Renault and Volvo fails; Volvo CEO Pehr G. Gyllenhammar resigns.
• December 5 – Rafael Caldera Rodríguez is elected President of Venezuela for the second time, succeeding interim president Ramón José Velásquez.
• December 7 – Colin Ferguson opens fire with his Ruger 9 mm pistol on a Long Island Rail Road train, killing 16 and injuring 29.
• December 7 – The 32-member Transitional Executive Committee holds its first meeting in Cape Town, marking the first meeting of an official government body in South Africa with Black members.
• December 7 – President of Côte d'Ivoire Félix Houphouët-Boigny dies at 83, the oldest African head of state. He is succeeded 3 days later by Henri Konan Bédié.
• December 10 – id Software releases Doom, a seminal first-person shooter that uses advanced 3D graphics for computer games.
• December 11 – Chilean presidential election, 1993: Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle is elected with 58% of the vote.
• December 11 – A variety of Soviet space program paraphernalia are put to auction in Sotheby's New York, and sell for a total of US$6.8M. One of the items is Lunokhod 1 and its spacecraft Luna 17; they sell for $68,500.
• December 12 – Péter Boross becomes Prime Minister of Hungary following the death of József Antall.
• December 13 – Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell resigns as head of the Conservative Party, to be succeeded by Jean Charest.
• December 13 – The Majilis of Kazakhstan approves the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and agrees to dismantle the more than 100 missiles left on its territory by the fall of the USSR.
• December 15 – Downing Street Declaration: The United Kingdom commits itself to the search for an answer to the problems of Northern Ireland.
• December 15 – The Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks reach a successful conclusion after 7 years.
• December 16 – Brazil's Supreme Court rules that former President Fernando Collor de Mello may not hold elected office again until 2000 due to political corruption.
• December 18 – Omar Bongo is re-elected as President of Gabon in the country's first multiparty elections.
• December 20 – The United Nations General Assembly votes unanimously to appoint a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
• December 20 – The first corrected images from the Hubble Telescope are taken.
• December 22 – The interim South African constitution is approved by Parliament 237–45.
• December 29 – Argentina passes a measure allowing President Carlos Saul Menem and all future presidents to run for a second term. It also shortens presidential terms to 4 years and removes the requirement for the president to be Roman Catholic.
• December 30 – Israel and the Vatican establish diplomatic relations.
• December 30 – The Congress Party gains a parliamentary majority in India after the defection of 10 Janata Dal party lawmakers.

Undated

• The second World Parliament of Religions is held in Chicago.
• U.S. President Bill Clinton sends 6 American warships to Haiti, to enforce United Nations trade sanctions against the military-led regime in that country.
• The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers flood large portions of the American Midwest.
• Severe floods hit South Asia, killing over 4,000 people in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
• The European Exchange Rate Mechanism is put in crisis, mainly from speculation against the French Franc.
• Over a dozen people are killed by the new Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, mainly in the Southwestern United States.
• Wildfires in California destroy over 16,000 acres (65 km²) and 700 homes.
• Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time becomes the longest running book on the bestseller list of The Sunday Times ever.
• The Oslo Accords negotiations begin.
• Many foreigners are murdered by rebel groups in Algeria.
• The Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform succeeds in having the Irish sodomy law reformed.

Ongoing

Wars

See also: List of wars 1990–2002

• Yugoslav wars
• The Troubles
• First Tuareg Rebellion
• Algerian Civil War
• Civil war in Afghanistan
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Conflicts in Asia
  • Sri Lankan Civil War
• Conflicts in Sub-saharan Africa
  • First Liberian Civil War
  • Rwandan Civil War
  • Sierra Leone Civil War
  • Lord's Resistance Army insurgency.
  • Second Sudanese Civil War
  • Conflict in the Niger Delta
  • Angolan Civil War
  • Casamance Conflict
• Conflicts in the Horn of Africa
  • Djiboutian Civil War
  • Somali Civil War
• Conflicts in Latin America
  • Guatemalan Civil War
  • Internal conflict in Peru
  • Colombian Civil War
• Conflicts in the former USSR
  • Georgian Civil War
  • Nagorno-Karabakh War
  • Civil war in Tajikistan

