1995: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Peace comes to Bosnia, but only after months of renewed fighting (see 1994). Serb forces resume their attacks on Sarajevo and other targets in March, and when NATO bombers strike at their ammunition dumps the Serbs take nearly 200 members of the UN peacekeeping force hostage for more than 2 weeks; longtime Yugoslav communist dissident Milovan Djilas has denounced Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic but dies of heart ailments at his Belgrade home April 20 at age 83. The Drina Battalion of Bosnian Serbs overruns the UN-protected "safe area" of Srebrenica July 11; its deputy commander, Col. Radislav Krstic, is promoted to major general (see human rights, 1998). Croatian forces invade the Serbian-held territory of Krajina August 4 to recover territory seized by the Serbs in 1990, retake the entire area by August 7, and force 150,000 Serb refugees to flee, heightening fears that the conflict will spread. NATO planes attack Bosnian Serb ammunition and fuel dumps August 30 (the largest military action thus far in NATO's 46-year history) following a mortar shelling of Sarajevo that killed 37 civilians, and they resume their attacks September 5. A new cease-fire takes effect October 12, gas and electricity are restored in Sarajevo, and the three major participants (Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia) initial a U.S.-brokered peace accord at Paris and then sign it outside Dayton, Ohio, November 21, ending 43 months of savage, genocidal warfare in which 250,000 have died and nearly 2 million lost their homes. The peace accord has been negotiated by New York-born diplomat Richard (Charles Albert) Holbrooke, 54, a onetime U.S. State Department assistant secretary who was managing director of the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers until appointed ambassador to Germany in 1993; the accord provides for a virtual partitioning of Bosnia and the deployment of a multinational implementation force (IFOR) to keep the warring factions apart and protect war-crimes investigators. Anyone under indictment for war crimes is to be barred from holding public office after scheduled elections, all parties are required to cooperate with the International War Crimes Tribunal, and Sarajevo is to be reunified under the control of the Bosnian government. The UN Security Council promptly votes to lift economic sanctions on Serbia as long as she abides by the accord. Some 50,000 NATO troops, including Russians and 20,000 Americans, begin to monitor the fragile peace in December despite widespread U.S. opposition to any military commitment in the area (see 1996; Kosovo, 1998).
Russian troops raise a flag over the charred remains of Chechnya's presidential palace at Grozny January 19 after more than 3 years of efforts to crush a rebellion (see 1993). President Yeltsin has had little popular support for his war against the small breakaway republic but insists that bringing Chechnya back into the Russian Federation is vital to preserving national integrity (and preventing any stoppage of oil shipments from Baku). An estimated 120,000 people continue to live in Grozny despite unexploded shells, lack of electricity or running water, and other problems. Islamic rebels agree to a truce July 30, but hostilities resume in late November (see 1996).
Florentine-born economist Lamberto Dini, 63, heads a new left-of-center Italian government that takes office January 17 and will continue for 16 months (see 1994). Seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti goes on trial at Palermo September 26 on charges that he secretly acted as political godfather for the Sicilian Mafia (see 1993; 1999).
French voters end 14 years of socialist rule May 7, electing longtime Paris mayor Jacques Chirac to the presidency (see 1986). Now 62, Chirac succeeds the ailing François Mitterand, now 78, who has held office since 1981 (see 1996).
Former British prime minister Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, dies at London May 24 at age 79, having fought cancer since the mid-1980s; former prime minister Alexander F. Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel, dies at his Berwickshire, Scotland, home October 9 at age 92.
Former Polish communist apparatchik Aleksandr Kwasniewski, 41, wins the presidency November 19, having used slick western-style campaign tactics to gain a narrow victory over Lech Walesa, now 52, in his bid for reelection.
The U.S. Senate votes March 23 to give the president power to veto specific items in spending bills (the "line-item veto"), but the measure languishes while Congressional Republicans and Democrats squabble all year over the issue of how large a role government, especially federal government, should play in such areas as health, education, public assistance, environment, and workplace safety. Republicans act on the premise that, despite the low turnout of voters last year, they have a "mandate" to enact a 10-point "Contract with America," which few voters had even heard about last year and which calls for rolling back social programs in order to lower taxes and still have a balanced budget in 7 years.
Oklahoma City's nine-story Alfred P. Murrah federal office building collapses April 19 as a 5,000-pound car bomb explodes, killing 168, including 15 infants in a second-floor daycare center. Police and FBI agents arrest members of a U.S. right-wing militant group suspected of wanting to avenge the April 1993 FBI attack on Branch Davidian religious fundamentalists at Waco, Texas; the tragedy draws attention to the growing power of heavily armed, unregulated militia groups which oppose government interference of any kind. President Clinton gives orders May 20 barring vehicular traffic in front of the White House. A grand jury indicts former Army buddies Timothy J. McVeigh, 27, and Terry L. Nichols, 40, August 10 on 11 charges each, and evidence emerges that McVeigh was inspired in part by neo-Nazi and white supremacist William Pierce's 1978 novel The Turner Diaries (see 1997). The Department of Justice then announces that it will pay Randy Weaver $100,000 and each of his daughters $1 million (see 1992). Saboteurs who leave a note signed "Sons of Gestapo" cause Amtrak's Sunset Limited to derail as it passes over a trestle in the Arizona desert October 9, killing a crewman and injuring dozens. FBI agents search for the perpetrators, whose note makes reference to Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Former secretary of defense Les Aspin dies following a stroke at Washington, D.C. May 21 at age 57; former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger of congestive heart failure at Washington, D.C., June 25 at age 87.
The CIA releases deciphered 1940s cables from the Soviet Union July 11 in a public ceremony at its Langley, Va., headquarters. CIA director R. James Woolsey has resigned January 10 and been succeeded May 10 by Brussels-born chemist John M. (Mark) Deutch, 56, who has been deputy secretary of defense since last year and will head the Central Intelligence Agency until late next year. Included in the intercepted messages are names (and cover names) of 200 U.S. spies, among them Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, but critics question the credibility of the material.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated on the mall at Washington, D.C., in July; it is composed of 19 stainless steel figures, each weighing half a ton, and unlike the Vietnam wall unveiled in 1982, it honors survivors as well as the deceased.
Former Indian prime minister Morarji Ranchodji Desai dies at Bombay (Mumbai) April 10 at age 99 after surgery for a blood clot on his brain.
Sino-American relations sour after Washington permits Taiwan's president Lee Teng-hui to make a private visit in June over Beijing's objections. President Jiang Zemin says he has been double-crossed; now 69, he is considered likely to succeed the ailing Deng Xiaoping.
A Beijing court sentences Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, 45, to 14 years in prison December 13 after a closed trial. He is charged with having conspired "to subvert the government."
Former Laotian president Souphanouvong dies in Laos January 9 at age 85; former Burmese prime minister U Nu at his home in Yangon (Rangoon) February 14 at age 87. Burmese authorities release opposition leader (and Nobelist) Daw Aung SanSuu Kyi July 10 after nearly 6 years of house arrest. Now 50, she is free to come and go as she pleases, they say.
President Clinton extends full diplomatic recognition to Vietnam July 11, normalizing relations with the communist nation 22 years after U.S. disengagement from the war with Hanoi.
Former Japanese premier Takeo Fukuda dies of chronic emphysema at Tokyo July 5 at age 90; former Japanese foreign minister Michio Watanabe of heart failure at Tokyo September 5 at age 72.
Japanese-American relations are strained following the September 4 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl by two U.S. marines and a sailor. Citing the end of the cold war, critics question the need to keep 45,000 U.S. troops in Japan and even more in South Korea.
