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Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping dies of advanced Parkinson's disease and lung disease at Beijing February 19 at age 92. President Jiang Zemin has held considerable power since 1989, but many doubt that he will inherit Deng's authority; now 75, he promises to continue Deng's economic policies and orders a simple funeral for the "paramount leader," who was the last major figure to have participated in the Long March of the 1930s yet led his country out of rigid economic controls into something much closer to a capitalist market economy and even permitted something like a grassroots democracy, however limited. Communist hard-liner Peng Zhen dies at Beijing April 26 at age 95, having helped to oust reform-minded party chief Hu Yaobang in 1987 and Hu's successor Zhao Ziyang 2 years later when Zhao refused to impose martial law to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. President Jiang's Communist Party leadership selects a new Central Committee September 18, omitting Jiang Zemin's rival Qiao Shi.
Hong Kong reverts to China July 1 after 156 years of British rule. China's president Jiang Zemin promises that Hong Kong will be allowed to govern itself under the "one country, two systems" policy first enunciated by Deng Xiaoping in 1982, "with its previous socioeconomic system and way of life remaining unchanged and its laws remaining basically unchanged while the main part of the nation persists in the socialist system."
The House of Representatives votes 395 to 28 January 21 to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich and orders him to pay $300,000 as recompense for expenses (see commerce, 1996). Gingrich announces in April that former majority leader Bob Dole has agreed to lend him the money at 10 percent interest with nothing to be repaid for 8 years (see 1998).
Czech-born diplomat Madeleine Albright (née Marie Jana Korbel), 59, is sworn in as U.S. secretary of state January 23, becoming the first woman to hold that office. She soon learns that her parents were Jewish and that three of her grandparents died in German concentration camps.
The Project for the New American Century founded in the spring by "neo-conservatives" is a right-wing think tank whose stated goal is to promote U.S. global leadership. Headed by former Commentary magazine editor William Kristol, it rents space in the Washington, D.C., building occupied also by the 54-year-old American Enterprise Institute, whose stated mission is to support the "foundations of freedom—limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense" (see 1998).
Republicans on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees make a formal request March 13 that Attorney General Janet Reno begin action that could lead to the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate fund-raising in behalf of President Clinton's reelection bid last year. Controversy over the issue continues all year, Justice Department investigators question the president and vice president in separate interviews November 11, and Reno announces December 2 that she will not appoint an independent counsel since the actions of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were, she says, outside the scope of federal election law.
Federal judge Thomas Penfield Jackson rules at Washington, D.C., April 10 that the law enacted by Congress last year giving presidents the power to cancel individual appropriations and tax benefits by line-item veto is unconstitutional because it delegates authority that cannot be surrendered (see 1998).
A federal grand jury at Denver returns a guilty verdict June 2 against Timothy J. McVeigh, who has been charged with conspiracy and murder in connection with the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bomb explosion that destroyed the federal building, killed 168 people, and injured hundreds more.
Former U.S. ambassador to Denmark Eugenie M. Anderson dies at her Red Wing, Minn., home March 31 at age 87; Canadian statesman Gérard Pelletier at Montreal June 22 at age 78.
President Clinton appoints his Flushing, N.Y.-born confidant George J. (John) Tenet, 44, to succeed John Deutch as director of the CIA. An expert on national security and intelligence, Tenet is sworn in July 11 and will head the agency until 2004.
Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic tells his parliament February 4 that he accepts the November 17 electoral victories of his opponents in Belgrade and 13 of the nation's other 18 major cities. His action comes after 77 days of daily street demonstrations that Milosevic's police and troops have balked at suppressing.
Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko issues an order March 6 banning slogans that "humiliate the authorities" and restricting the right to demonstrate (see 1994); his police enter the National Front's headquarters at Minsk 1 week later, they arrest its vice president Yuri Khodyko and at least 10,000 demonstrators march through central Minsk March 15, waving the outlawed independence flag (Lukashenko has replaced it with a Soviet-era flag) and shouting, "Down with Lukashenko!"
British elections May 1 end in a landslide victory for the "New" Labour Party after 18 years of Conservative Party rule, first by Margaret Thatcher, then by John Majors. The election campaign lasts an extraordinary 6 weeks and is marked by the nation's first television debate between the Tory and Labour Party candidates. Labour's Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair, 43, has taken some ideas from Bill Clinton, co-opting Tory positions to raise the fortunes of his party (whose constituency had fallen from 53 percent in 1980 to 32 percent in 1994), and he becomes the first Labour prime minister since 1979. Even though Britain is more prosperous than her European neighbors, the scandal-plagued Conservatives suffer their worst defeat since 1832, and Blair becomes the nation's youngest prime minister since 1812.
Albania verges on anarchy as insurgents demand the resignation of President Sali Berisha and others whom they hold responsible for 20 pyramid schemes that have sucked the equivalent of $1.2 billion from the people of Europe's poorest country (Albania's national budget is only about $960 million, one-third of it aid from the European Union).
The Irish Republican Army announces at Dublin July 19 that it will resume the cease-fire that it broke in February 1996 after deciding that the British Government was not serious about peace talks on Northern Ireland (see Good Friday accord, 1998).
Thousands of Turkish women (and some men) march through the streets of Ankara February 15 to protest the policies of the nation's new Islamic-led government (see 1996). They carry banners that read, "Women's Rights Are Human Rights," "Down with Shariah," and "Women Exist." Turkey's military ousts Prime Minister Erbakan June 18, calling his pro-Islamic Welfare Party divisive and undemocratic. Erbakan is replaced June 30 by secular leader Mesut Yilmaz, now 50, who has headed two previous but short-lived governments (see 1999).
Scottish nationalists win a vote September 11 to establish a legislature of their own for the first time since 1707. Britain's prime minister Tony Blair has favored devolution, but although the move is considered the greatest upheaval since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 it does not sever Scotland from the United Kingdom.
French voters oust Prime Minister Alain Juppé and elect socialist Lionel Jospin, 59, despite President Chirac's warnings against turning the government over to a socialist-communist majority. The unemployment rate is a record 12.8 percent, the socialists promise to create 700,000 government-backed jobs and stimulate demand by raising wages and cutting the work week from 39 hours to 35 without reducing pay, but pragmatists say any new regime will have to support Chirac's efforts to modify the welfare state and take other austerity measures to meet the criteria for joining Europe's single currency, the euro, in 1999.
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees January 15 after much delay to hand over Hebron on the West Bank to Palestinian control in a deal brokered by U.S. mediator Dennis Ross (see 1996), but bulldozers begin work in East Jerusalem March 18 on the hilltop Har Homa housing project that has been called "provocative." Palestinians and world opinion have opposed the project on grounds that it may jeopardize the peace process begun with the Oslo accord of 1993, but Netanyahu defies his critics and proceeds with it, despite terrorist acts that kill and wound many Israelis. Soldiers in riot gear protect the bulldozers from interference. A scandal over Netanyahu's January appointment of Likud Party crony Roni Bar-On as attorney general threatens to bring down the government, but a 12-week national police probe ends in late April without the indictment that Likud supporters had feared. Terrorist attacks and retaliations continue to undermine efforts to pursue the peace process, Israeli secret service (Mossad) agents botch an attempt to kill a Hamas leader at Amman, Jordan, September 25, but while the incident strains Israel's relations with King Hussein it actually boosts Netanyahu's popularity at home (see 1998).
Iranian voters defeat strict Islamic clerics and elect a moderate to the presidency in elections held May 23. A direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed, Mohammed Khatami, 54, is a scholar who since 1992 has been director of the National Library; he succeeds President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has served for two terms; his reading of Islamic law rejects coercion and oppression, and he hopes to legalize political parties, but his powers are limited. The CIA has promised for more than 5 years to make public its files related to a secret mission to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, but it reveals May 28 that nearly all the documents were routinely burned in the early 1960s (see 1998).
Algeria's military-backed government holds elections June 4 in an effort to end the undeclared war that has killed more than 50,000 since 1992, but the Islamic fundamentalist Salvation Front is banned, the turnout is relatively low, and although the party representing the interests of President Liamine Zeroual wins 155 seats of the 380-seat assembly (no other party wins even half that many), opposition parties charge fraud, the unemployment rate continues to be nearly 30 percent, the government's attempt to restore democracy and peace meets with little success, and massacres by the militants continue to exact a fearsome toll (some 412 men, women, and children are hacked to death in villages 180 miles west of Algiers the night of December 30, first day of Ramadan).
The United Nations Security Council votes June 11 to tighten restrictions on Iraq if she has not stopped blocking UN inspectors from searching for weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam Hussein has been doing since February 1991. Australia's UN ambassador Richard Butler takes over July 1 as head of the weapons-inspection team and reports October 6 that the Iraqis are using every effort to keep his people from discovering the whereabouts, number, and production sites of germ war shells that may already be loaded on planes and short-range missiles; Britain, the United States, and seven other countries propose keeping those Iraqis responsible for this obstruction from traveling abroad, but the French demur October 23 and Saddam expels U.S. members of a United Nations inspection team November 13; the entire team withdraws in protest after 7 years in which it has uncovered and destroyed more weapons of mass destruction than were taken out in the 1991 Gulf War, President Clinton threatens military action if Saddam does not back down, Russian foreign minister Yevgeny M. Primakov reaches an accommodation with Saddam November 19, the UN inspectors return to work November 22, but there are fears that Iraq has used the time to build up stocks of nerve gas and biological weapons such as anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum, and smallpox toxins that could pose a threat not only to her neighbors but to the whole world. Secretary of Defense William Cohen warns November 25 that Iraq may possess enough of the nerve gas VX to kill everyone in the world but adds that more than 25 countries have, or are developing, nuclear capability and/or weapons of mass destruction (see 1998).
Six Islamic militants in Egypt open fire with automatic weapons outside the 3,400-year-old Hatshepsut's Temple at Luxor November 17, killing 36 Swiss and 22 other foreign tourists. Two police officers and two Egyptian civilians are also killed before the police finally kill the perpetrators, whose motivation has been to damage Egypt's $3 billion-per-year tourist industry as part of an ongoing effort to topple the government and replace it with an Islamic state.
Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party is roundly defeated in February 3 elections to Nawaz Sharif, the 47-year-old industrialist whose Pakistan Muslim League ran the government from 1990 to 1993 (see 1996), but three-fourths of the population remains illiterate, only 17 percent of the electorate votes, economic conditions are dismal, and powerful Islamic religious groups keep up pressure to oust India from Kashmir (see 1999).