1993 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1993 MCMXCIII
Ab urbe condita	2746
Armenian calendar	1442 ԹՎ ՌՆԽԲ
Bahá'í calendar	149 – 150
Bengali calendar	1400
Berber calendar	2943
Buddhist calendar	2537
Burmese calendar	1355
Byzantine calendar	7501 – 7502
Chinese calendar	壬申年十二月初九日 (4629/4689-12-9) — to — 癸酉年十一月十九日 (4630/4690-11-19)
Coptic calendar	1709 – 1710
Ethiopian calendar	1985 – 1986
Hebrew calendar	5753 – 5754
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2048 – 2049
- Shaka Samvat	1915 – 1916
- Kali Yuga	5094 – 5095
Holocene calendar	11993
Iranian calendar	1371 – 1372
Islamic calendar	1413 – 1414
Japanese calendar	Heisei 5 (平成5年)
Korean calendar	4326
Thai solar calendar	2536
Unix time	725846400 – 757382399
v • d • e

Births

January–June

• January 4 – Scott Redding, English Grand Prix motorcycle racer
• January 9 – Ashley Argota, American actress
• January 12 – Aika Mitsui, Japanese singer
• January 18 – Morgan York, American actress
• January 19 – Gus Lewis, English actor
• January 26 – Cameron Bright, Canadian actor
• February 7 – David Dorfman, American actor
• February 9 – Parimarjan Negi, Chess prodigy from India
• February 12 – Jennifer Stone, American actress
• February 14 – Martín Galván, Mexican footballer
• February 16 – Mike Weinberg, American actor
• February 17 – Marc Márquez, Spanish Grand Prix motorcycle racer
• February 19 – Victoria Justice, American actress
• February 20 – Oliver Smith, UK politician
• February 23 – Kasumi Ishikawa, Japanese table tennis player
• February 26 – Taylor Dooley, American actress
• March 4 – Yves Michel-Beneche, American actor
• March 17 – Julia Winter, English actress
• March 21 – Bobby Preston, American actor
• March 28 – Naoki Takeshi, Japanese actor
• April 1 – Keito Okamoto, Japanese Singer/Actor
• April 3 – Dakoda Dowd, American golfer
• April 14 – Vivien Cardone, American actress
• April 14 – Graham Phillips, American actor
• April 15 – Madeleine Martin, American television actress/voice actress
• April 16 – Mirai Nagasu, Japanese-American figure skater
• April 23 – Akrit Jaswal, child physician
• May 9 – Ryosuke Yamada, Japanese Singer/Actor
• May 10 – Mirai Shida, Japanese actress
• May 13 – Alexander Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, British noble
• May 13 – Debby Ryan, American actress
• May 14 – Miranda Cosgrove, American actress
• May 20 – Caroline Zhang, American figure skater
• May 25 – The Dilley sextuplets
• June 15 – Kanna Arihara, Japanese singer
• June 22 – Ingmar Lazar, French classical pianist

July–December

• July 11 – Rebecca Bross, American artistic gymnast
• July 26 – Taylor Momsen, American actress
• July 28 – Hannah Lochner, Canadian actress
• July 29 – Ang Ching Hui, Singaporean actress
• August 2 – Paul Raymond, Australian dancer
• August 3 – Paula Riemann, German actress
• August 3 – Yurina Kumai, Japanese singer
• August 5 – Suzuka Ohgo, Japanese child actress
• August 10 – Yuto Nakajima, Japanese singer and actor
• August 11 – Alyson Stoner, American actress and dancer
• August 12 – Ewa Farna, Polish singer
• August 17 – Sarah Sjöström, Swedish swimmer
• August 26 – Keke Palmer, American actress and singer
• August 29 – Lucas Cruikshank, American actor
• August 31 – Daniel Jimenez, American Musician
• September 1 – Ilona Mitrecey, French singer
• September 4 – Mark Vincent, Australian tenor
• September 5 – Gage Golightly, American actress
• September 9 – Charlie Stewart, American actor
• October 2 – Tara Lynne Barr, American actress
• October 8 – Angus T. Jones, American actor
• October 28 – Elliot John Crosby, English tenpin bowler
• November 9 – Maya Ritter, Canadian actress
• November 30 – Yuri Chinen, Japanese singer and actor
• December 6 – Elián González, Cuban refugee
• December 8 – AnnaSophia Robb, American actress
• December 10 – Rachel Trachtenburg, American musician
• December 10 – Lochlan Denholm, Australian stage actor
• December 15 – Matthew Koon, English stage actor
• December 22 – Aliana Lohan, American actress and singer
• December 22 – Mark Klein, American singer