South Korean police arrest former president Roh Tae Woo November 16 on charges of having accepted at least 282 billion won ($370 million) in bribes. Now 62, Roh is credited with having helped to transform his nation into a democratic republic, but he has been caught by reforms which he himself promoted. His predecessor Chun Doo Hwan, who ruled from 1980 to 1988, is arrested December 3, and Roh Tae Woo is indicted December 5. Also indicted are Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun Hee, Daewoo Group chairman Kim Woo Choong, and five other business executives (see 1996).
Emigré Iraqi banker Ahmad Chalabi, 51, organizes a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein in the northern part of the country. CIA officials call off the revolt at the last moment, and thousands of Iraqi National Congress members lose their lives. A Shiite Muslim, Chalabi left Iraq for Jordan at age 12 or 13 and has been living at London. The Swiss federal banking commission withdrew the license of a Chalabi bank at Geneva in April 1989 and it collapsed. Jordanian authorities charged him with taking $200 million (£127 million) 4 months later for currency speculation. They shut down the Petra Bank he cofounded in 1977; a Jordanian military court tried him in absentia 3 years ago; it found him guilty of fraud, embezzlement, and misuse of depositor funds as chairman of the bank, and it sentenced him to 22 years' imprisonment, but he has insisted that the Iraqi government trumped up the accusations and that Jordan's king Hussein ordered prosecution only after Chalabi's brother appeared on the U.S. television program 60 Minutes and accused the king of taking bribes to sell arms to Iraq (see 2004).
Qatar has a bloodless palace coup June 27 as Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 45, ousts his father and makes himself head of the tiny Persian Gulf emirate whose natural-gas reserves are the world's third largest. Former emir Sheik Khalifa, 63, issues a statement from Geneva insisting that he is still the legitimate ruler, but he transferred some of his powers to his son 3 years ago. The new emir wins pledges of allegiance from other members of the ruling al-Thani family and in the next 7 years will lift laws that have prevented women from voting, driving, or holding jobs in which they would supervise men. He will also abolish censorship, lift the prohibition against alcohol consumption that prevails in Islamic countries (such as Saudi Arabia) in which the dominant religion is Wahabism, and permit construction of U.S. military bases.
A bomb explodes in a Paris Latin Quarter subway station July 25, killing eight and wounding 86. Algerian militants claim responsibility for the Métro atrocity, and similar bombs wound six dozen other French civilians, some of them gravely, in the next 2 months as civil war continues in Algeria, where close to 40,000 have been killed since 1992. Defying threats from militant extremist groups who boycott the election, Algerians go to the polls November 16 and overwhelmingly reject Islamic fundamentalists; Gen. Liamine Zeroual, 54, wins reelection as president with 61 percent of the vote, but the nation's 25 percent unemployment rate, 30 percent inflation rate, falling industrial production, and food shortages foreshadow future trouble.
France conducts nuclear tests beginning September 5 beneath atolls southeast of Tahiti in French Polynesia, breaking a 1992 test moratorium despite worldwide protests from environmentalists.
A federal jury at New York finds Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other militant Muslims guilty October 1 of conspiring to carry out a campaign of terrorist bombings and assassinations aimed at forcing Washington to abandon its support of Israel and Egypt. Now 57, the blind Egyptian clergyman and his followers have not been accused of blowing up the World Trade Center in 1993 but the cases overlap.
The United Nations celebrates its 50th anniversary at New York October 24 with a gathering of more than 140 heads of state (the largest such gathering in world history), including Boris Yeltsin, Jiang Zemin, Tomiichi Murayama, Jacques Chirac, John Major, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, and Yasir Arafat but not Helmut Kohl, Hosni Mubarak, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi. Former U.S. senator and UN champion J. W. Fulbright (D. Ark.) has died at Washington, D.C., February 9 at age 89 (more than 250,000 international Fulbright scholarships have been awarded). The UN under Boutros Boutros-Ghali has extended its peacekeeping operations, but the secretary general is unpopular, some countries are in arrears on their dues, the United States is more than $1 billion behind (Congress has withheld funding in an effort to force reforms on the UN's inefficient bureaucracy), growing neoisolationist sentiment hinders efforts to get the much-needed congressional appropriation, and while most people recognize the value of the UN not only to resolve disputes but also to fight the spread of weapons, disease, and unfair labor practices, some groups foment fears that U.S. sovereignty may in the future be subordinated to that of a "world government."
Quebec votes October 30 to remain part of Canada, but provincial separatists lose only by a hair's breadth (50.6 percent to 49.4) and vow to continue their efforts (see 1967; Meech Lake Accord expiration, 1990).
Israel releases 900 Palestinian prisoners October 10 but President Ezer Weissman has acted October 6 to hold up the pardon of two women arrested for anti-Israeli violence, contravening a core provision of a pact signed in September. Widespread Palestinian protests ensue, and all but one of 23 imprisoned women refuse to sign a statement promising to abstain from further terrorism and respect the law. (The exception is an 18-year-old who has been held in solitary confinement and did not know about her sisters' defiance.) They vow to stage a boycott until all Palestinian female detainees are freed.
The assassination of Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Jewish extremist after a Tel Aviv peace rally November 4 shocks the world. Israel and the PLO have initialed an agreement September 24 for withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank following U.S. mediation, Rabin and Yasir Arafat signed the accord at Washington 4 days later, the Israeli parliament approved the pact by a slim 61-to-59 margin, Israel's religious right has insisted that God gave "Judea" and "Samaria" to the Jewish people 2,000 years ago and Rabin was a traitor for giving it away. His assassin claims to have acted alone, but police suspect a right-wing Jewish conspiracy and make other arrests. Some Arabs continue to deny the legitimacy of Israel's very existence, but progress toward self-rule in most Arab-populated areas of the West Bank continues despite the loss of Rabin and despite opposition by hardliners on both sides.
Turkey's prime minister Tansu Ciller resigns December 26 following a narrow electoral victory by the Islamic Party (see 1993). She agrees to work toward a coalition government in an effort to keep the Islamic Party from taking power and turning the 72-year-old secular republic into a theocracy that would be at odds with the West (see 1996).
Former Somalian dictator Mohamed Siad Barre dies in exile at Lagos, Nigeria, January 2 at age 84 (approximate).
Nigeria's military government executes nine of its critics at Port Harcourt November 10, prompting international protests. The dead include author-playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, 54, who has campaigned for a more equitable distribution of the nation's oil wealth and against environmental damage wrought by foreign oil companies.
Sierra Leone employs a private army (Executive Outcomes) to drive rebel forces from parts of the Kono district diamond fields whose gems have been sold to finance the insurrection (see 1992; 1996).
Mexico's President Zedillo sends troops into Chiapas in February to suppress the Zapatista National Liberation Army, led by the ski-masked guerrilla known as "Subcommander Marcos" (presidential aides say he is actually Rafael Sebastián Guillén, 36, a middle-class furniture salesman's son) (see 1994). Marcos eludes arrest, more than a million Mexicans participate in a nationwide poll in August, and a majority votes that the Liberation Army should become a peaceful political party; Marcos emerges from the Lacandon forest September 29, says the government cannot be trusted, and outlines plans for a civilian movement of unions, civil rights groups, middle-class debtors, and others to push for more democracy. He then quickly slips away, dashing hopes that the government can easily co-opt the rebels in new peace talks. Authorities seize another rebel leader (Fernando Yañez Muñoz, 51) October 24, and critics say the arrest undermines chances for a peaceful resolution.
Former Argentine president Arturo Frondizi dies of a heart ailment at Buenos Aires April 18 at age 86. President Carlos Saul Menem wins reelection in May but with little public enthusiasm despite an upsurge in the economy since 1991.
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's hand-picked successor René Preval, 51, wins election December 17 with about 80 percent of the vote in a 14-man race (see 1994). The constitution has prevented any president from having two consecutive terms, but more than three out of four eligible voters stay away from the polls (illiteracy and unemployment rates are both about 75 percent) (see 2000).