India's parliament votes early in the year to let Bombay be called by its Gujarati and Marathi name Mumbai; parliament defeats Prime Minister Deve Gowda's 10-month-old government April 11, and former foreign minister I. K. (Inder Kumar) Gujaral, 77, is sworn in as prime minister at New Delhi April 21. Like many Hindus living in what became Pakistan 50 years ago, Gujaral fled with his family to India at that time but is determined to improve relations with Pakistan (see 1998). A caste-based riot breaks out at Mumbai July 11; state and federal legislators vote July 14 to make Kocheril Raman Narayanan, 76, the nation's president. He becomes the first member of the "untouchable" caste to attain such high office.
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge hard-liners split into factions following reports of a June 13 order by Pol Pot to liquidate his key aide Son Sen along with his family (see 1996). Co-Prime Minister Hun Sen, 45, seizes power July 5, ordering his troops to attack the stronghold of his coalition partner Prince Norodom Ranariddh, son of King Nordom Sihanouk, and routing the prince's royalist forces. A onetime commander of the Khmer Rouge movement, Hun Sen fled to Vietnam to escape the bloodshed of the Pol Pot regime from 1975 to 1979; he promises to reopen Parliament, hold elections, and work with an opposition party, but although he calls July 13 for a free press and protection of human rights, Western diplomats distrust him, charging that he has had dozens of political opponents killed and hundreds arrested. His troops include former Khmer Rouge commander Ke Pauk, who has been responsible for tens of thousands of murders. Pol Pot's former comrades capture their erstwhile leader in the jungle June 20; he is condemned by a "people's court" July 25 after a show trial and sentenced to life imprisonment (see 1998).
Former Philippine president Diosdado Macapagal dies at Makati, Philippines, April 21 at age 86; former Vietnamese puppet emperor (and acting prime minister) Bao Dai in exile at Paris July 31 at age 83, having spent most of the money he appropriated while in power.
Guyana's president Cheddi Jagan suffers a heart attack at Georgetown February 15, is flown to Washington, D.C., for treatment, but dies at Walter Reed Hospital March 6 at age 78; his Chicago-born wife, Janet, wins a hard-fought election to succeed him and at age 77 is sworn in December 19, becoming the first elected woman president in South American history and Guyana's first white president. "I intend to be a president of all the people," Jagan says in her inaugural address, but supporters of London-educated People's National Congress leader Desmond Hoyte, 63, challenge the election results (see 1998).
The hostage crisis at Lima ends April 22 after 4 months in which all efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed. Peruvian commandos storm the Japanese ambassadorial residence, kill the 14 Tupac Amaru rebels there, and release 71 hostages (a 72nd—Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Giusti Acuña—is wounded in the shooting of his guerrilla captors and dies of a heart attack).
M-16 assault rifle inventor Eugene Stoner dies of cancer at his Palm City, Calif., home April 24 at age 74.
Mexican voters end 68 years of hegemony by the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that has held power since 1929. Labor leader Fidel Velásquez Sánchez dies June 21 at age 97, after 6 decades of controlling the Mexican labor movement and allowing workers' living standards to decline, but political reforms instituted by President Ernesto Zedillo enable six of the country's 31 states to elect non-PRI governments July 6, and Party of the Democratic Revolution leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, 63, is elected mayor of Mexico City in a free and open election (mayors have been appointed by the PRI since 1928). The PRI has allegedly been stealing elections for years, and its overwhelming repudiation puts the leftist Cárdenas, whose late father helped to found the PRI and was president from 1934 to 1940, in line to be elected president himself in 2000. A massacre of 45 Tzotzil men, women, and children in the Indian township of Chenalhó near the Guatemalan border December 22 is blamed on men allied with President Zedillo's PRI.
Former Paraguayan president Gen. Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti dies of complications from liver cancer at New York April 21 at age 73; former Colombian president Virgilio Barco Vargas of stomach cancer at Bogotá May 20 at age 75; Brazilian social activist Herbert José "Betinho" de Souza of AIDS at Rio de Janeiro August 9 at age 61; former Colombian president Misael Pastrana Borrero of stomach cancer at a Bogotá clinic August 21 at age 73.
Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila issues an ultimatum February 5 to President Mobutu: relinquish power by February 21 or face an all-out rebel offensive (see 1996). Mobutu has been in France for treatment of his prostate cancer. Rebel forces take the country's third largest city, Kisangani, March 15; Mobutu leaves Kinshasa May 16, and prepares to go into exile as rebel forces wearing T-shirts and tennis shoes enter the capital city to a jubilant welcome. Mobutu Sese Seko has ruled the country for nearly 32 years, mercilessly suppressing dissent while filling his own pockets (and his foreign bank accounts) with hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars from U.S. aid that his successors will try for years to recover. Kabila makes himself president of the mineral-rich nation and renames it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mobutu dies in Morocco September 7 at age 66, but Congolese Tutsi gain so much power in the army and in local government that they are regarded by many other ethnic groups as invaders from Rwanda. The guerrilla war with Hutu rebels that continues in western Rwanda spreads into the Congo, and President Kabila is more intent on eliminating tribal enemies than on establishing a democratic political system (see 1998).
Sierra Leone's democratically-elected president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah is ousted in a military coup d'état May 25 after 14 months in power (see 1996). Major Johnny Paul Koroma takes power and warns Nigerian peacekeeping forces not to interfere. He allies his new government with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) but by September the country is in chaos, with government troops fighting peacekeeping forces sent in by the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and ECOMOG using air power against commercial targets in Freetown (see 1998).
Liberian warlord Charles G. Taylor, now 49, wins election to the nation's presidency in July elections that are called free and fair by outside monitors. Civil war has wracked the country since Taylor led a coup against President Doe in 1989 (see 1990).
Former Malawi president Hastings Kamuzu Banda dies at Johannesburg November 25 at age 90 (see 1994); his body lies in state beginning November 28 at Lilongwe's New State House, and he is given a state funeral with full military honors December 3.
Longtime South Korean dissident Kim Dae-jung is elected president December 18 at age 72, ending 5 decades of one-party rule and becoming the first opposition leader to gain the presidency in Korean history as the nation struggles with its worst economic problems since the end of hostilities with North Korea in 1953 (see 1996). A Roman Catholic, Kim founded the National Congress for New Politics Party 2 years ago and has been described as "Asia's Mandela." Ousting the scandal-ridden administration of Kim Young Sam, he brings a vision of a new Korea and a new Asia, promising policies based on political democracy, market-oriented economics, and social justice (see 1998).
A Union Bank of Switzerland guard acts in January to halt the shredding of documents that appear to include papers related to "forced auctions" of property in Berlin in the 1930s (see 1996). Investigators seek to trace Jewish assets deposited in Swiss accounts during the Holocaust. The chairman of Crédit Suisse proposed January 22 that a fund be created for Holocaust survivors and their relatives, offering $72 million (see 1998).
Brazilian television airs a 90-minute videotape in late March that shows São Paulo police violence far more brutal than that seen in California's Rodney King incident of 1991. Captured with concealed cameras by three freelance cameramen on three consecutive nights at the intersection of two streets in a downtown area, the tape reveals attacks on people of all races in all walks of life. The vicious beatings earlier in the month of Silvio Calixto Lemos, Antonio Carlos Dias, Jefferson Sanches Caput, and Mario José Josino horrify members of the middle and upper classes, who have heretofore turned a mostly blind eye to the actions of law-enforcement officials.
Hong Kong residents express dismay following an announcement April 9 that China will restrict public protest and control rights of association when she takes over the British crown colony July 1. Beijing has selected shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa to run the returned colony, and the British colonial government issues a long attack on his proposals. Beijing releases longtime dissident Wei Jingsheng, now 47, from prison November 16 and allows him to be flown to Detroit for medical treatment. Wei's book The Courage to Stand Alone has recently been published in America; he has spent all but 6 months of the last 18 years in prison.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issues orders April 29 that employers must take reasonable steps to accommodate employees with psychiatric or emotional problems in order to comply with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Many employers react with consternation, but the National Institute of Mental Health says one American in 10 each year experiences some disability from a diagnosable mental illness.
A military jury at Aberdeen, Md., April 29 finds U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, 32, guilty on 18 charges of rape. The army integrated male and female trainees in 1994, and the former drill sergeant at the 72,500-acre Aberdeen Proving Ground has allegedly taken advantage of his position to force recruits to have sex with him.
President Clinton expresses regret and apologizes May 16 for the infamous and "clearly racist" U.S. Public Health Service's "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" (see 1972). The government has paid $10 million in compensation to the experiment's victims and heirs, but it has never made a formal apology. Only eight survivors of the study, one of them over 100 years old, are present for the tearful ceremony, held in part to overcome distrust about government efforts to treat blacks for HIV or AIDS.
Revelations that a young female U.S. Air Force bomber pilot has had an adulterous relationship and similar revelations about a U.S. general in line to become chairman of the joint chiefs of staff produce astonishment in most other countries, where the private lives of well-qualified and competent officers are kept private. Foreigners also marvel at a 9-to-0 May 27 Supreme Court decision that President Clinton can delay facing sexual-indiscretion charges filed by Paula Corbin Jones that date to a time when he was governor of Arkansas.
An 8-to-1 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court June 26 upholds New York and Washington State laws that prohibit physician-assisted suicide but leaves open the possibility that dying patients may in future win the constitutional right to such assistance.
A California ban on affirmative action takes effect August 28 in accordance with Proposition 209, which won overwhelming voter support in last year's election. Thousands march across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge to protest the end of preferential graduate-school admissions and state-agency hiring based on race or gender.
Egypt's highest court decides December 28 to uphold a ban on the genital cutting of girls and women, overturning a lower court decision to challenge the nation's 1996 ban on such mutilation. Islamic hard liners have called the practice female circumcision and denied any government right to interfere in a cultural or religious issue, but the court says, "Circumcision of girls is not an individual right under the Sharia," and "there is nothing in the Koran that authorizes it." The ruling cannot be appealed and has repercussions throughout the Islamic world.
A treaty outlawing anti-personnel land mines wins agreement September 17 from representatives of about 100 countries convened at Oslo and will be submitted for formal ratification, but President Clinton bows to pressure from the Pentagon (which insists that land mines are needed to protect U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula); he withholds U.S. support of the treaty, even while acknowledging that invisible land mines kill an estimated 9,600 innocent men, women, and children each year and blind or maim 14,000 others, mostly in Angola, Bosnia, and Cambodia (China, India, and Pakistan also refuse to sign the treaty). The Nobel Prize committee awards its Peace Prize October 10 to Vermont anti-land mine activist Jody Williams, 47, and her 6-year-old coalition, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). The United States will contribute the lion's share of funding for landmine removal worldwide in the next 5 years.
Cable News Network founder Ted Turner announces September 18 that he is making a gift of $1 billion, to be paid over 10 years, for United Nations agencies that benefit programs to clear land mines (which cost only a few dollars each to make but $300 to $1,000 to detect and clear), aid refugees and children, and fight disease.