Deaths

January–March

Audrey Hepburn

• January 6 – Dizzy Gillespie, American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer (b. 1917)
• January 6 – Richard Mortensen, Danish painter (b. 1910)
• January 6 – Rudolf Nureyev, Russian dancer (b. 1938)
• January 15 – Sammy Cahn, American lyricist (b. 1913)
• January 16 – Glenn Corbett, American actor (b. 1930)
• January 18 – Eleanor Burford (Jean Plaidy, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Ellalice Tate, Anna Percival, Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr), English writer (b. 1906)
• January 20 – Kōbō Abe, Japanese author (b. 1924)
• January 20 – Audrey Hepburn, Belgian born British-Dutch actress (b. 1929)
• January 21 – Charlie Gehringer, American baseball player (b. 1903)
• January 24 – Thurgood Marshall, American jurist, First African-American on the Supreme Court (b. 1908)
• January 26 – Robert Jacobsen Danish artist (b. 1912)
• January 26 – Jeanne Sauvé, Canadian Governor General (b. 1922)
• January 27 – André the Giant, French professional wrestler (b. 1946)
• February 5 – Hans Jonas, German philosopher (b. 1903)
• February 5 – Tip Tipping, British actor and stuntman (parachuting accident) (b. 1958)
• February 5 – Joseph L. Mankiewicz, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1909)
• February 6 – Arthur Ashe, American tennis player and activist (b. 1943)
• February 8 – Roland Mousnier, French historian (b. 1907)
• February 9 – Kate Wilkinson, American stage and television actress (b. 1916)
• February 11 – Robert W. Holley, American biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1922)
• February 18 – Kerry Von Erich, American professional wrestler (b. 1960)
• February 20 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer (b. 1916)
• February 21 – Inge Lehmann, Danish seismologist (b. 1888)
• February 21 – Dick White, British intelligence officer (b. 1906)
• February 23 – Phillip Terry, American actor (b. 1909)
• February 23 – Robert Triffin, Belgian economist (b. 1911)
• February 24 – Bobby Moore, English footballer (b. 1941)
• February 25 – Eddie Constantine, American-born French singer and actor (b. 1917)
• February 26 – Beaumont Newhall, American curator (b. 1908)
• February 27 – Lillian Gish, American actress (b. 1893)
• February 28 – Ruby Keeler, American actress (b. 1909)
• March 3 – Albert Sabin, American biologist, developer of the oral polio vaccine (b. 1906)
• March 5 – Cyril Collard, French filmmaker (b. 1957)
• March 8 – Billy Eckstine, American musician (b. 1914)
• March 11 – Dino Bravo, Italan-Canadian pro wrestler (b. 1949)
• March 16 – Ralph Fults, last of America's depression-era outlaws. (b. 1910)
• March 17 – Helen Hayes, American actress (b. 1900)
• March 20 – Polykarp Kusch, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
• March 20 – Paul László, Hungarian-born architect (b. 1900)
• March 24 – John Hersey, American writer and journalist (b. 1914)
• March 27 – Kate Reid, Canadian actress (b. 1930)
• March 30 – Richard Diebenkorn, American painter (b. 1922)
• March 31 – Brandon Lee, American actor (b. 1965)
• March 31 – Mitchell Parish, American lyricist (b. 1900)