Refugees from war-torn Bosnia report atrocities that include mass killings of men and gang rapes of their wives and daughters by soldiers dressed in appropriated UN uniforms. Bosnian Serbs overrun the UN-declared "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July, expelling tens of thousands of women and children and slaughtering more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men, many of them elderly or incapacitated, with axes, crowbars, and knives in the largest concentrated massacre of the Yugoslav War. The victims had sought refuge at UN headquarters in the northern end of the "safe area," but the 110 Dutch peacekeepers there looked on while the boys and men were carted off to killing sites (the Dutch government opposed air strikes lest their troops be taken hostage). Barbarities attributed to Croatians and Bosnian Muslims as well as to Serbs have continued since 1991.
Croatian forces launch an attack in August on Serbs living in the Krajina region which they have inhabited for 500 years; within 4 days, they have driven out 150,000 people in a savage act of "ethnic cleansing." A UN War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague has indicted leaders on all sides, the Dayton accord signed at Paris December 14 bars them from taking political office, but the accord upsets many by giving apparent validity to "ethnic cleansing" (see 1996)
Retired Argentine Navy captain Adolfo Francisco Scilingo, 48, reveals in March that prisoners arrested between 1976 and 1983 were systematically drugged, stripped, and dropped into the Atlantic from military planes (see 1983). President Menem calls him a crook, but no one refutes Scilingo's story. He estimates that between 1,500 and 2,000 people "disappeared" this way; what became of an estimated 7,000 to 7,500 others during the 7½ years of dictatorship that ended in December 1983 remains a mystery, and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires continue to press for answers.
Singapore authorities hang Filipina housemaid Flor Contemplacion, 42, March 17 after a court has convicted her of murdering another Filipina maid and a 4-year-old Singaporean boy. Later testimony suggested that the boy drowned accidentally and the maid was killed by the boy's father, Philippines president Fidel V. Ramos has asked for a delay in execution, but authorities say that Contemplacion's conviction was based on her confession. Ramos calls her a "heroine," and Contemplacion's death creates a furor as stories come to light about mistreatment of Asian women working in menial jobs throughout East Asia,, Japan, the Middle East, the Netherlands, and Britain.
North Carolina judge James B. McMillan dies of cancer at Charlotte March 4 at age 78, having seen his 1965 order to bus school children in order to achieve racial desegregation upheld by higher courts and become common practice.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules June 11 that federal programs that favor people on the basis of race are presumably unconstitutional. The 5-to-4 decision in Adarand v. United States gives support to opponents of affirmative action. President Clinton declares July 19 that affirmative action has been "good for America," but the University of California's Board of Regents votes July 20 to end preferential treatment of minority applicants.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 29 that using race "as a predominant factor" in drawing congressional districts should be presumed to be unconstitutional.
France's president Jacques Chirac issues an official statement July 16 acknowledging that Paris police helped to round up some 13,000 Jewish men, women, and children July 16, 1942, cramming them into an indoor cycling stadium, interning them in suburban Drancy, and then deporting them to death camps. Denouncing the role played by the French in the deportation of some 76,000 French and foreign Jews, Chirac says, "Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state."
Swiss banks meet secretly with the World Jewish Congress and agree in September to look for more unclaimed accounts of Holocaust victims (see 1962; 1996).
South Korea frees what Amnesty International calls the world's longest-held political prisoner August 15 to celebrate the end of World War II. Kim Sun-maong, 71, has refused to renounce his belief in communism.
Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn dies at her Philadelphia home April 22 at age 89.
Pope John Paul II issues a letter at Rome July 10 saying that equality for women is no longer simply a question of justice but an absolute necessity. The pope assumes responsibility for centuries of discrimination against women by the Roman Catholic Church and gives credit to the women's movement for its "substantially positive" achievements. He urges women to protect what he calls their special role in the family and in society, where the "feminine genius" can have a humanizing influence against the demands of "efficiency and productivity." Spokesmen for the Vatican have criticized the draft document of a forthcoming UN world conference, saying that it has been overly influenced by Western feminist thought.
Japan's prime minister Tomiichi Murayama gives a speech at Tokyo August 15 extending his "heartfelt apology" for atrocities committed by his countrymen in World War II. Murayama apologizes November 14 for the suffering endured by Korea during Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Revelations emerge in October that Japan established government brothels after her surrender in 1945 and recruited "patriotic" young women to serve as "comfort women" for G.I. occupation forces and thus "protect the purity of Japanese blood" from defilement. The secret program lasted only 7 months before U.S. military authorities, alarmed about sexually-transmitted disease, declared the red-light districts off limits, thus giving a boost to privately owned brothels.
Three U.S. servicemen plead guilty November 7 to charges that they conspired to kidnap and rape an Okinawan schoolgirl. Adm. Richard C. Macke, 57, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, is forced to take early retirement November 17 after stating, "I think that it was absolutely stupid, I've said several times. For the price they paid to rent the car they could have had a girl" (meaning a prostitute). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D. Calif.) has told the press that she was stunned by the remark condoning prostitution: "I would say to Navy Secretary John Dalton, 'Your guys still don't get it. You better teach them, or else. Rape isn't about money and it isn't about sex. It's about power over women, and it's a very degrading, terrible, major felony.'"
The UN's Fourth World Conference on Women opens September 4 outside Beijing with 20,000 women, including 5,000 official delegates from more than 180 countries. The U.S. delegation is headed by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton despite criticism of her going to a country whose government policies on women's rights are among the most oppressive in the world (Chinese women have no political voice, female infants are commonly allowed to starve to death so that couples may be free to have male offspring, and slave or convict labor is used to manufacture products exported to overseas markets). Clinton gives a rousing speech September 5, not mentioning China specifically but leaving no question that her attacks on state repression of dissent and reproduction rights apply to the Beijing government.
Sen. Bob Packwood resigns in tears September 7 after a recommendation by the Senate Ethics Committee that he be expelled for sexual misconduct and abuse of office (see 1993).
South Africa's Supreme Court rules in late September that imprisonment of debtors is unconstitutional, ending a system that has put as many as 660,000 people per year behind bars, 80 percent of them for debts of $200 or less.
The acquittal of O. J. Simpson October 2 polarizes Americans, with most whites calling the verdict a miscarriage of justice, while many blacks take satisfaction in the exposure of a Los Angeles police officer as a racist whose testimony damaged the prosecution's case. Women had hoped that a guilty verdict would send a message to men who abuse their wives and girlfriends. Whites represent 74 percent of the U.S. population, blacks 11.8 percent, Hispanics 9.5, and Asians 3.1 (1992 Census figures).
A Million Man March on Washington October 16 brings at least 400,000 African-American men (a remarkable 4.3 percent of the 9.3 million U.S. black males age 18 and older) together on the mall for speeches urging them to give up spousal abuse and shoulder the responsibilities of raising their families, but many shun the demonstration because it is led by Bronx, N.Y.-born minister Louis Farrakhan (originally Louis Eugene Walcott), 62, a onetime Calypso singer who heads the 20,000-member Nation of Islam and whose anti-Semitic, anti-white, sexist, and homophobic remarks have alienated him from those seeking racial harmony.
Ireland's electorate votes by a narrow margin in November to end the nation's ban on divorce (no other European country has such a ban), but only after 4 years' legal separation.
Florida-born astronaut Norman Thagard, 51, arrives at the Mir space station March 16 and is given the traditional Russian welcome of bread and salt (see 1990); he is the first American on Mir (see Krikalev, 1994). Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, 52, returns to Earth March 22, having set a record of 439 consecutive days in space; the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis docks with Mir June 29, creating a spacecraft with a combined weight of 225 tons in the first of a projected nine such U.S.-Russian space linkups (see 1996); the Galileo probe reaches Jupiter December 7 after a 6-year journey from Earth.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) comes into existence January 1, succeeding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that has existed since 1947 as a neutral body for resolving international trade disputes. Japan and the United States resolve a dispute regarding sale of U.S. auto parts in the Japanese market June 28 without recourse to the WTO after Washington has threatened a 100 percent tariff on Japanese luxury motorcars.