The 11-year-old Mir space station has problems beginning February 23, when an oxygen-producing candle bursts into flame, burns for nearly 14 minutes, and sends smoke through the station, blocking the route to the Soyuz space capsule. Both oxygen generators fail in March, forcing the crew to rely on candles. Coolant leaks in April raise temperatures briefly above 86° F., causing primary air-purification systems to fail. The Russian supply ship Progress collides with the Spektr module June 25 during a practice docking procedure, damaging Spektr's solar arrays and causing a loss of pressure and knocking out half of Mir's power; a relief capsule docks with Mir August 7 following further mishaps, and Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander Lazutkin land their Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan August 14 (see 1998).
The NASA spacecraft Pathfinder lands on Mars July 4, its mobile "rover" Sojourner is equipped with instruments to study soil and rocks, it beams back perfect color pictures nearly 120 million miles to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, Calif., and its success bolsters arguments against the need for manned space exploration, but the spacecraft falls silent after 83 days; the nuclear-powered Cassini probe heads toward Saturn October 15.
President Clinton announces January 15 that the $12.5 billion 1995 U.S. bailout loan to Mexico has been repaid ahead of time, with interest, and has actually produced a profit of $560 million. The Mexicans have used only 60 percent of their $20 billion line of credit and can now get better terms from international lenders, but many say their country's economic recovery has been at the expense of an austerity program that has eliminated thousands of jobs.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 7022.44 February 13, breaking through the 7000 mark for the first time as inflation remains low and industry continues to improve productivity.
At least 2 million Russian workers strike March 27 to protest economic conditions in the largest job action since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. From Siberia to the Black Sea, people grumble about the rise of a new class of plutocrats, many of them criminals, while they themselves go unpaid after 6 years of economic decline; trade union officials claim that 4 million people have joined the national walkout, but they had hoped to bring out 21 million. Russians exchange $13 billion of rubles for dollars, pushing their total dollar holdings to $40 billion (twice the supply of rubles in circulation). President Yeltsin announces September 24 that the government will increase its role in monitoring the economy and begin moving its money from private banks (which have conspired with business corporations to manipulate the nation's economy for their own benefit) to the federal treasury, promising fair and transparent privatization auctions; he reveals in a speech September 26 that upwards of 2,500 civil and military officials are under investigation for corruption and fraud (see devaluation, 1998).
Unemployment reaches 12.2 percent in Germany and grows to a similar level in France and some other European countries, fueling the appeal of right- and left-wing political parties.
Britain's new Labour government announces May 6 that it will grant control over short-term interest rates to the Bank of England. The country's economy remains robust, and although Prime Minister Blair has indicated that Britain will not be among the first to join a projected monetary union the move to give the central bank more power reassures European leaders as well as Blair's opposition.
The 62-year-old U.S. federal welfare system ends July 1 under terms of the legislation signed by President Clinton last year, but while most states demand that recipients work as a condition of aid, many have invested in work-related services to help them keep more of their benefits while earning paychecks. The poverty rate among Americans over age 65 has fallen more than 50 percent since 1970, but the rate among children has risen by 26 percent and is higher than that of any industrialized nation in the world. Entry-level jobs for male high school graduates pay 28 percent less in real dollars than in 1973 and even pay for college graduates has declined somewhat.
Thailand stops supporting her currency July 2, having spent $60 billion ($23 billion of it borrowed) in just a few months to prop up the baht. Thai companies have been gambling on the baht, borrowing dollars and exchanging them for bahts, which have paid a higher interest rate. The baht has been linked to a basket of currencies led by the U.S. dollar, it immediately plunges 16 percent against the dollar, and other Asian currencies fall in value as currency speculators face up to the fact that too many loans have been extended to an overbuilt real estate market, that accounting practices have been shoddy, and that corruption in some countries has contributed to an overvaluation of the baht, the Malaysian ringgit, the Indonesian rupiah, and the South Korean won. By late October the baht has dropped 35 percent and central banks from Indonesia to Malaysia to the Philippines are struggling to keep mobile money from leaving them. The South Korean won comes under renewed pressure in November, and that country appeals for help from the International Monetary Fund as Asia's "tiger" nations fall into deep recession.
A tax bill signed by President Clinton August 5 cuts federal income taxes—and the capital gains tax—for the first time since 1981. The bill is designed to balance the federal budget by 2002; while it restores some of the funds eliminated in last year's welfare reform act, critics say it benefits the rich more than the poor and middle class.
Top Enron Corp. officials meet at Houston November 5 and approve a management proposal to provide several hundred million dollars in loan guarantees for an outside partnership named Chewco (for the Star Wars character Chewbacca) that will supposedly be an independent entity but will actually be run (and partly owned) by a young Enron executive (see energy, 1985). The seven-member executive board agrees to let Chewco pay $383 million for an interest in Enron's JEDI limited partnership, thus veering off from it business of energy trading to one of making transactions that can avoid U.S. taxes through hundreds of offshore partnerships while at the same time inflating Enron earnings and hiding billions of dollars in debts from creditors, employees, and shareholders (see energy, 2001).
Congress votes November 13 to approve a Foreign Operations spending bill of nearly $13 billion with no provision for helping to fund the International Monetary Fund or making overdue payments to the United Nations. A dispute over UN funding of abortions in family-planning programs has derailed Clinton administration efforts to obtain the funding.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average soars above 8200 in August, plunges a record 554.26 points October 27 to close at 7161.15 following precipitous declines in the Hong Kong market as currency worries plague Asian markets generally, but the Dow closes December 31 at 7908.25—up 22.6 percent from its 1996 close of 6448.27.
AuctionWeb (later eBay) grows by mid-year to have more than 150,000 users bidding in 794,000 auctions per day, doubles its size every 3 months, and sells a 22 percent stake in the company to a venture-capital firm in June for $4.5 million as interest in on-line buying and selling increases (see 1996; 1999).
Priceline.com is founded in July by Connecticut entrepreneur Jay Walker, who sees an opportunity to make money by using the Internet to help airlines and hotels fill their excess capacity. Walker persuades some venture capitalists to back him, and in April of next year will start a Web site on which customers can list the amount that they are willing to pay for a flight from Chicago to Dallas, a hotel room in Boston, or whatever. Searching its proprietary database for an airline or hotel willing to meet the posted offer, Priceline fills the order if the flight or room is available at that price.
Montgomery Ward files for bankruptcy protection July 7. It has long since abandoned the mail-order business that it started in 1872 and has been operating hundreds of retail stores; most have been losing money in recent years.
F. W. Woolworth announces July 18 that it will close its more than 400 U.S. variety stores (it once had about 2,600), and concentrate after 118 years of five-and-diming on its profitable Foot Locker and other sports equipment stores. Its variety stores have been losing money, and the company will operate under the name Venator Group beginning June 12, 1998, but Britain's independent Woolworth Co. continues to thrive.
An accident at a Japanese nuclear-waste reprocessing plant March 11 contaminates 35 workers with radiation (see 1991). Owned and operated by the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp., the plant at Tokaimura closes down about 80 miles northeast of Tokyo, and the PNC admits April 17 that it has failed to report 11 radiation leaks in its Fugen heavy-water nuclear plant at Tsuruga over the past 3 years (see 1999).
The French oil company Total, Russian oil company Gazprom, and Malaysian oil company Petronas sign a $2 billion contract in October to explore Iran's South Pars offshore gas field, defying U.S. sanctions against dealing with Iran.
American Airlines pilots strike for pay increases at midnight February 14 but go back to work 4 minutes later on orders from President Clinton. The pilots average $120,000 per year.
A Korean Air Boeing 747-300 crashes in the jungle hills of Guam August 5, killing 224 of the 254 passengers aboard; a Garuda Indonesia Airbus A-300 crashes in hilly terrain 900 miles northwest of Jakarta September 26, killing all 234 aboard; a Russian AN-124 military transport jet takes off from a weapons factory at Irkutsk in southern Siberia December 6 and crashes in sub-zero weather into an apartment complex, killing at least 80; a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 en route from Jakarta to Singapore crashes on the Indonesian island of Sumatra December 19, killing all 104 passengers and crew aboard in what investigators will suggest was a suicide by the plane's 41-year-old ethnic Chinese Singaporean captain Tsu Way Ming.
A strike by United Parcel Service workers begins August 5, disrupting deliveries of packages and causing millions of dollars of losses each day to U.S. business firms in the nation's largest strike in 10 years. International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Ronald Carey says 38,000 of the 46,000 union jobs created by UPS since 1993 are part-time jobs paying about $9 per hour on average and demands that the company convert them to full-time positions, which pay $19.95 on average, and raise starting wages for part-timers. UPS executives demand that its workers withdraw from the 31 multi-employer pension plans to which the company has been contributing $1 billion per year (they say UPS is subsidizing the pensions of thousands of retirees whose employers have gone bankrupt) and that the workers join a single pension plan.
The 20-month-old Surface Transportation Board issues its first emergency order in October: it requires the Union Pacific Railroad to share its track in the Houston-Gulf Coast area with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Texas Mexican Railway in order to end the gridlock that has cost shippers as much as $100 million per month in rail traffic jams. The order will not be lifted until the end of July 1998.
Canada's 42,200-foot New Brunswick/Prince Edward Island bridge is completed to link the two provinces; it is second in length only to Japan's Seto-Ohashi bridge of 1988.
Hong Kong's two-tier Tsing-Ma suspension bridge opens April 27 to link the city with its new airport, not yet finished, but saboteurs cut the world's longest highway and rail link in 32 places 1 week before its inaugural ceremony. Beijing has criticized Britain for "squandering" $20 billion on the development project, which has required expanding a small island to four times its original size because other real estate is forbiddingly expensive, but when Chinese officials realized that the airport would open under Chinese rule they became enthusiastic (see airport, 1998).
Both Daimler Benz and Toyota introduce prototype fuel-cell-powered cars (see bus, 1993): Toyota introduces the Prius, a hybrid "eco-car" that runs on both gasoline and electric battery power. Some 30,000 Japanese will buy the cars by the end of 1999 as U.S. and other Japanese carmakers introduce experimental hybrid cars of their own.
The Ford Taurus loses its position as top-selling U.S. car to the Toyota Camry (the Honda Accord is third, Honda Civic fourth, Chevrolet Cavalier fifth). The Taurus has a sticker price of $17,995, but it takes the average American only 1,365 hours to earn $17,995, down from the 1,638 that it took to buy a $3,030 Ford Fairlane in 1955.
Microsoft's Bill Gates announces August 6 that his company will make a $150 million investment to help insure the survival of Apple Computer, which has been struggling, and that the two companies will cooperate on sales and technology in several areas. Microsoft has been Apple's largest supplier of word-processing, spreadsheet, and other programs. Apple cofounder Steven P. Jobs appoints a new board, whose members include Oracle Systems founder Larry Ellison, and works to revive the company's fortunes (see 1998).