April–June

Turgut Özal

Pierre Bérégovoy

Pat Nixon

• April 1 – Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona (b. 1913)
• April 2 – Eugenie Leontovich, Russian-born actress (b. 1900)
• April 3 – Pinky Lee, American comedian (b. 1907)
• April 8 – Marian Anderson, American contralto (b. 1897)
• April 10 – Donald Broadbent, British psychologist (b. 1926)
• April 13 – Wallace Stegner, American writer (b. 1909)
• April 15 – Leslie Charteris, British author (b. 1907)
• April 15 – Robert Westall, British author (b. 1929)
• April 17 – Turgut Özal, Turkish president and prime minister (b. 1927)
• April 20 – Cantinflas, Mexican comedian (b. 1911)
• April 23 – César Chávez, Mexican-American civil rights activist (b. 1927)
• April 29 – Héctor Lavoe, Puerto Rican salsa singer (b. 1946)
• April 29 – Mick Ronson, English rock guitarist (b. 1946)
• May 1 – Pierre Bérégovoy, Prime Minister of France (b. 1925)
• May 6 – Ann Todd, English actress (b. 1909)
• May 7 – Mary Philbin, American actress (b. 1903)
• May 8 – Avram Davidson, American writer (b. 1923)
• May 8 – Alwin Nikolais, American choreographer (b. 1912)
• May 14 – William Randolph Hearst, Jr., American businessman (b. 1908)
• May 22 – Mieczysław Horszowski, Polish pianist (b. 1892)
• May 30 – Sun Ra, American jazz musician (b. 1914 or 1915)
• June 1 – Melchior Ndadaye, Burundian president (b. 1953)
• June 2 – Tahar Djaout, Algerian writer (b. 1954)
• June 5 – Conway Twitty, American musician (b. 1933)
• June 6 – James Bridges, American screenwriter and director (b. 1936)
• June 7 – Drazen Petrovic, Croatian basketball Player (b. 1964)
• June 9 – Alexis Smith, Canadian actress (b. 1921)
• June 11 – Ray Sharkey, American actor (b. 1952)
• June 13 – Deke Slayton, American astronaut (b. 1924)
• June 13 – Gérard Côté, Canadian marathon runner (b. 1913)
• June 15 – John Connally, American politician (b. 1917)
• June 15 – James Hunt, British race car driver (b. 1947)
• June 16 – Nicanor Zabaleta, Spanish harpist (b. 1907)
• June 19 – William Golding, English writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
• June 19 – Szymon Goldberg, Polish-born violinist (b. 1909)
• June 22 – Pat Nixon, First Lady of the United States (b. 1912)
• June 24 – Archie Williams, American athlete (b. 1915)
• June 26 – Roy Campanella, American baseball player (b. 1921)
• June 28 – GG Allin, American punk singer (b. 1956)
• June 30 – George "Spanky" McFarland, American actor (b. 1928)

July–September

Baudouin of Belgium

Jimmy Doolittle

• July 2 – Fred Gwynne, American actor and comedian (b. 1926)
• July 2 – Masuji Ibuse, Japanese writer (b. 1898)
• July 3 – Don Drysdale, American baseball player (b. 1936)
• July 3 – Curly Joe DeRita, American comedian (b. 1909)
• July 4 – Anne Shirley, American actress (b. 1918)
• July 13 – Davey Allison, American stock car driver (b. 1961)
• July 14 – Léo Ferré, French poet and singer-songwriter (b. 1916)
• July 15 – David Brian, American actor (b. 1914)
• July 18 – Jean Negulesco, Romanian-born film director (b. 1900)
• July 23 – James Jordan, father of basketball superstar, Michael Jordan (b. 1936)
• July 24 – Rene Requiestas, Filipino comedian (b. 1957)
• July 25 – Nan Grey, American actress (b. 1918)
• July 25 – Cecilia Parker, American actress (b. 1914)
• July 26 – Matthew Ridgway, United States Army General (b. 1895)
• July 31 – Baudouin of Belgium, King of Belgium (b. 1930)
• August 3 – James Donald, Scottish actor (b. 1917)
• August 3 – Theodore A. Parker III, American ornithologist (b. 1953)
• August 5 – Eugen Suchoň, Slovak composer (b. 1908)
• August 7 – Christopher Gillis, American dancer and choreographer (b. 1951)
• August 10 – Øystein Aarseth, Norwegian black metal musician (b. 1968)
• August 10 – Irene Sharaff, American costume designer (b. 1910)
• August 16 – René Dreyfus French Grand Prix racing driver (b. 1905)
• August 16 – Stewart Granger, Anglo-American actor (b. 1913)
• August 20 – Bernard Delfgaauw, Dutch philosopher (b. 1912)
• August 21 – Ichiro Fujiyama, Japanese composer and singer (b. 1911)
• August 28 – E. P. Thompson, English historian and activist (b. 1924)
• August 30 – Richard Jordan, American actor (b. 1937)
• September 4 – Hervé Villechaize, French-born actor (b. 1943)
• September 9 – Helen O'Connell, American singer (b. 1920)
• September 11 – Erich Leinsdorf, Austrian conductor (b. 1912)
• September 12 – Raymond Burr, Canadian actor (b. 1917)
• September 12 – Charles Lamont, Russian-born film director (b. 1895)
• September 20 – Erich Hartmann, world's highest-scoring Fighter Ace (b. 1922)
• September 22 – Maurice Abravanel, Greek-born conductor (b. 1903)
• September 24 – Ian Stuart, singer for white power skinhead band Skrewdriver (b.1957)
• September 22 – Nina Berberova, Russian writer (b. 1901)
• September 27 – Jimmy Doolittle, American general (b. 1896)
• September 28 – Alexander A. Drabik, American soldier (b. 1910)