Mexico verges on default of paying interest on its government bonds but is rescued by President Clinton, who sidesteps Congress, which has failed to approve $40 billion in loan guarantees to prop up the peso, and uses his own emergency authority January 31 to lend (or guarantee loans) of up to $20 billion—the largest non-military U.S. international commitment since the Marshall Plan of 1947. Other emerging-world markets rally on the news, but Mexican interest rates rise to 100 percent, creating a disaster for homeowners with variable-rate mortgages, and some 500,000 Mexicans lose their jobs.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 4000 (4003.33) February 23, up from 2000 in early 1987 and 3000 in mid-April 1991, as a slowdown in the U.S. economy suggests that the Federal Reserve Board may stop raising interest rates. The Standard & Poor 500 index reaches 500 March 24.
The U.S. dollar falls to historic lows in April against the yen and deutschmark, making U.S. exports cheap, reducing costs for Japanese and German tourists in America, but discouraging U.S. tourists from going abroad. The dollar regains strength beginning in August.
An accident at a South African gold mine May 10 kills more than 100 workers, raising questions about safety practices in the industry (see 1986). Cables controlling a 12-ton, battery-powered, underground train snap at the Anglo-American Corporation's huge Vaal Reefs Mine 95 miles southwest of Johannesburg, the cars hurtle down a 7,000-foot vertical shaft onto a two-story elevator, and those inside are crushed to death. Most were from Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa. Some 69,000 mine workers have been killed in work-related accidents since 1911, say mining officials, including 485 last year.
A predawn raid by California investigators on a garment sweatshop at El Monte, Calif., August 2 finds 72 illegal aliens, mostly Thai women, working in virtual peonage. Smuggled into the country by an organized crime gang that confiscated their passports and took part of their earnings, the workers have been held in a group of apartments surrounded by a fence and razor wire. Federal labor authorities announce in September that routine inspections of 50 legally registered garment factories have turned up wage and overtime violations at 46 sites, where 600 workers were shortchanged by more than $500,000. Experts say the problem is widespread from California to New York. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich meets at New York September 12 with large retailers and manufacturers who say they might consider voluntary compliance programs, but California governor Pete Wilson has vetoed bills making such programs mandatory lest they "drive the garment industry out of state."
President Clinton vetoes a bill November 13 that would have granted a temporary increase in the government's legal debt limit and refuses that evening to sign a continuing resolution (or stopgap spending bill) that would have provided funding for 2 more weeks of government operations. Congressional Republican leaders have been pushing for what the president calls "extreme proposals" that would "impose their priorities on our nation," attaching riders that would reduce taxes and favor special interests while imperiling consumer safety, federal aid to education, the environment, Medicare, and the like; House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R. Ga.) says the Republicans were elected last year to "change politics as usual" and accuses the president of playing "political games"; the impasse forces a partial shutdown of the government November 14, some 770,000 federal employees (about 30 percent of the total) are sent home, national parks and monuments are closed, but about 1.9 million remain on the job, Amtrak trains continue to operate, and Secretary of the Treasury Robert E. Rubin taps two federal retirement funds to avoid default on government bonds (see 1996).
London's 232-year-old merchant bank Baring Brothers fails February 26 after its Singapore trader Nicholas W. Leeson, 27, loses upwards of $1 billion. Newly promoted to trader, Leeson was supposed to have arbitraged the difference between very similar securities traded on the Singapore, Osaka, and Tokyo exchanges, buying the cheaper version and selling the more expensive one, but Barings has had little experience trading in the synthetic securities called derivatives, nobody at London has asked Leeson why he was borrowing money for his transactions, and he has risked twice the bank's net worth in speculations on the Tokyo exchange. Pleading guilty in November to two charges, Leeson is sentenced by a Singapore court to 6½ years' imprisonment.
New York's Chase Manhattan and Chemical banks announce a $10 billion merger August 28 in what amounts to a takeover of Chase by Chemical, which retains the Chase name and becomes the largest U.S. bank (the world's fourth largest) (see Morgan, 2000).
IBM agrees June 11 to pay $3.5 billion in cash for Lotus Development Corp., a major producer of computer software, including the 1-2-3 Spreadsheet and Notes. The acquisition positions IBM to challenge Microsoft for leadership in the software industry.
The United Auto Workers, Steel Workers, and Machinists announce July 27 that they will merge and invite other unions to join them in the next 5 years to increase their collective bargaining power, but less than 16 percent of the U.S. labor force now belongs to unions, down from nearly 25 percent in the early 1950s, and while a person who earned $25,896 per year in 1979 may have received wage raises in the past 16 years he or she is now earning only $24,700 (measured in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars), and the richest 5 percent of Americans, measured on the same basis, now earns on average $177,518 per year—up from $137,482 in 1979. Service Employees president John Sweeney, 61, is elected president of the AFL-CIO October 25 to succeed Lane Kirkland, who retired under pressure in August.
Bethlehem Steel's 88-year-old mill on the Lehigh River at Bethlehem, Pa., produces its last heavy-duty steel beam October 20 and shuts down, idling nearly 1,800 workers. The town has made steel since 1873, and the mill specialized in single-piece H-beams used for such structures as New York's George Washington Bridge and Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but the company cites weak demand for structural steel.
The 92-year-old Malden Mills plant at Lawrence, Mass., catches fire December 11 on the Spicket River about 25 miles north of Boston; 45-mile-per-hour winds whip the flames from one building to the next, injuring 33 people, leaving three of the eight buildings in ruins and apparently destroying the livelihoods of 3,100 workers. Mill owner Aaron M. Feuerstein, 71, announces that he will not take the $300 million in insurance and relocate to Mexico but, rather, will rebuild; within a year all but 400 of the employees will be back at work, producing the company's patented Polartec and Polarfleece synthetic thermal fabrics (see everyday life, 1981).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average tops 5000 (5023.55) November 21 and closes December 29 at 5117.12—up 33.5 percent from its 1994 year-end close of 3834.44 as low inflation combines with high corporate profits to give investors confidence, but while the U.S. unemployment rate in September is only 5.7 percent (compared with 6.6 in the Netherlands, 8.2 in Britain, 9.1 in Sweden, 9.2 in Greece, 11.3 in Italy, 11.4 in France, and 22.2 in Spain), U.S. paychecks have barely managed to keep up with inflation.
The Seoul department store Sampoong collapses June 29 while packed with shoppers in South Korea's worst peacetime disaster. Some 260 bodies are recovered by mid-July but the government announces July 13 that nearly 700 are dead or missing in the collapse, which is blamed on shoddy building and inspection practices.
eBay has its beginnings September 4 (Labor Day) in AuctionWeb, founded by French-born, Maryland-raised computer programmer and entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar, 29, who has seen an opportunity to match would-be buyers and sellers via the Internet more efficiently than by conventional retail buying and selling. His concept is that users will go on line and bid for items offered by sellers, with his company providing no search engine, charging no fees, settling no disputes, and not guaranteeing the quality of anything offered for sale. AuctionWeb's only effort to market itself is to list itself on the What's Cool site of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it has no customers until October, but Omidyar's Canadian-born employee Jeffrey S. Skoll, 30, has recently received an MBA from Stanford, devises a business plan, and by February of next year the company will be charging fees to recoup its increasing Internet service-provider costs (see 1996).