Intel Corp. announces a breakthrough September 17 that doubles the amount of memory a computer chip can hold, gainsays the 32-year-old axiom (Moore's Law) that the engineering and manufacturing cycle of a computer is roughly 18 months, and holds promise that the cycle will soon be only 9 months and that computers, including the microcomputers in automobiles, television sets, watches, and other consumer goods, will be cheaper (see 1998). Ordinary $1,500 personal computers can now handle 200 million instructions per second as compared with 330,000 handled by the $5,000 IBM PC of 1981.
Microsoft introduces Explorer 4.0 in September, challenging Netscape for dominance in the Internet browser market; the Department of Justice files suit against Microsoft in October, saying the company has violated the 1994 consent decree under which it has operated. Sun Microsystems sues Microsoft in October for alleged breach of contract, false advertising, trademark infringement, and unfair competition in connection with its licensing of Sun's 2-year-old Java computer language (see 1996). Microsoft countersues. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader holds an anti-Microsoft conference at Washington, D.C., in November, and Maryland-born federal judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, 60, issues a preliminary injunction December 11 to stop Microsoft from requiring personal computer makers to install its Explorer browser (see 1998).
The announcement February 22 that Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut, 52, has cloned a mammal refutes previously accepted wisdom. Developmental biologists James McGrath and David Solter wrote in Science magazine 13 years ago (December 14, 1984), "The cloning of mammals, by simple nuclear transfer, is biologically impossible," but Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute, outside Edinburgh, have scraped a few cells from the udder of a 6-year-old ewe and fused them into a specially altered egg cell from another sheep to create Dolly—a lamb that is the first animal ever cloned from an adult. Wilmut was looking for a better way to make pharmaceuticals (PPL had shown that genetically engineered sheep could be made to manufacture certain drugs in their milk that could be used to treat cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and other human diseases). But other scientists will not be able to replicate Wilmut's feat, and Rockefeller University microbiologist Norton D. Zinder will write that Wilmut's success rate, one in about 400 tries, was scientifically meaningless since any number of possible errors could yield a false result. A Wisconsin cattle breeder announces August 7 that he has cloned a calf (now about 6 months old) from so-called primordial stem cells removed from a cow fetus. While the possibility of cloning raises questions of bioethics, many believe that it holds promise for medical advances; scientists generally consider it far less significant than the breakthroughs in molecular biology 20 years ago (see 1998).
The scientific journal Cell publishes a study in its July 11 issue reporting that DNA tests conducted on a Neanderthal skeleton showed a genetic makeup quite different from that of Homo sapiens, suggesting that Neanderthals and humans did not interbreed and that the evolutionary split between the two occurred much earlier than was heretofore believed. Researchers led by DNA expert Svante Paabo of the University of Munich found a way to extract DNA from the upper armbone of a well-preserved skeleton found in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf in 1856.
Nobel biochemist Melvin Calvin dies at Alta Bates, Calif., January 8 at age 85; Nobel biochemist Alexander Todd, Baron Todd (of Trumpington), at Cambridge January 10 at age 89; astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh at Las Cruces, N.M., January 17 at age 90; Nobel physicist Chien-Shiung Wu at New York February 16 at age 84; Nobel physicist E. M. Purcell at Cambridge, Mass., March 7 at age 84; Nobel biologist George Wald at his Cambridge, Mass., home April 12 at age 90; Nobel chemist A. D. Hershey at his Syosset, N.Y., home May 22 at age 87, having helped to pioneer in the application of molecular biology to the study of viruses; Nobel physicist Sir Nevill F. Mott dies at Milton Keynes, England, August 8 at age 90, having helped pave the way for mass production of computers; Nobel biochemist Sir John C. Kendrew dies at Cambridge August 23 at age 80; Nobel inorganic chemist Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson at London September 26 at age 75, having helped to create organometallic "sandwiches" that led to the production of low-lead fuels.
The cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor introduced in February by Warner-Lambert's Parke-Davis subsidiary will soon outsell all other statin drugs.
Nobel surgeon and medical researcher Charles B. Huggins dies at Chicago January 12 at age 95; Syanon founder Charles "Chuck" Dederich of cardiorespiratory failure at Visalia, Calif., February 28 at age 83.
The Food and Drug Administration gives approval May 7 to a "painless" laser drill for hard-tissue dental procedures such as removing decayed tissue and filling cavities. Made by an Irvine, Calif., company and sold under the name Centauri, the new drill can also be used in place of an acid for roughening enamel to improve the bonding of tooth fillings.
Harvard researchers report May 20 that secondhand tobacco smoke nearly doubles the risk of heart disease among women who have never smoked. Their 10-year study has tracked 32,000 healthy women, and they say the results apply to men as well.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 9 to 0 June 26 that doctor-assisted suicide has no constitutional protection but does not absolutely foreclose any claim that it is, leaving open the possibility that a future case involving a terminally ill patient suffering intolerable pain may be decided otherwise (Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill).
The magnetic fields of electric power lines do not produce leukemia in children, according to results of a large and meticulously designed scientific study released July 2. The National Cancer Institute has worked with childhood leukemia specialists from leading U.S. medical centers to match 636 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia against 620 healthy children, but skeptics will continue to suspect a link despite solid evidence to the contrary.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues new regulations August 8 that relax restrictions on radio television advertising of prescription drugs (see 1985). Under previous rules such advertising could refer to a drug's purpose only if it provided extensive and technical information with regard to risk, but pharmaceutical companies have complained that this was impractical with the electronic media. The companies last year spent $595.5 million on advertising, a 90 percent increase over 1995 levels; they have argued that advertising direct to consumers provides a public information service and brings transparency to an area that has historically been controlled by the medical profession, but consumer advocate Sidney M. Wolfe calls the rules change "a setup for misleading people." No other country except New Zealand permits advertising of drugs directly to consumers, it is estimated that the companies will spend $1 billion on such advertising next year, and by the end of the decade their spending will be at an annual rate of more than $13.2 billion (far more than the amount they budget for research and development) as advertising pushes consumers to ask their physicians to prescribe drugs for conditions such as erectile dysfunction and male hair loss.
The world has 4,274 reported cases of poliomyelitis, down from 35,251 in 1988 (see 1994); the World Health Organization has vaccinated 1.5 billion children worldwide (but see 2002).
A United Nations report released in late November says that 1 percent of all adults in the world are now infected with the HIV virus, 90 percent of them live in the developing nations, and 90 percent are unaware that they are infected (see 1998).
The mass suicide of 39 millennial religious cultists at the San Diego suburb Rancho Santa Fe March 26 evokes memories of the 1978 incident at Jonestown, Guyana. An anonymous telephone tip to police leads to the revelation that 21 women and 18 men, all dressed alike and with close-cropped hair that leads to an erroneous initial report that all are men, have taken lethal mixtures of phenobarbitol and vodka and put plastic bags over their heads on instructions from cult cofounder Marshall Herff Applewhite, 65, in the belief that he is an extraterrestrial shepherd who will lead them aboard a spaceship into eternity. Heaven's Gate cult leader Applewhite, who is among the dead, has built a business under the name Higher Source designing commercial home pages for the Internet.
Fire driven by 40-mile-per-hour winds April 15 tears through an overcrowded tent city at Mina, three miles from Mecca, killing 340 Muslim pilgrims and injuring at least 1,300 who have come to Saudi Arabia on the obligatory hadj required of all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it (see 1990). The fire is believed to have been started by a gas cylinder used for cooking (see 1998).
Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral opens in early August and St. Petersburg's Church of the Savior of Spilt Blood opens for services August 19, both having been rebuilt after their demolition by the late Josef Stalin 60 years ago, but a bill signed by Russia's president Boris Yeltsin Sepember 26 reverses some religious freedoms granted in 1990, restricting religious practice to Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Russian Orthodoxy and limiting the activities of non-"traditional" religious groups (such as Baptists, Mormons, Pentecostalists, Roman Catholics, and Seventh-Day Adventists) that have not been registered in the country for at least 15 years. Yeltsin vetoed an earlier bill, passed by the Duma June 23, saying that its omission of Christianity violated a provision in the 1993 constitution that decreed all religions to be equal. The Russian Orthodox Church has advocated the law as a means of restricting activities of cults and dissident Russian Orthodox sects.
Mother Teresa dies at Calcutta September 5 at age 87 and is given a state funeral, although detractors say that the modest nun, who won a Nobel Prize for her devotion to the sick and dying, was too willing to accept gifts from unsavory political leaders.
The Promise Keepers hold a rally on the Mall at Washington, D.C., October 4 that draws a crowd of 750,000, most of them white males. Founded 7 years ago by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, now 57, the evangelical movement exhorts men to beg forgiveness for their infidelity, spousal abuse, child abandonment, racial hatred, insensitivity, and other sins and take responsibility for their lives with help from Jesus Christ. Critics worry that the movement is allied to the religious right and apparently opposed to women's rights.
The Million Woman March at Philadelphia October 25 brings out at least 300,000 (and possibly as many as 1.5 million) in a day-long rally to promote family unity and the meaning of being a U.S. woman of African descent. Speakers urge efforts to help solidify family relationships and solve problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, and irresponsible behavior.
President Clinton's State of the Union Message February 4 gives top priority to education, but minority enrollments in leading law schools plunge close to zero in California and Texas following bans on affirmative action in those states.
A Harvard University report issued April 5 reveals that the United States has since 1991 experienced "the largest backward movement toward [racial] segregation" since the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
The British government announces in July that it will end its longstanding policy of providing free higher education and begin imposing annual tuition fees of about $1,600 for all college students. A new loan system will supplant student maintenance grants for living expenses.
Virginia Military Institute (VMI) admits its first female cadets August 18 in response to a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision after 158 years as an all-male school. The 32 women freshmen have 428 male counterparts.
Japan's Supreme Court rules August 29 that Education Ministry censors have broken the law by deleting references to well-documented atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against civilians in China, Korea, and elsewhere in the 1930s and '40s. The decision crowns a 32-year effort by Prof. Saburo Ienaga, 83.
Bob Jones University chancellor Bob Jones Jr. dies at Greenville, S.C., November 12 at age 86. The nondenominational fundamantalist Christian school has grown to have about 5,000 students.
Tony Blair of the Labour Party and Conservative prime minister John Major face off in the first British television debates before any general election.