October-December

Vincent Price

Frank Zappa

Félix Houphouët-Boigny

• October 5 – Agnes de Mille, American dancer and choreographer (b. 1905)
• October 7 – Cyril Cusack, Irish actor (b. 1910)
• October 12 – Leon Ames, American actor (b. 1903)
• October 17 – Criss Oliva, American Musician (b. 1963)
• October 21 – James Leo Herlihy, American novelist and playwright (b. 1927)
• October 25 – Vincent Price, American actor (b. 1911)
• October 25 – Danny Chan, Hong Konger singer (b. 1958)
• October 26 – Harold Rome, American composer (b. 1908)
• October 31 – Federico Fellini, Italian film director (b. 1920)
• October 31 – Paul Grégoire, archbishop of Montreal (b. 1911)
• October 31 – River Phoenix, American actor (b. 1970)
• November 1 – Severo Ochoa, Spanish-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1905)
• November 1 – A. N. Sherwin-White, English historian of Ancient Rome (b. 1911)
• November 3 – Léon Theremin, inventor of the theremin (b. 1896)
• November 12 – H.R. Haldeman, American political aide and businessman (b. 1926)
• November 12 – Anna Sten, Ukrainian-born actress (b. 1908)
• November 16 – Achille Zavatta, French circus artist (b. 1915)
• November 18 – Fritz Feld, German actor (b. 1900)
• November 20 – Emile Ardolino, American film director (b. 1943)
• November 21 – Bill Bixby, American actor (b. 1934)
• November 22 – Anthony Burgess, English author (b. 1917)
• November 28 – Kenneth Connor English comedian (b. 1916)
• November 28 – Garry Moore, American television host and comedian (b. 1915)
• November 29 – J. R. D. Tata, Indian aviator and businessman (b. 1904)
• December 2 – Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord (b. 1940)
• December 3 – Lewis Thomas, American physician and essayist (b. 1913)
• December 4 – Frank Zappa, American guitarist and composer (b. 1940)
• December 5 – Doug Hopkins, American musician (b. 1961)
• December 5 – Alexandre Trauner, Hungarian set designer (b. 1906)
• December 6 – Don Ameche, American actor (b. 1908)
• December 7 – Wolfgang Paul, German physicist, Noble Prize laureate (b. 1913)
• December 7 – Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ivoirian president (b. 1905)
• December 13 – József Antall, Hungarian Prime Minister (b. 1932)
• December 14 – Myrna Loy, American actress (b. 1905)
• December 15 – Evelyn Venable, American actress (b. 1913)
• December 16 – Charles Willard Moore, American architect (b. 1926)
• December 16 – Kakuei Tanaka, Japanese Prime Minister (b. 1918)
• December 17 – Moses Gunn, American actor (b. 1929)
• December 17 – Janet Margolin, American actress (b. 1943)
• December 18 – Charizma, American hip hop artist (b. 1973)
• December 18 – Sam Wanamaker, American film director and actor (b. 1919)
• December 22 – Don DeFore, American actor (b. 1917)
• December 22 – Alexander Mackendrick, British-American film director (b. 1912)
• December 24 – Norman Vincent Peale, American preacher and writer (b. 1898)
• December 25 – Pierre Victor Auger, French physicist (b. 1899)
• December 28 – William L. Shirer, American journalist and historian (b. 1904)
• December 31 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia (b. 1939)
• December 31 – Brandon Teena, American transman (b. 1972)
• Undated – Christian Metz, French film theorist (b. 1931)

Ship events

• List of ship launches in 1993
• List of ship commissionings in 1993
• List of ship decommissionings in 1993

Nobel Prizes

• Chemistry – Kary Mullis, Michael Smith
• Economics – Robert W. Fogel, Douglass C. North
• Literature – Toni Morrison
• Peace – Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk
• Physics – Russell Alan Hulse, Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.
• Physiology or Medicine – Richard J. Roberts, Philip Allen Sharp

Templeton Prize

• Charles Colson

See also

• 20th century

Notes

1. ^ Archive copy at the Internet Archive

• Trumbull, Charles P. (ed.) (1994). 1994 Book of the year. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. ISBN 0-85229-600-2. 
• (French) Berani, Jacques (ed.) (1994). Univeralia 1994. Paris: Encyclopædia Universalis. ISBN 2-85229-321-8. 
• (French) Harnois, Christiane (dir.) (1994). Le Livre de l'Année 1994. Montreal: Grolier. ISBN 0-7172-3019-8. 

External links

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