Denver International Airport opens March 1, replacing 65-year-old Stapleton Airport. Finished 16 months late, the 53-square-mile facility has cost $4.9 billion—$2 billion over budget—and is 23 miles from downtown Denver.
Aviator Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan dies at Orange, Calif., December 9 at age 88.
An American Airlines Boeing 757 from Miami crashes crashes 50 miles from Cali, Colombia, December 21, killing 160 of the 164 aboard.
Shanghai's first subway opens April 10 with 10 miles of track and 13 stations, all built in 5 years with help from a German consortium. More than 10,000 workers have worked day and night to build the $680 million system.
The Kalindi Express bound for New Delhi stops suddenly August 20 after striking a cow, a train from Puri plows into the first train, and more than 340 people are killed in the collision, which injures more than 400 and draws attention to a lack of modernization on India's 37,000-mile rail system, the world's fourth largest.
Amtrak discontinues the Broadway Limited after September 10 to cut costs, ending more than 93 years of daily rail service between New York and Chicago. Passengers must now change trains at Pittsburgh and lay over there for nearly 2 hours.
A Baku subway fire October 28 kills about 300 and injures at least 250 in the Azerbaijan capital; most are victims of carbon monoxide fumes from burning toxic materials, and although government officials blame the fire on an electrical malfunction the Times of London reports October 31 that Azeri investigators found a blackened hole in one subway car that could have been caused by a bomb.
New York City transit fares increase to $1.50 November 12, up from $1.25 and the largest increase ever.
A $6 billion highway bill signed into law by President Clinton November 28 repeals the federal 55-mile-per-hour speed limit in place since 1974 but widely flouted, especially in Western states. Clinton expresses concern that ending the limit will lead to more highway accidents, deaths, and injuries.
The number of registered automobiles worldwide reaches 647 million, up from 127 million in 1960; automobile ownership has risen more than twice as fast as the world population.
Intel introduces the Pentium Pro microchip containing 5.5 million transistors (see 1993; 1997).
Microsoft introduces Windows 95 with great fanfare August 24. A great advance over the Windows program introduced in 1986, the new operating platform makes IBM-compatible computers more "user friendly" (see 1994) but requires more capacity than most existing personal computers possess; although critics complain that it takes too long to boot up and is prone to crash, Windows 95 sparks a rush to upgrade PCs or buy new ones. Bill Gates has sent a memo to his top executives May 26 advising them that establishing dominance on the Internet must be the company's top priority, and Microsoft has met June 21 with Netscape, allegedly making an illegal offer to divide the browser market. The Internet Explorer 2.0 introduced by Microsoft in December is clearly inferior to Netscape's Navigator but signals Microsoft's intention to challenge Netscape for domination of the worldwide Internet browser market (see 1996).
Sun Microsystems introduces Java, a new cross-platform computer programming language created by Calgary-born Sun programmer James Gosling, 39, and a team of other programmers specifically for the world of the Internet (see Sun, 1982). Unlike other computer languages, Java can "run anywhere," says Sun CEO Scott McNealy, and although he initially promotes Java as a technology for improving the appearance of Web sites, he will soon push the idea of a simplified network computer that will store and access files and programs on a network rather than on a hard drive. Netscape's Marc Andreesen, Oracle Systems CEO Larry Ellison, and IBM form an alliance to embrace Java as a way to counter what they perceive as a stranglehold by Microsoft on the computer software industry (see 1996).
Mathematician and computer scientist George R. Stibitz dies at his Hanover, N.H., home January 31 at age 90; computer co-inventor J. Presper Eckert Jr. of leukemia at Bryn Mawr, Pa., June 3 at age 76; physicist and computer pioneer John V. Atanasoff at Frederick, Md., June 15 at age 91; former Texas Instruments president John Erik Jonsson at Dallas August 31 at age 94.
Scientists at the private Institute for Genomic Research at Gaithersburg, Md., announce May 24 that they have decoded the entire DNA sequence for the complete gene set (genome) of a free-living organism. Denied funds for the project by the National Institutes of Health (see 1991), former NIH scientist J. Craig Venter has joined forces with Johns Hopkins University Nobel biologist Hamilton O. Smith, now 63, to decode the sequence for Hemophilus influenzae, a bacterium that causes ear and upper respiratory infections in young people and pneumonia in older ones. The sequence has 1,830,121 DNA base pairs. Venter and Smith announce their achievement at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, and Venter says they have done it in less than a year, using computer software which has allowed them effectively to omit the mapping stage generally needed for sequencing generic material (see Celera, 1998). Venter announces also that his wife, Claire (née Fraser), has headed a separate team which has in just 3 months decoded the complete DNA sequence of another free-living organism, the harmless bacterium Micoplasma genitalium which has 580,067 DNA pairs (see yeast decoding, 1996).
The MIT research team that discovered "left-handed" DNA in 1979 reports that it has found a biological role for so-called Z-DNA: the DNA with the zig-zag backbone helps an "editor" protein to change the genetic message of RNA (see 1999).
Fossils and stone tools found last year at Gran Dolina indicate that human ancestors were in Europe as early as 780,000 B.C.—far earlier than had been thought—according to reports published in Science magazine August 11 (Gran Dolina is a cave site in the Atapuerca mountains near Burgos, Spain). Fossil remains unearthed in Kenya have revealed that a new species of human ancestors, little bigger than chimpanzees, stood erect and walked on two legs 4 million years ago, says an article in Nature magazine August 17. Archaeologists call the new hominid Australopithecus anamensis; a team led by fossil hunter Richard Leakey's wife, Maeve, made the discoveries near Lake Turkana (see 1998).
Algerian-born French physicist Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, 62, and his colleagues at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, cool helium to within 18 millionths of a degree above absolute zero (see Chu, 1985; Phillips, 1988). They have explored an apparent discrepancy in atomic theory and devised new mechanisms for trapping atoms with laser light. Combined with those of the Americans Steven Chu and William D. Phillips, the French efforts enhance scientific understanding of the interaction between light and matter, making it possible to build instruments such as atomic clocks that are capable of ultra-high degrees of precision.
University of Colorado, Boulder, scientist Carl E. Wieman, 44, and National Institutes of Standards and Technology scientist Eric A. Cornell, 33, break new ground in quantum physics June 5 by producing a curious state of matter that does not exist in nature but whose existence was predicted in the 1920s by Albert Einstein and the late Calcutta physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle, 37, at MIT replicates their finding a few months later, and there are suggestions that the Bose-Einstein condensate may lead to the creation of ultra-precise clocks, greater miniaturization of electronics, and super-fast quantum computers.
Nobel nuclear physicist Eugene P. Wigner dies of pneumonia at Princeton, N.J., January 1 at age 92; Nobel astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén at Djursholm, Sweden, April 2 at age 86; Nobel astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar of a heart attack at Chicago August 21 at age 84; nuclear physicist Sir Rudolph E. Peierls of kidney disease at Oxford September 19 at age 88.
Zaire has a new outbreak of Ebola virus in late April or early May (see 1976; Sudan, 1979). The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announce May 10 that at least 50 people have died of the deadly disease; as many as 300 patients, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers have fled hospitals in the area of Kikwit, 250 miles east of Kinshasa. The final death toll after 6 months is about 250 (malaria kills more than 20 times that many Africans every day).
German prosecutors announce August 9 that they have filed three charges of murder and 5,837 of attempted murder against two company executives for selling blood plasma contaminated with the AIDS virus. Nine batches of untested blood from a donor infected with HIV were sent to various clinics between 1986 and 1987, shortly before testing became mandatory, say the prosecutors. Of the 14 patients who received the blood, three died of AIDS-related illness and two others contracted AIDS.
Nobel immunologist Georges J. F. Köhler dies at Freiburg im Breisgau March 1 at age 48; virologist Jonas E. Salk of heart failure at La Jolla, Calif., June 23 at age 80. He has been studying ways to boost immunity to the AIDS virus HIV.