The Wall Street Journal reports April 30 that Chrysler, Ford, and other advertisers have exerted pressure on Esquire, the New Yorker, People, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines, withdrawing (or threatening to withdraw) their advertising to discourage the periodicals from running "sensitive" articles. Ford does sponsor a TV showing of the 1993 film Schindler's List without commercial interruption in an obvious bid to regain Jewish motorists who have refused since the 1920s to buy cars produced by the anti-Semitic Henry Ford, but commercial interference with editorial freedom raises profound questions.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules June 26 that free speech on the Internet is entitled to the same protection as in any other media and that last year's Communications Decency Act, designed to protect children from pornography, is unconstitutional (Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union). Justice O'Connor and Chief Justice Rehnquist dissent in part from the unanimous opinion.
Microsoft launches Explorer 4.0 in September, stepping up its challenge to the Netscape Navigator for Internet browsing. It begins shipping Internet Explorer 4.0 in October. The Department of Justice files suit against the company October 20 for breaching the consent decree that it signed in July 1994, Dataquest reports November 16 that Netscape's share of the browser market dropped to 53.7 percent in the third quarter, down from 73 percent in the comparable 1996 quarter (Netscape later contends that it retained a 67 percent market share), and Judge Thomas Penfield of the U.S. District Court at Washington, D.C., issues a temporary restraining order December 11 that stops Microsoft from requiring computer makers who sell Windows 95 "or any successor" program to install its Internet Explorer. The Department of Justice files court orders in December designed to prevent Microsoft from bundling Explorer with its Windows 95 operating system, which is now used on 90 percent of desktop and laptop computers. Microsoft appeals December 15 but says it will sell modified versions of Windows to comply with the preliminary injunction (see 1998).
NASA reports that its Jet Propulsion Laboratory on-line World Wide Web site www.nasa.gov and mirror site received 45 million "hits" between July 4 and 11. Commercial Web sites also experience a flood of visitors looking for information about the Mars landing of Pathfinder and the findings of its rover Sojourner. The response suggests that the Internet can deliver so much information so quickly and cheaply that it may be overtaking radio, television, and the print media as a source of news.
BBC News 24 begins broadcasting round-the-clock television news November 9 with lead anchor Gavin Esler, 44, telling viewers, "This isn't going to be your grandfather's BBC. It will be as authoritative as it was in granddad's day, but it's not going to be stuffy. We're not going to be pompous; we might even be fun."
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen dies of lung cancer at San Francisco February 1 at age 80; newspaper publisher Pierre Péladeau suffers a heart attack in early December, lapses into a coma, and dies at his native Montreal December 24 at age 72.
The Gates Library Foundation announces in June that it will spend $200 million over 5 years to bring new computers and the Internet into the nation's public libraries. Established by Microsoft boss Bill Gates, the foundation is intended chiefly to help libraries in low-income areas but may ultimately benefit as many as half of the nation's 16,000 public libraries. Gates and his wife, Melinda (née French), add another $200 million to the program, and Oracle Systems founder Larry Ellison announces that he will contribute $100 million to libraries.
The famous circular reading room of the British Museum closes after 140 years as the museum moves to London's St. Pancras area (see British Library, 1998).
Nonfiction: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Boston-born University of California Medical School physiologist and ornithologist Jared (Mason) Diamond, 59, who credits environmental coincidences for the early ascendancy of European societies; Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals by Niall Ferguson (editor) is a book of "what ifs"; The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives by Zbigniew Brzezinski; A History of the Twentieth Century, 1900-1933 by Sir Martin Gilbert (he was knighted in 1995); Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by the late J. Anthony Lukas is about the 1905 assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg; Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady by Greg Mitchell deals with the 1950 senatorial race between Richard M. Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas; The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour M. Hersh; Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Hartford, Conn.-born author Mark Kurlansky, 45; The Perfect Storm by New York writer Sebastian Junger, 35; From East to West: California and the Making of the American Mind by Columbus, Ohio-born San Francisco Chronicle editor Stephen (Alfred) Schwartz, 49; The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism by Kansas City-born Chicago social critic Thomas Frank, 32, who founded the newsletter Baffler in 1988. He alleges that advertisers have learned since the success of Volkswagen Beetle ads in the 1950s and '60s how to appeal to consumers' desire to be different; My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid, whose youngest brother died of AIDS last year in Antigua.
Writer Margaret Halsey dies at White Plains, N.Y., February 4 at age 86; historian Dame C. V. (Cicely Veronica) Wedgwood at London March 9 at age 86; Helene Hanff at New York April 9 at age 80; J. Anthony Lukas kills himself in his New York apartment June 5 at age 64 in a fit of depression; biographer-critic Leon Edel dies at Honolulu September 5 at age 89; historian A. L. Rowse at St. Austell, Cornwall, October 3 at age 93; historian-philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin of a heart attack at Oxford November 5 at age 88.
Fiction: All the Names (Todos os Nomes) by José Saramago, now 74, who will win next year's Nobel Prize in literature; Stone Mountain by North Carolina novelist Charles Frazier, 46, is about the Civil War; Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon; Purple America by Rick Moody; Le Divorce by Diane Johnson; Larry's Party by Carol Shields; The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald; The Virgin Blue by Washington, D.C.-born London editor-novelist Tracy Chevalier, 33; Bridget Jones's Diary by London novelist Helen Fielding, 38, who has based it on her columns in The Independent (her heroine can't stop smoking, drinks too much, and is obsessed with dieting); The Witch of Exmoor by Margaret Drabble; Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson; The God of Small Things by New Delhi screenwriter and aerobics instructor Arundhati Roy, 37, whose book has sales of 350,000 copies worldwide within 5 months. It will be translated into 24 languages and sold in 30 countries, although some domestic critics say Roy's passages about sex are obscene; Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen; Killing Floor by English mystery novelist Lee Child, 42, who has been a director for Granada Television. His protagonist Jack Reacher is a former military police officer who finds crime in America.
Novelist-language expert Leo Rosten dies at New York February 19 at age 88; novelist Andrei Sinyavsky of cancer at Paris February 25 at age 71; V. S. Pritchett at London March 20 at age 96; William S. Burroughs of a heart attack at Lawrence, Kansas, August 2 at age 83; Harold Robbins of pulmonary arrest at Palm Springs, Calif., October 14 at age 81; James Michener takes himself off kidney dialysis and dies at Austin, Texas, October 16 at age 90; Mary J. Latsis (half of the Emma Lathen mystery-writer team) dies of a heart attack and stroke at Plymouth, N.H., October 27 at age 70.
Poetry: Morning Poems by Robert Bly; Collected Poems by Edgar Bowers, now 73.
Poet-novelist James Dickey dies of complications from lung disease at Columbia, S.C., January 19 at age 73; Allen Ginsberg of liver cancer at New York April 5 at age 70; Denise Levertov of complications from lymphoma at Seattle December 21 at age 74.
Juvenile: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (in America, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) by Edinburgh author J. K. (Joanne K.) Rowling, 31, a single mother and former schoolteacher who has been living on the dole but whose books about an orphan-turned-junior wizard will soon be translated into 35 languages and published in 115 countries; The Subtle Knife and Clockwork: Or All Wound Up by Philip Pullman; The Adventures of Captain Underpants: An Epic Novel by Cleveland-born Seattle writer-illustrator David Murray "Dav" Pilkey Jr., 31, whose bathroom humor will come under attack for encouraging bad behavior; Moonstruck: The True Story of the Cow who Jumped Over the Moon by Santa Monica, Calif.-born author Gennifer Choldenko, 40.
Author Geoffrey Trease dies at Bath January 27 at age 88, having written more than 100 books, most of them children's historical novels; the Rev. T. Awdry dies at his Gloucestershire home March 21 at age 85 (he wrote 26 stories before his son Christopher took over).
Painting: Ib Reading by Lucian Freud. Willem de Kooning dies at his East Hampton, L.I., home March 19 at age 92 (he has had Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade and has not painted since 1990); op art leader Victor Vasarely dies in a private clinic at Paris March 15 at age 90; Roy Lichtenstein of pneumonia complications at New York September 29 at age 73.
The Young British Artists who created a stir in 1988 put on an exhibition entitled Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts. London advertising man and contemporary arts patron Charles Saatchi, now 54, owns the works, many of which have pornographic or scatological references and which include a portrait of a black Virgin Mary stained with elephant dung, a bust of a man made from his own frozen blood, Damien Hirst's butchered animals in formaldehyde, and a shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. Marcus Harvey's depiction of mass murderer Myra Hindley attracts the most controversy. (Other artists in the group include Ian Davenport, Gary Hume, Abigail Lane, Chris Ofili, Marc Quinn, Fiona Rae, Gavin Turk, Gilian Wearing, and Rachel Whiteread.) The show draws protests as well as raves, and although most serious critics dismiss the works as superficial they attract 350,000 visitors (see New York, 1999).
Sculpture: Double Torqued Ellipse by Richard Serra; Three Red Spanish Venuses by Jim Dine. Sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca dies of a stroke at his home near Lucca June 11 at age 74.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is dedicated at Washington, D.C., May 2. Designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, 81, Neil Estern, graphic artist-sculptor Leonard Baskin, now 74, and George Segal, now 72, the 7½-acre open-air memorial of granite, brass, bronze, water, and trees beside the Tidal Basin is the first presidential monument since FDR dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in 1943; critics deplore the concealment of FDR's disability from the polio that required him to use a wheelchair, but only two photographs, both family snapshots, depict the late president in a wheelchair, and it is obvious that he took pains to avoid drawing attention to his paralysis. An addition to the memorial will be dedicated in January 2001 with a bronze statue of FDR in his wheelchair.
A museum devoted to the late Georgia O'Keeffe opens July 17 at Santa Fe, N.M.
The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum opens October 19 in Spain. Designed by Frank O. Gehry, the $100 million structure on the Nervión River has a $50 million acquisition fund and will show part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's permanent collection on a rotating basis.
The Miho Museum opens in November near Kyoto, Japan, where architect I. M. Pei and his project architect, Tim Culbert, have spent 6 years creating the structure to house the collection of 1,000 ancient Asian and Near Eastern artworks owned by the 27-year-old religious order Shinji Shumeikai, which has commissioned the building and poured an estimated $1 billion into it.
The J. Paul Getty Center opens at Los Angeles December 6 on a 110-acre site on the western slope of the Sepulveda Pass at Brentwood, overlooking the San Diego Freeway (the original Getty Museum at Malibu will continue as a showcase for the museum's collection of classical antiquities). When oil baron Getty died in 1976 he left an estate of $1 billion, of which about three-fourths was stock placed in trust for an art museum (the stock has grown in value to about $4.3 billion). Getty made his first major art acquisition in 1931, paying $1,100 for a Jan van Goyen at Berlin. Designed by New York-based architect Richard Meier, now 63, with Michael J. Palladino, the new museum is reached by a tram from the Getty garage, and its works include nothing created later than 1900.
The Sony Mavica digital camera introduced in August will soon have more than 41 percent of the market, mostly because it stores its images on a standard floppy disk that can be popped into a personal computer and printed (other digital cameras either require cables that connect from a port in the camera to the computer or use a floppy-disk converter that is sold separately; see Kodak, 1995). Like the others, the Mavica etches images on electronic sensors rather than on film and converts them into computer-readable binary data. It sells for $665 (competitors such as Kodak, Canon, Fuji, Matsushita, Olympic, Seiko, and Toshiba have models that sell for between $300 and $500).
Photographs: Terra: Struggle of the Landless by photojournalist Sebastião Salgado documents the plight of poor Brazilian migrants in 100 black-and-white pictures. The book includes a preface by Portuguese novelist José Saramago and poems by Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque.
Former Life magazine photographer-editor David Scherman dies of cancer at his Stony Point, N.Y., home May 5 at age 81; author-photojournalist pioneer Stefan Lorant at Rochester, Minn., November 12 at age 96.
Theater: How I Learned to Drive by Providence, R.I., playwright Paula Vogel, now 45, 3/10 at New York's off-Broadway Vineyard Theater, with Mary-Louise Parker as 18-year-old L'il Bit, David Morse as her pedophilic uncle, 450 perfs.; Young Man from Atlanta by Horton Foote 3/27 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Rip Torn, Shirley Knight, William Biff, Marcus Giamatti, Jacqueline Williams, 84 perfs; Closer by English playwright Patrick Marber, 33, 3/31 at London's Lyric Theatre (after opening a ago at the Cottesloe), with Kate Ashfield, Tom Mannion, Lloyd Owen, Imogen Stubbs; An American Daughter by Wendy Wasserstein 4/12 at New York's Cort Theater, with Kate Nelligan, Lynne Thigpen, Hal Holbrook, Bruce Norris, Elizabeth Marvel, 89 perfs.; Closer by Patrick Marber 5/22 at London's Royal National Theatre, Cottlesloe; Amy's View by David Hare 6/20 at London's Theatre Royal, Lyttelton, with Judi Dench, Samantha Bond, Tate Donovan; As Bees in Honey Drown by actor-playwright Douglas Carter Beane, 38, 7/15 at New York's off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater (after an earlier opening at the Greenwich House Theater), J. Smith-Cameron, Jo Foxworth, 366 perfs.; The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard 10/1 at London's Court Theatre, with Guy Adkins and Paxton Whitehead as poet A. E. Housman; The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet 11/19 at New York's Booth Theater, with Peter Riegert, Patti LuPone, Vincent Guastaferro, Jack Willis, Rebecca Pidgeon, 197 perfs.
Actor-director-teacher Sanford Meisner dies at his Sherman Oaks, Calif., home February 2 at age 91; theatrical lighting expert Abe Feder at his New York home April 24 at age 87; actor John Beal at Santa Cruz, Calif., April 26 at age 87; actor-director-teacher Robert Lewis of a heart attack at New York November 23 at age 88.
Television: Just Shoot Me 3/4 on NBC with Chris Hogan, David Spade, David W. Harper, Enrico Colantoni, George Segal, Laura San Giacino, Wendie Mack (to 8/16/2003); The Practice 3/4 on ABC with Kelli Williams, Camryn Manheim, Dylan McDermott as Boston lawyers in series created by David E. Kelley (to 5/16/2004); Buffy the Vampire Slayer 3/31 on WB with Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Sunnydale, Calif., teenager and Charisma Carpenter in a series created by Joss Whedon (to 5/20/2003); Ellen DeGeneres reveals in Time magazine that she is a lesbian, a 1-hour special of her ABC show Ellen 4/30 attracts 36.1 million viewers to the show's character revelation of her sexual orientation (ABC announces that at least 42 million saw some portion of the show, which gets a 23.4 rating when its normal rating has fallen to about 9.6), and although Chrysler pulls out under pressure from the religious right, advertisers who include Bayer, The Gap, Viacom's Paramount Pictures, Volkswagen, and Warner Brothers run commercials. ABC is now owned by Walt Disney studios, and Southern Baptists vow to boycott Disney films, theme parks, and the like; Port Charles 6/1 on ABC (initially a 2-hour primetime special, then a daytime soap opera) with Lynn Herring as Lucy Coe, Jon Lindstrom as Kevin Collins, Kin Shriner in a spinoff of General Hospital (to 7/4/2003); Oz on HBO 7/12 with Ernie Hudson, Terry Kinney in the cable network's first original dramatic series; South Park 8/13 on Comedy Central is an animated show for adults created by Denver showmen Trey Parker, 27, and Matt Stone, 25, with their voices plus those of three others (the central characters are four third-grade boys who live in South Park, Colo.; the show's language and political views offend both left-and right-wing political groups as it satirizes U.S. culture and challenges taboos); Ally McBeal 9/8 on Fox with Illinois-born actress Calista Flockhart, 32, as a Boston lawyer in the title role of a series created by David E. Kelley (to 5/20/2002); Judge Judy 9/16 on WB with former New York family court judge Judith Sheindlin, 54, whose syndicated daytime cable show will soon reach 9.5 million homes, beating Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jesse Raphael, or Montel Williams; Martha Stewart Living debuts in September and 197 stations pick up the syndicated program (the radio feature "Ask Martha" debuts in September and is heard on 135 stations; a Martha Stewart Web site debuts on the Internet in September and is soon getting 300 visits per day); Dharma and Greg 9/24 on ABC with Los Angeles-born dancer-actress Jennifer Mary "Jenna" Elfman, 25, Charleston, S.C.-born actor Thomas Gibson, 35 (to 4/30/2002); Working 10/18 on NBC with Fred Savage, Maurice Godin, Sarah Knowlton (to 8/26/1999).
Films: James Brooks's As Good as It Gets with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear; Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver; James Cameron's Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates. Also: Steven Spielberg's Amistad with Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, and Benin-born actor Djimon Hounsou, 33, as the slave leader Cinque; Robert Duvall's The Apostle with Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton, June Carter Cash; Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights with Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore; Mike van Diem's Character with Fedja van Huet, Jan Decleir, Betty Schuurman; Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy with Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams; Wayne Wang's Chinese Box with Jeremy Irons, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li; Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry with Allen, Kirstie Alley, Judy Davis, Billy Crystal; Taylor Hackford's Devil's Advocate with Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves; Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino, Johnny Depp; Kassi Lemmons's Eve's Bayou with Samuel L. Jackson, Debbi Morgan; John Woo's Face/Off with Nicolas Cage, John Travolta; Takeshi Kitano's Fireworks with Kitano, Ren Osugi; Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty with Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy; Frank Oz's In and Out with Matt Dillon, Kevin Kline, Debbie Reynolds, Joan Cusack; Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men with Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy, Stacy Edwards; Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential with Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito; John Madden's Mrs. Brown with Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, Scottish comedian Billy Connolly as her manservant John Brown; Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda with Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett; Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book with Ewan McGregor; Jacques Doillon's Ponette with Victoire Thivisol; Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's La Promesse with Olivier Gourmet; Masayuki Sun's Shall We Dance with Koji Yakusho; Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter with Ian Holm; Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo; Iain Softley's The Wings of the Dove with Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache.
Director Fred Zinnemann dies at his London home March 14 at age 89; actor Robert Mitchum of lung cancer and emphysema at his Santa Barbara home July 1 at age 79; James Stewart of a pulmonary blood clot at his Beverly Hills home July 2 at age 89; Burgess Meredith at his Malibu home September 9 at age 88; comedian Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton at Rancho Mirage, Calif., September 17 at age 84; director Samuel Fuller at his Hollywood Hills home October 30 at age 85; comedian Stubby Kaye at Rancho Mirage, Calif., December 14 at age 79; former Hollywood studio chief Dawn Steel of brain cancer at Los Angeles December 20 at age 51; director Juzo Itami commits suicide at Tokyo December 20 at age 64 (he jumps from the roof of his eight-story office building, leaving a note in which he denies a tabloid magazine's allegations of an extramarital affair); actor Toshiro Mifune dies outside Tokyo December 24 at age 77.
Film musicals: John Musker and Ron Clements's Hercules with Walt Disney animation, voices of Tate Donovan, Joshua Keaton, Robert Bart, Danny DeVito, James Woods, Susan Egan, Rip Torn, Charlton Heston (narrator), music by Alan Menken, lyrics by David Zippel, songs that include "Go the Distance."
Broadway musicals: Dream: The Johnny Mercer Musical 4/3 at the Royale Theater, with Lesley Ann Warren, John Pizzarelli, Margaret Whiting, now 72, music by composers who include the late Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, Henry Mancini, Harry Warren, and Richard Whiting, lyrics by the late Mercer, 109 perfs.; Titanic 4/23 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, with John Cunningham, Brian d'Arcy, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, book by Peter Stone, 804 perfs.; Steel Pier 4/24 at the Richard Rodgers Theater, with Daniel McDonald, Joel Blum, Debra Monk, Karen Ziemba, music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, 76 perfs.; The Life 4/26 at the Barrymore Theater, with Vernel Bagneris, Cleveland-born performer Chuck Cooper, 42, Brooklyn-born performer Lillias White, 45, music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Ira Gasman, 466 perfs.; Jekyll and Hyde 4/28 at the Plymouth Theater, with Robert Cuccioli, music by New York-born composer Frank Wildhorn, 38, book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, songs that include "This Is the Moment" and "Once Upon a Dream," 1,543 perfs.; King David 5/18 at the newly restored New Amsterdam Theater, with Judy Kuhn as Michal, Marcus Lovett in the title role, music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Tim Rice, 6 perfs.; Forever Tango 6/19 at the Walter Kerr Theater, with Argentinian singer Carlos Morel and 17 dancer-choreographers, 332 perfs.; Side Show 10/10 at the Richard Rodgers Theater, with Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner as the Siamese Twins Daisy and Violet, Ken Jennings, music by Henry Krieger, book and lyrics by Bill Russell, 84 perfs.; The Scarlet Pimpernel 11/9 at the Minskoff Theater, with Douglas Sills, Christine Andreas, Terrence Mann, music by Frank Wildhorn, book and lyrics by Nan Kingston, songs that include "Into the Fire," 772 perfs.; The Lion King 11/13 at the New Amsterdam Theater, with John Vickery, Samuel E. Wright, Jason Raize, Scott Irby-Ranniar, music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, additional music and lyrics by Lebo M. Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Julie Taymor (who also directed and designed the costumes and puppets), and Hans Zimmer, 3,100+ perfs.
Broadway songwriter Burton Lane dies at his New York home January 6 at age 84; burlesque comic Joey Faye at the Actors' Home in Englewood, N.J., April 26 at age 87.
Concert pianist Syatoslav Richter dies of a heart attack at Moscow August 1 at age 82.