Spontaneous Healing by Philadelphia-born alternative-medicine guru Andrew Weil, 53, touts good nutrition along with a sensible life style and enjoys huge sales despite its lack of scientific support.
American Atheists Inc. founder and president Madalyn Murray O'Hair goes missing from Austin, Texas, August 27 along with her 40-year-old second son, Jon Garth, and his daughter, whom Madalyn has adopted. Now 76, O'Hair has left a note saying they were going to San Antonio, she and Jon have allegedly taken more than $625,000 in organization funds, Jon orders $600,000 in gold goins from a San Antonio jeweler in September but takes delivery of only $500,000 worth, nothing more is heard of them, and O'Hair's elder son, William, will file a missing persons report in December of next year. The three are presumed dead, probably having been murdered by a person or persons unknown who kidnapped them and forced them to withdraw the missing funds before killing them. Ex-convict David Roland Waters worked at the organization's Austin office and will eventually plead guilty to lesser charges before leading police to the bodies of the three victims on a remote Texas ranch in January 2001.
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days by evangelical preacher and author Tim LaHaye, now 69, and former sportswriter Jerry B. Jenkins, 45, begins a series of adult and juvenile Left Behind novels (all published at Wheaton, Ill.) that promote religious fundamentalism and will have sales of more than 62 million copies in the next 10 years, at least 70 percent of them in the South and Midwest. Having written dozens of non-fiction books (some of them with his wife, Beverly), LaHaye starts building a huge fortune.
Chinese authorities proclaim a 6-year-old boy the 11th Panchen Lama in ceremonies November 29 at Lhasa, Tibet, challenging the choice of the Dalai Lama, who has been exiled since 1959.
Namibian schools adopt English for all classes except religion beginning in January, but few teachers can speak English and must read from books to uncomprehending pupils. The minister of education has decided that English is far more useful than Afrikaans, the language of Namibia's historic oppressors.
The Illinois State Legislature passes a bill in June giving Chicago's mayor Richard M. Daley complete control of the nation's third-largest school system and one of its most troubled.
The U.S. Department of Education finds that 32 percent of Asian high school students at Albuquerque, N.M., receive "native-language" instruction in Spanish. Many English-speaking Hispanic students in some states are placed in bilingual classes simply because of their surnames, violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Fire at a school ceremony in an Indian village 185 miles northwest of New Delhi December 23 kills at least 538. Mourners blame corrupt officials.
The U.S. first-class postal rate rises January 1 from 29¢ to 32¢.
Maxim magazine begins publication early in the year at London with backing from Felix Dennis, now 47 (see 1985). He will bring out a U.S. edition of his girly publication in 1997, promote it by giving free subscriptions to radio disk jockeys, push its circulation through the million mark by mid-1999, force competitors such as Esquire and GQ to put scantily-clad women on their covers, and watch circulation top 2 million by 2001 (seeThe Week, 2001).
George magazine begins publication at New York with a cover photograph of model Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. Developed by John F. Kennedy Jr., 35, and Michael J. Berman, 38, after a presidential inaugural dinner last year, the consumer-oriented publication about politics has financial backing from Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, projects a circulation of about 250,000, and within 18 months will have a rate base of 400,000 (versus 101,000 for the New Republic, 196,000 for the National Review).
Working Woman's paid circulation falls to 764,000, down from its peak of more than 900,000 in 1988, as U.S. general-interest magazines with broader appeal pay more heed to women's issues.
Toronto-based Thomson Corp. announces July 27 that it will sell 21 of its newspapers as part of a reorganization plan, 19 of them (in Ontario and Saskatchewan) to Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc. Thomson retains control of the Toronto Globe and Mail (see 1980).
Newsprint prices increase sharply worldwide, increasing by 50 percent between March and year's end. Some papers reduce page numbers and print runs, some switch from broad-sheet format to tabloid size, some increase prices, some cut staff or cut back on travel budgets for foreign correspondents; the higher cost of newsprint slows a fierce British price-war begun by Rupert Murdoch 2 years ago, Murdoch's News International gives away copies of its Times of London August 24 (Microsoft has sponsored the entire issue to launch its Windows 95) but shuts down its 9-year-old, labor-supporting paper Today in November.
The syndicated column "Ask Martha Stewart" launched in November will be in 212 newspapers by 1998.
Syndicated newspaper columnist Victor Riesel dies of a heart attack at his New York apartment January 4 at age 81; New Yorker magazine cartoonist George Price at Englewood, N.J., January 12 at age 93; public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays of bladder cancer at Cambridge, Mass., March 9 at age 103 (he has reportedly been sexually active until age 101); journalist-author George Seldes dies at Windsor, Vt., July 2 at age 104; speed-reading teacher Evelyn Wood at a Tucson, Ariz., hospice August 26 at age 86; former New York Times Washington correspondent James B. "Scotty" Reston Jr. of cancer at his Washington, D.C., home December 6 at age 86 (he retired in 1989 after 50 years at the Times).
The History Channel launched on cable television in January by Hearst Corp., ABC, and NBC has an initial subscriber-viewer base of 1 million viewers; by 2005 it will reach 87.5 million homes with an average of nearly 1.2 million viewers (mostly older men) tuning in each night.
Former BBC TV news anchor Peter Holmes Woods dies of cancer at Yeovil, England, March 22 at age 64; former television news anchor (and onetime Timex Watch spokesman) John Cameron Swayze at his Sarasota, Fla., home August 15 at age 89.
Walt Disney Co. announces July 31 that it will pay $19.2 billion to acquire Capital Cities/ABC, whose properties include cable TV companies such as ESPN (see sports, 1979) as well as the ABC network.
Congress tries to rewrite U.S. communications laws, reducing regulation of cable television, allowing local telephone companies to enter the long-distance market, and the like. More than 63 percent of U.S. households have cable TV service, up from less than 20 percent in 1980.
Being Digital by MIT Media Laboratory cofounder Nicholas Negroponte predicts "smart homes" that will be wired in ways that people's refrigerators will tell their motorcars that they are low on milk, that news will be tailored to individuals' particular interests, that electronic butlers will screen people's phone calls, etc.
The AltaVista search engine has its beginnings in the spring as Digital Equipment Corp. Research lab scientists at Palo Alto, Calif., devise a way to store every word of every page on the entire Internet in a fast searchable index (see Yahoo!, 1994). Their patented discovery will lead to the development of the first searchable, full-text database on the World Wide Web and the first one able to support Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, but AltaVista will soon have powerful competition in the search-engine market (see 1996).
Microsoft's new Windows 95 provides access to the company's new Internet (MSN), competing with America Online (AOL), CompuServe, Delphi, e-World, Prodigy, Netscape, and other "cyberspace" networks that permit computer users to communicate with each other via telephone modems. Former McCaw Cellular and Federal Express executive James L. Barksdale, 51, has joined Netscape as president and CEO January 11 to give the company some adult guidance. AOL progenitor William F. Von Meister dies of melanoma at his Great Falls, Va., home May 18 at age 53, leaving a pile of debts. A May 26 memo from Microsoft's Bill Gates to his top executives advises them that the Internet is the company's top priority (see 1994). Netscape Communications goes public August 9; it has yet to show a profit with its Navigator Internet browser, but sale of stock in the company brings in $2 billion, making Marc Andreesen and James Clark enormously rich.
The Excite Internet browser is introduced in October by former Stanford University Ph.D. candidates Graham Spencer and Joe Kraus, both 23, to challenge the 18-month-old Yahoo! with backing from America Online and the Tribune Co. but mostly from private venture capitalists. Spencer and Kraus will wind up with just 15.4 percent of the company.