Soprano Lois Marshall dies at her native Toronto February 19 at age 73; former Metropolitan Opera impresario Sir Rudolf Bing of Alzheimer's disease at Yonkers, N.Y., September 2 at age 95.
Madrid's Teatro Real reopens for opera in October. It presented its last opera in 1925, was closed for structural problems, and was reopened by the late Francisco Franco as a concert hall in 1966 (he considered opera decadent).
Ballerina Alexandra Danilova dies of heart disease at her New York home July 13 at age 93; Tamara Geva at New York December 9 at age 91.
Popular songs: "My Heart Will Go On" by James Horner for the film Titanic (Celine Dion sings it on the soundtrack, but seven of the 15 tracks on the top-selling album are by the Norwegian singer Sissel (Kyrkjebo), now 28; Time Out of Mind (CD) by Bob Dylan; Come On Over (CD) by Shania Twain; My Way by Chattanooga-born singer Usher Raymond, 28, includes the singles "You Make Me Wanna" and "Nice and Slow;" Love Scenes (CD) by British Columbia-born jazz pianist-singer Diana Krall, 32 (with Russell Malone on guitar, Christian McBride on bass); Left of the Middle (CD) by Australian singer-actress Natalie (Jane) Imbruglia, 22; City Streets (CD) by Akron, Ohio-born New York songwriter/singer Joseph Arthur, 25; Flaming Pie (CD) by Paul McCartney includes "Somedays"; The Dance (CD) by Fleetwood Mac; This Fire (CD) by Paula Cole includes the single "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?"; "I Believe I Can Fly" by R. Kelly; "Everyday Is a Winding Road" by Sheryl Crow; OK Computer (CD) by Radiohead; "Sunny Came Home" by Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal; The Day (CD) by Babyface; Nine Lives (CD) by Aerosmith; "Candle in the Wind 1997" by Elton John, lyrics by Bernard Taupin (written originally for Marilyn Monroe, it was on John's 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road but is now linked with the late Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, and gains enormous success); You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Songs (CD) and "How Do I Live" by LeAnn Rimes; So Long So Wrong (CD) by Alison Krauss and her band Union Station; Supa Dupa Fly (CD) by Portsmouth, Va.-born singer-songwriter-rap artist Misdemeanor (originally Melissa Arnett) Elliott, 26, who will later call herself Missy Elliott; "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" and "I'll Be Missing You" by rap artist Sean "P. Diddy" or "Puff Daddy" Combs, now 27, and Florida-born, Newark, N.J.-raised vocalist Faith Evans, 24 (the latter song is about Combs's protégé Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.); Infinite (CD) by St. Joseph, Mo.-born rap artist Eminem (Marshall [Bruce] Mathers III), 24.
Rhythm and blues singer La Vern Baker dies of heart complications at New York March 10 at age 67 (a diabetic, her legs were amputated in 1995 but she returned to performing last year); 280-pound Brooklyn-born rap star Christopher G. Wallace (known variously as Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G.) is killed in a drive-by shooting near Beverly Hills, Calif., March 9 at age 24 and given a funeral procession March 18 from Fort Greene through Bedford-Stuyvesant; Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer at her Danbury, Conn., home April 8 at age 49; jazz singer Thelma Carpenter at her native New York May 15 at age 77; jazz trumpeter Adolphus A. "Doc" Cheatham at Washington, D.C., June 2 at age 91, having performed almost to the end; John Denver is killed October 12 at age 53 when the light plane he is flying crashes into California's Monterey Bay; jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli dies at his native Paris December 1 at age 89.
The suicide May 14 of French schoolgirls Valentine Défontaine, 12, and Aurélie Leleu, 13, at Somain, a mining town 110 miles north of Paris, shocks the nation. Both girls have worshipped the late singer Kurt Cobain of the Seattle rock group Nirvana (see 1994) and vowed to follow his example. At least two suicides in America and one in Italy have been similarly inspired; Australian rock singer Michael Hutchence, 37, of the group INXS hangs himself in November 22 in his Ritz Carlton hotel room at Double Bay, a Sydney suburb.
The Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl XXXI, defeating the New England Patriots 35 to 21 January 26 at New Orleans.
Houston ice skater Tara Lipinski, 14, wins the world figure skating title at Lausanne, Switzerland, March 22. The four-foot-eight-inch, 75-pound ninth grader is a month younger than Sonja Henie was when she won the first of her 10 consecutive titles in 1927 and her prize is $50,000.
Golfer Tiger Woods wins the Masters tournament April 13 at Augusta, Ga., with a record 18-under-par score of 270 for 72 holes, beating the Masters record of 271 shared by Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd. Now 21, he is the first black and first Asian (his mother is Thai) to wear the traditional green jacket, but Woods loses the U.S. Open.
Golfing legend Ben Hogan dies at Fort Worth, Texas, July 25 at age 84, having won two PGA championships, one British Open, four U.S. Opens, and two Masters tournaments. He has had surgery in recent years for colon cancer; golfer Joyce Wethered dies at London November 18 at age 96.
Australian marathon swimmer Susie Maroney, 22, leaves Havana May 11 to swim the 118-mile Florida Straits and arrives at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park in the Keys 24½ hours later to become the first woman—and perhaps the first person—ever to succeed (a 28-by-eight-foot metal cage has protected her from sharks but she has suffered from nausea, numerous jellyfish stings, and hallucinations).
Former world middleweight champion Tony Zale dies at Portage, Ind., March 20 at age 83, having suffered from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
Boxer Mike Tyson loses his bid to regain the heavyweight title at Las Vegas June 28 when he is disqualified in the third round for biting a piece out of champion Evander Holyfield's ear; Tyson turns 31, apologizes, says he "snapped," his boxing license is revoked for a year, and he is fined $3 million (but still takes away $27 million); the Professional Boxing Safety Act that becomes law July 1 begins to bring controls to the "sweet science" that has allegedly been abused by promoters and matchmakers.
Cricketer Denis C. S. Compton dies at Windsor, Berkshire, April 23 at age 78, having retired in 1964 after a 28-year career.
Onetime tennis champion Helen Hull Jacobs dies of heart failure at her East Hampton, N.Y., home June 2 at age 88.
Pete Sampras wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Czech-born Swiss prodigy Martina Hingis, 16, (the youngest winner since 1887) in women's; Patrick Rafter, 24, (Australia) wins the U.S. Open men's singles title, Hingis the women's.
The Chicago Bulls win their fifth National Basketball Association title, defeating the Utah Jazz in June. Michael Jordan is running a fever but rallies his team in the fifth game to win 90 to 86.
Golden State Warriors basketball coach P. J. Carlesimo chews out his star scorer Latrell Sprewell, 27, at the Oakland Arena December 1, Sprewell grabs him by the neck and threatens to kill him; the guard is suspended for a year without pay, the remaining $24 million of his $32 million contract is terminated, and so is his Converse endorsement deal, but many consider Carlesimo more to blame than Sprewell.
Former St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood dies of pneumonia at Los Angeles January 20 at age 59 (he has had throat cancer).
The 5-year-old Florida Marlins win the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 3.
Jockey Eddie Arcaro dies of liver cancer at his Miami home November 14 at age 81, having been the first to ride five Kentucky Derby winners and two Triple Crown champions. In his 31-year career he won 4,779 races, 549 of them stakes races, and purses totaling more than $30 million.
The U.S. Air Force releases a voluminous report June 24 on the 1947 Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) affair (the so-called "Roswell, N.M. incident"). There was no spaceship, the report says, nor were there any extraterrestrials, alien artifacts, or government coverups, but millions of believers (encouraged by commercial interests) and conspiracy theorists remain unconvinced by explanations that involve weather balloons and dummies.
Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, is fatally injured at age 36 August 31 in an auto crash at Paris along with her millionaire Egyptian admirer Emad Mohamed "Dodi" al-Fayed, 41, whose father owns Harrods, Punch magazine, a soccer team, and the Paris Ritz. Their driver is also killed when their Mercedes-Benz smashes into the wall of an underpass at high speed while being pursued by photographers. "Princess Di" has devoted her efforts to humanitarian causes (e.g., halting deployment of land mines), and she is mourned worldwide.
Mattel Inc. redesigns the 11½-inch Barbie doll introduced in 1959 to give it more realistic dimensions (less busty and thicker at the waist). The average American girl owns eight Barbie dolls, and approximately 1 billion have been sold worldwide, along with countless costumes and accessories.
Sing & Snore Ernie is introduced by Mattel's Tyco Toys. Based on a Sesame Street character, the doll is in such short supply at Christmas that it fetches as much as $400 in black-market transactions.
The Liggett Group agrees March 20 to settle lawsuits against it by the attorneys general of 22 states (see 1996): it will use warning labels that smoking is addictive, and it will turn over internal documents that may help antitobacco forces in their suits against its larger competitors (Liggett, controlled by financier Bennett S. LeBow, 59, is dwarfed by Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard). Conceding that smoking does cause cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses, the company agrees to pay the states one fourth of its pretax profits each year for the next 25 years. Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds soon seek a deal that would give them immunity from further prosecutions in return for paying $300 billion over 25 years and abandoning ads (including the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel) that appeal to young people. Congress votes down a bill proposed by Senators Orrin G. Hatch (R. Utah) and Edward M. Kennedy (D. Mass.) that would raise the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes from 24¢ to 67¢ as a way to discourage teenage smoking, which has surged in recent years but has not returned to 1970s levels (opponents say that cutting sales would reduce state tax revenues by more than $1 billion per year); tobacco company officials and state attorneys general announce an agreement June 20 that would cost the companies $368.5 billion over 25 years, and Reynolds dumps Joe Camel in July, but the deal requires congressional approval; critics of the $45 billion per year tobacco industry say the companies will actually make money on the deal, that medical costs related to smoking will total closer to $1 trillion in the next 25 years, and that the agreement limits the FDA's power to control nicotine content (see 1998).
O. J. Simpson loses a civil trial of wrongful death brought against him by the families of his former wife and her friend Ronald L. Goldman in their June 1994 murder. The court at San Diego finds him guilty February 4, orders him to pay the Goldman family $8.5 million in compensation and imposes subsequent punitive damages that bring the total to more than $33 million. A higher court rejects Simpson's appeal in April.
Britain's House of Lords ends efforts to block or amend a gun-control bill February 20 (see Dunblane, 1996); new handgun restrictions that go into effect February 27 outlaw all handguns of more than .22 caliber and require that those of .22 caliber or less be stored at registered gun clubs.
A 5-to-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court June 27 in Printz v. United States says the states cannot be forced to check backgrounds of prospective handgun buyers, as required by the 1993 Brady gun-control law, but the ruling has more to do with states' rights than with gun controls. The law violates "the very principle of state sovereignty," rules the majority, but 27 states already have their own rigorous screening measures, the decision does not affect other provisions of the Brady law, and the provision affected will become moot late next year (see 1998).