Microsoft begins shipping its Internet Explorer 2.0 browser in November; Bill Gates unveils his Internet strategy December 7 with an all-day program for analysts, customers, and journalists to show that Microsoft intends to win the Internet race (see 1996). By next year the Internet will be a collection of more than 100,000 individual computer networks owned by governments, universities, nonprofit groups, and companies, all adhering to the same basic technical standards.
The New York Public Library begins in November to offer Internet services in all of its 87 branches. The Internet is soon being used for 150,000 searches per month.
Nonfiction: My American Journey by Gen. Colin L. Powell, U.S. Army (ret.), who has received a $6 million advance for his memoirs and announces November 9 that he will not run for president in 1996, disappointing many who had hoped that having a black man in the White House might help heal America's racial divisions; On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace by Lithuanian-born Yale classics and history professor Donald Kagan, 63; Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation, 1827-1927 by Glasgow-born Oxford historian Niall Ferguson, 31; The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie; The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman; In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, now 78, whose mea culpa is criticized by some for opening old wounds; Hiroshima in America by Niagara Falls, N.Y.-born New York editor Greg Mitchell, 47, and Robert Jay Lifton contends that the U.S. government deliberately concealed Japan's human suffering in 1945 to make nuclear weapons more palatable to Americans; The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution by Harper's magazine executive editor Michael Lind, 32, an apostate "conservative" who says today's multiculturalism is "plutocracy tempered by tokenism" and calls the "caste-like" U.S. educational system the "final redoubt of oligarchy"; The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the age of AIDS by Philadelphia-born journalist Elinor Burkett, 51; Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact by Vine Deloria Jr.; The All-American Skin Game; or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It by Stanley Crouch; Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by New York-born former New York Times science reporter Dava Sobel, 48; It Takes a Village(And Other Lessons Children Teach Us) by Hillary Rodham Clinton; River Out of Eden by zoologist Richard Dawkins, who has created controversy with his views of evolution and his atheism (he has compared religious belief to the childishness of needing someone to blame for anything inexplicable) but is appointed the first Charles Simonyi professor of public understanding of science at Oxford.
Author George Woodcock dies at Vancouver, B.C., January 28 at age 82; naturalist-author Gerald M. Durrell of complications from a liver transplant at St. Helier, Jersey, January 30 at age 70; James Herriot at his Yorkshire home near Thirsk February 23 at age 78; pioneer paperback publisher Ian Ballantine of cardiac arrest at his Bearville, N.Y., home March 9 at age 79; biochemist-historian Joseph Needham at Cambridge, England, March 24 at age 94; John Chamberlain at his native New Haven, Conn., April 9 at age 91.
Fiction: Too Far Afield (or A Broad Field, Ein weites Feld) by Günter Grass, whose view that German reunification was a mistake creates a furor that produces sales of 350,000 copies in 1 year; The Rings of Saturn (Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine Englische Walifahrt) by W. G. Sebald; The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald is about the late 18th-century German poet Novalis and his hapless love for an adolescent girl; The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco; Blindness (Ensalo Sobre a Cegueira) by José Saramago; Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth; Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks; Independence Day by Richard Ford; Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin; Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos; Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Behind the Scenes at the Museum by York-born English novelist Kate Atkinson, 44; The Ghost Road by Pat Barker; The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kinkaid; The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie; The Information by Martin Amis; The Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee; The Polish Officer by Alan Furst; Raising Holy Hell by Milwaukee-born novelist Bruce Olds, 43; The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan; Moo by Jane Smiley; Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon; The Ring of Brightest Angels around Heaven (novella and stories) by Rick Moody is about AIDS, drugs, despair, rock music, and artistic ambitions in New York's bohemian East Village.
More than 7,600 new fiction titles are published in the United States, up from 5,764 in 1990.
Novelist Patricia Highsmith dies of leukemia at Locarno, Switzerland, February 4 at age 79 (she leaves her entire estate to the Yaddo art colony at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where she did much of her writing); Calder Willingham dies of lung cancer at Laconia, N.H., February 14 at age 72; novelist-historian Paul Horgan at Middletown, Conn., March 8 at age 91; Max Braithwaite at Brighton, Ont., March 19 at age 83; Stanley Elkin at St. Louis May 31 at age 65; Brigid Brophy August 7 at age 66 in the Lincolnshire nursing home where she has been confined with multiple sclerosis; Henry Roth at Albuquerque October 13 at age 89; Sir Kingsley Amis at London October 22 at age 73 after breaking two vertebrae in a fall; Walter Braden "Jack" Finney dies at Greenbrae, Ohio, November 14 at age 84; novelist, playwright, and man of letters Robertson Davies of a stroke at Orangeville, Ont., December 2 at age 82.
Poetry: The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins; A Scattering of Salts by the late James Merrill; The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Glück; Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz, now 90.
Poet James Merrill dies of AIDS at Tucson, Ariz., February 6 at age 68; Ralph B. Gustafson at North Hatley, Quebec, May 29 at age 85; Sir Stephen Spender of a heart ailment at his native London July 16 at age 86; May Sarton at York, Me., July 16 at age 83; Earle Birney at Toronto September 3 at age 91; poet-critic Donald Alfred Davie at Exeter, Devon, September 18 at age 73.
Juvenile: The Golden Compass by British schoolteacher-turned-author Philip Pullman, 48, is the first of a trilogy in which organized religion is the villain; Yolanda's Genius by Carol Fenner; Trupp: A Fuzzhead Tale by Janell Cannon; The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza by Washington, D.C.-born Los Angeles author David Shannon, 35.
Author Michael Ende dies of stomach cancer at Stuttgart August 28 at age 65.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opens in January. Designed by Italian architect Mario Botta, 51, it has impressive gallery space and some notable works but its ground floor has no room to display paintings or sculpture.
Sculpture: Heir, State Line, Voyage by Robert Rauschenberg. The French sculptor César erects a 520-ton barrier of compressed automobiles at the Venice Biennale.
Congress reacts to the controversy over publicly financed art by cutting its appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts by 40 percent to $99 million; it eliminates all fellowships to individuals except for those to writers, a few jazz musicians, and a dozen "traditional artists."
Eastman Kodak introduces the DC40 digital camera at less than $800 (see 1991). Digital imaging remains in its infancy (see Sony Mavica, 1997).
Photojournalism pioneer Alfred Eisenstaedt dies at Oak Bluffs, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard August 23 at age 96.
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates acquires the Bettmann Archive through his Corbis Corp. with a view to building a library of digitally-stored images that may be sampled and sold via computer disks or over the Internet.
Theater: Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally 2/14 at New York's Walter Kerr Theater (after a run at the Manhattan Theater Club), with Nathan Lane, Stephen Bogardus, John Glover, Anthony Heald, 248 perfs.; Dealer's Choice by London-born playwright Patrick Marber, 30, in February at London's Royal National Theatre, Cottlesloe; Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard 2/27 at London's Aldwych Theatre, with Felicity Kendal; Defending the Caveman by comedian Rob Becker 3/26 at New York's Helen Hayes Theater, with Becker in what began as a stand-up act at San Francisco's Improv, 674 perfs.; The Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry 4/5 at London's Theatre Upstairs (later at the Royal Court Theatre), with Donal McCann; Skylight by David Hare 5/4 at London's Cottesloe Theatre, with Michael Gambon, Lia Williams, David Betts; Valley Song by Athol Fugard in August at Johannesburg, with Fugard, Lisa Gay Hamilton; The Food Chain by Philadelphia-born playwright Nicky Silver, 33, 8/24 at New York's Westside Theater Upstairs, with Hope Davis, Phyllis Newman, Rudolf Martin, Patrick Fabian, and Tom McGowan; Moon Over Buffalo by Ken Ludwig 10/1 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Carol Burnett, Philip Bosco, 309 perfs.; Mrs. Klein by Cape Town-born British playwright Nicholas Wright, 55, 10/24 at New York's off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater, with Uta Hagen, now 76, as psychoanalyst Melanie Klein; Riff Raff by actor-playwright Laurence Fishburne 11/1 at New York's Circle-in-the-Square Downtown; Master Class by Terrence McNally 11/5 at New York's Golden Theater, with Zoë Caldwell as the late diva Maria Callas, 598 perfs.