Japanese police arrest a 14-year-old middle-class schoolboy at Kobe June 28 on charges that he decapitated a mentally retarded 11-year-old boy and left the head on the front gate of a junior high school (the severed head was discovered May 27, its mouth stuffed with notes asking, "Can you stop me, police?" The victim's body was later found in nearby bushes). Police say the boy has confessed also to having attacked two girls, aged 9 and 10, administering fatal stab wounds to the older girl and seriously injuring the other.
Fashion designer Gianni Versace, now 50, is gunned down July 15 outside his lavish 1930 Miami Beach mansion on Ocean Drive. Dade County police and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents say the only suspect is Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, a male prostitute who is on the FBI's 10 "Most Wanted" List, to whom four other murders have been linked; Cunanan commits suicide on a Miami houseboat July 23.
Pearl, Miss., schoolboy Luke Woodham, 16, uses a .30-caliber rifle to kill his mother and two classmates; seven other boys are subsequently arrested. West Paducah, Ky., schoolboy Michael Carneal, 14, opens fire December 1 with a .22-caliber Ruger pistol December 1 on a prayer meeting that has assembled at his school, killing three girls. Stamps, Ark., schoolboy Joseph "Colt" Todd, 14, uses a .22-caliber rifle December 15 to shoot two schoolmates at random. All three boys are charged as adults.
Congress eliminates taxes on most home sales, but only 35 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 own their own homes, down from 43.6 percent in 1973, and only 52.6 percent of those aged 30 to 34, down from 60.2 percent.
Architect Paul Rudolph dies of mesothelemia (asbestos cancer) at New York August 8 at age 78; Aldo Rossi at his native Milan September 4 at age 66 of injuries sustained in an automobile accident the previous week.
The Russian tanker Nakhodka breaks apart in the Sea of Japan January 2, releasing about 1.6 million gallons of fuel oil that foul some of the nation's richest fishing grounds and wash up on western Honshu beaches; the supertanker Diamond Grace, loaded with 257,000 tons of crude oil from the United Arab Emirates, runs aground in Tokyo Bay July 2, but early reports of a massive oil spill turn out to be exaggerated.
An earthquake rocks northeastern Iran May 10. Registering 7.5 on the Richter scale; it leaves 1,560 dead, at least 4,460 injured, 60,000 homeless.
The U.S. Forest Service releases a plan May 23 that authorizes cutting 220 million to 267 million board feet of timber per year for the next 10 years in southeastern Alaska's Tongass National Forest but says it will set aside 1.1 million acres in which no logging will be allowed (most of the total 17 million acres is unsuitable for logging).
The worst tornadoes in decades roar through central Texas May 27, killing at least 27 people.
The Red River floods its banks in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and southern Manitoba in April following a spring blizzard. Thousands at Grand Forks and other communities are obliged to flee their homes, and it is weeks before they are able to return.
Central Europe has its worst floods in a century as the Oder and other rivers overflow their banks in Poland, the Czech Republic, and eastern Germany in July, killing more than 100. Somalia has floods from late October to December that kill more than 1,000, leave 230,000 homeless, destroy crops, and threaten to create a new famine.
President Clinton gives approval June 25 to sharply tightened limits on air pollutants despite industry complaints that the new rules will cost far more than produce by way of health benefits. Speaking in Tennessee, Clinton cites the problem of children who play out of doors, especially asthmatics who are put at risk from exposure to ozone and the small soot particles created by burning fossil fuels.
Los Angeles has only one Stage 1 smog alert day, when residents with respiratory ailments are warned to remain indoors and others are urged to refrain from vigorous outdoor exercise. There were 148 such days in 1970, 122 in 1977, but the local Air Quality Management District has been forced by budget cuts to roll back or ease up some of the landmark protections enacted in the 1980s.
Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano erupts June 25 (see 1995). Spewing molten rivers of lava, ash, and gas at 150 miles per hour, it destroys two-thirds of the island's housing and kills 19 of its 11,000 people. British colonial authorities have ordered the evacuation of the island, most of the dead defied the evacuation order, another eruption in early August forces hundreds to evacuate areas that had been declared safe, and two thirds of the population will now leave.
Forest fires in Indonesia blanket much of the Philippines, Malaysia, and other countries with choking clouds of smoke beginning in August and continue through most of November until monsoon rains extinguish them.
Teheran's Razi Park opens in September with gardens, a lake, and amusement-park rides. The city government has built 600 parks in the last 8 year, partly to restore some green space to the smog-choked capital.
The U.S. Department of Energy concedes November 25 that the Hanford Nuclear facility built in Washington State for the Manhattan Project during World War II has leaked nuclear waste into ground water that will flow into the Columbia River, creating a potential hazard for agriculture and drinking water.
A United Nations Conference on Climate Change convened at Kyoto, Japan, from December 1 to 10 concludes with a treaty (the Kyoto Protocol) whose signatories agree to bring down levels of "greenhouse" gas emissions, chiefly carbon dioxide, to specific levels by specific dates (gases are to be reduced by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012) (see 1995). The costs of such efforts are forbidding, scientists remain uncertain about the future consequences of fossil-fuel emissions, some insist that global warming is less likely than a new ice age, and critics insist that the developing countries must agree to reduce their emissions if the industrialized countries do so. The United States accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions in 1990, Russia 17.4 percent, both countries will sign the treaty, so will 118 other countries, but the U.S. Senate has voted 95 to 0 July 25 to adopt the Byrd-Hagel Resolution calling on U.S. negotiators to pursue options that would not seriously harm the U.S. economy, and polls show that few Americans consider global warming a significant issue (see 2001).
Maryland and Virginia close rivers following an outbreak of the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicida that kills thousands of fish (nearly all of them menhaden, used for fertilizer, not food). The microbe devastates Chesapeake Bay's crab industry (even though crabs are not affected), sickens scores of people who have been exposed to the organism, reduces fish and shellfish sales by as much as 40 percent, forces the closing of small hotels and restaurants, and ruins the summer tourist season.
The United States imports 50 to 55 tons of Russian caviar, up from 25 tons in 1985, as the economy booms and more Americans indulge their taste for luxury.
U.S. honeybee colonies fall to 250,000, down from 5.2 million (half of them wild) a decade ago, as the Varroa mite and tracheal mite from Europe take a terrible toll (see 1996). More than 90 crops depend on bees for pollination, and the mite epidemic threatens to raise prices of apples, cherries, plums, pears, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin, squash, pepper, and other fruits and vegetables.
Farmers worldwide plant 30 million acres of genetically-altered seeds, up from 3 million last year, but some insist that although such seeds may increase yields and reduce the needs for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides, they are unnatural and potentially hazardous to human health (see U.S., 1999).
Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman lead a drive to squeeze enough waste out of the U.S. food distribution system to feed 450,000 hungry Americans. Most of the food is discarded by restaurants, commercial food services, and families. Glickman disputes claims that the labor required to reduce waste may be more valuable than the food lost.
A World Bank survey of what people will be eating and using for animal feed in the first two decades of the 21st century finds that problems arising from increased consumer demand and falling water tables may create food crises in the poorest countries despite rising economic growth.
A study reported in October shows that rhesus monkeys on well-balanced, low-calorie diets are healthier and age more slowly than animals permitted to eat as much as they want. The study confirms what has been shown in rodents.
Endorsements of various food products by the American Heart Association (AMA) raise millions of dollars from the National Cattlemen's Association, Conagra, and Kellogg Corp. to help research and spread the AMA's message but also raise questions from critics, who say such endorsements may mislead consumers.
The Japanese government announces in late July that fish from Minamata Bay is now safe to eat after 4 decades of contamination by mercury that has caused birth deformities, brain damage, convulsions, paralysis, and other ailments. The Chisso Corp. was found guilty in 1973 of having dumped chemical waste into the bay.
The Food and Drug Administration proposes banning phenopthalein as a cancer risk August 29; the chocolate-covered laxative Ex-Lax sold for 91 years is immediately recalled as its maker works to reformulate the product using a different ingredient.
Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories of American Home Products withdraws the anti-obesity drugs Pondimen (fenfluramine) and Redux (dexfenfluramine) September 15 and Interneuron Pharmaceuticals withdraws its dexfenfluramine product following reports of potentially fatal heart-valve abnormalities among patients who have taken the weight-loss medications. Redux has been on sale since May, and 398,000 prescriptions had been filled by August. Loss of the "miracle" drugs prompts a rush for alternatives in the $5.6 billion U.S. market for weight-loss solutions. The FDA gives approval November 24 to Meridia, made by Knoll Pharmaceutical Co., calling it "moderately effective" but warning that it may increase blood pressure and pulse rate.
Food tainted with bacteria kills as many as 6,000 Americans each year, most of them children and elderly people. The FDA gives approval December 2 to irradiating beef with gamma rays to kill bacteria, molds, and small insects while leaving the exposed food virtually unchanged and radiation free (the process was approved in 1962 for wheat and flour; it was approved earlier for pork, poultry, spices, fruits, and vegetables; and it has the endorsement of the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization), but consumer resistance, much of it irrational, makes the food industry reluctant to use irradiation.
Hong Kong officials ban imports of chicken from mainland China in December and order the slaughter of 1.3 million chickens following an outbreak of the bird-flu virus A(H5NI) that has left four people dead.
The February issue of Wired magazine carries an interview with anti-Malthusian University of Maryland economist Julian L. Simon who states, "Whatever the rate of population growth is, historically it has been that the food supply increases at least as fast, if not faster," but most biologists and ecologists look at population growth in terms of the earth's natural carrying capacity and are less optimistic.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives approval February 24 to using high doses of birth-control pills containing the hormones estrogen and progesterone as an emergency "morning after" contraceptive. Known since the 1970s to be safe and effective, the method for preventing ovulation can be employed for up to 72 hours after intercourse and is widely used in Europe, where family planners suggest they may partly explain lower rates of abortion. Many U.S. physicians have been prescribing the high-dose morning-after pills, but many women have been unaware of it or have been reluctant to use it without government approval (see 2004).
A new procedure introduced in September by Houston Planned Parenthood medical director Jerry Edwards permits abortions as early as 8 to 10 days after conception; by December, 23 Planned Parenthood affiliates will be offering very early abortions, which are made possible by improved ultrasound imaging that shows the gestational sac as soon as the embryo is implanted in the womb.
Rules contained in last year's U.S. immigration law take effect April 1, creating confusion, panic, and lawsuits as civil-rights groups bring actions on behalf of immigrants. Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and some other countries will not accept deportees from the United States, so non-citizens sentenced to deportation for crimes committed before April 1 are subject to confinement in U.S. jails even long after their prison sentences have expired.
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