Broadway playwright-director-actor-producer George Abbott dies of a stroke at his Miami Beach home January 31 at age 107; playwright Bob Randall of AIDS at his New Milford, N.Y., home February 13 at age 57; playwright Jack Gelber at Los Angeles February 14 at age 62 following a stroke; playwright Robert Bolt of a heart ailment at his home near Petersfield, England, February 20 at age 70; playwright Sidney Kingsley of a stroke at his Oakland, N.J., home March 20 at age 88; actor Sir Michael Hordern of kidney failure at Oxford May 2 at age 83; Eric Porter of colon cancer at London May 15 at age 67; actress Genevieve Tobin at Pasadena, Calif., July 21 at age 95; Esther Muir at Mount Kisco, N.Y., August 1 at age 92; Jeremy Brett of heart failure at London September 12 at age 59; playwright John Patrick by his own hand at a Delray Beach, Fla., adult-care center November 7 at age 90; playwright Charles Gordone of cancer at his College Station, Texas, home November 17 at age 70.
Television: Cybill 1/2 on CBS with Cybill Shepherd, now 44, as an unsuccessful TV actress, Alicia Witt, Dede Pfeiffer, Ivan Sergei, in a sitcom created by Chuck Lorre (to 7/3/1998); NewsRadio 3/21 on NBC with Canadian-born actor Dave Foley, 32, Phil Hartman, 46 (to 5/4/1999); Caroline in the City 9/21 on NBC with Lea Thompson, Eric Lutes, Malcolm Gets, Amy Pietz (to 4/26/1999); JAG 9/23 on CBS with David James Elliott as Lieut. Harmon Rabb of the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General's corps (on CBS 1997 to 4/29/2005); Xena: Warrior Princess 9/23 on MCA stations with New Zealand-born actress Lucy Lawless, 26 (to 6/23/2001).
British radio disk jockey-TV comedian Kenny Everett (Maurice James Christopher Cole) dies of AIDS-related illness at Liverpool April 4 at age 50; former U.S. game-show host Art Fleming of pancreatic cancer at his Crystal River, Fla., home April 25 at age 70; actor Paul Eddington of skin cancer at London November 4 at age 68.
Films: Ron Howard's Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris; Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant. Also: Marleen Gorris's Antonia's Line with Willeke van Ammelrooy, Jan Decleir; Chris Noonan's Babe with James Cromwell and a pig; Amy Heckerling's Clueless with Alicia Silverstone, Stacy Dash (who speak like in the as if vernacular of California Valley Girls); Terry Zwigoff's documentary Crumb about underground comic-book artist Robert Crumb; Ronald Harwood's Cry, The Beloved Country with James Earl Jones, Richard Harris; Barry Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty with John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito; Michael Mann's Heat with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro; Gianni Amelio's Lamerica with Enrico Lo Verso; Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas with Nicolas Cage; Roger Michell's Persuasion with Amanda Root; Alfonso Cuaron's A Little Princess with Liesel Matthews, Eleanor Bron; John Lasseter's Toy Story with computer-animated toys (voices by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, et. al.).
Actor Donald Pleasence dies following heart surgery at Worksop, England, February 2 at age 75; David Wayne of lung cancer at Santa Monica, Calif., February 9 at age 81; director Jack Clayton of heart and liver ailments at Slough, England, February 25 at age 73; Burl Ives of cancer at Anacortes, Washington, April 14 at age 85; Ginger Rogers at her Rancho Mirage, Calif., home April 25 at age 83 (she made more than 70 films in her career); Elisha Cook Jr. dies at Big Pine, Calif., May 18 at age 92; Elizabeth Montgomery of cancer at her Los Angeles home May 18 at age 57; animation pioneer Fritz Frelung at Los Angeles May 26 at age 89; Sunday Times film critic Dilyn Powell at London June 3 at age 93; Lana Turner of throat cancer at her two-bedroom Los Angeles condo June 29 at age 74; Ida Lupino of cancer at her Burbank home August 3 at age 77; Eva Gabor of respiratory illness and other infections at Los Angeles July 4 at age 74; actor Eijo Okado in Japan September 14 at age 75; Viveca Lindfors of rheumatoid arthritis at Uppsala October 25 at age 74; screenwriter Terry Southern of respiratory failure at New York October 29 at age 71; director Louis Malle of lymphoma at his Beverly Hills home November 23 at age 63; Butterfly McQueen of burns suffered in a fire at her Augusta, Ga., home December 22 at age 84; Dean Martin of acute respiratory failure at his Beverly Hills home December 25 at age 78.
Hollywood musical: Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg's Pocahontas with Disney animation, music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, songs that include "Colors of the Wind," "If I Never Knew You."
Broadway musicals: Smokey Joe's Cafe 3/2 at the Virginia Theater, with Brenda Braxton, B. J. Crosby, DeLee Lively, music and lyrics by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, now both 61, 2,036 perfs.; Victor/Victoria 11/17 at New York's Marquis Theater, with Julie Andrews, now 60, Tony Roberts, book by Blake Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, songs by Frank Wildhorn that include "Trust Me," "Louie Says," and "Living in the Shadows," 734 perfs.
Composer Ulysses Kay dies of Parkinson's disease at Englewood, N.J., May 20 at age 78; onetime Broadway (and West End) musical star Dorothy Dickson at London September 25 at age 102, having long since become a chum of the Queen Mum.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum opens September 1 at Cleveland in an $84 million, 150,000-square foot building on Lake Erie designed by I. M. Pei. A concert at nearby Municipal Stadium September 2 features veteran performers who include Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen.
Popular songs: Jagged Little Pill (CD) by Canadian vocalist Alanis Morisette, 21, who scores a smash hit with her song "You Oughta Know"; The Woman in Me by Windsor, Ont.-born singer-songwriter Shania Twain, 30; A Boy Named Goo (CD) by the Buffalo, N.Y., alternative rock band Goo Goo Dolls (singer-guitarist John Joseph Theodore "Johnny" Rzeznik, 29, and singer-bassist Robby Takae, 30); What's the Story (Morning Glory) (CD) by Oasis includes the singles "Wonderwall" and "Don't Look Back in Anger;" Daydream (CD) by Mariah Carey; "Kiss from a Rose" by the singer Seal; Dreaming of You (CD) by the late U.S. Tejano singer Selena (Selena Quintanilla Perez); Now That I've Found You: A Collection (CD) by U.S. country soprano and fiddler Alison Krauss, 23, and her group Union Station; "Let Her Cry" by Hootie and the Blowfish; "For Your Love" by Stevie Wonder; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (two-CD album) by Smashing Pumpkins; HIStory, Past, Present & Future (CD) by Michael Jackson; Fais la vie (album) by Charles Trenet; Mirror Ball (CD) by Pearl Jam with Neil Young, now 49, who in the 1960s was part of the vocal quartet Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Annual growth in the U.S. recording industry falls to 2 percent, down from 20 percent last year.
Jazz drummer Art Taylor dies at New York February 6 at age 65; songwriter Kendall L. Hayes of liver cancer at his Danville, Ky., home February 2 at age 59; U.S. Tejano singer Selena (Selena Quintanilla Perez) is shot dead at Corpus Christi, Texas, March 31 at age 23 by the 35-year-old head of her fan club; Taiwanese pop singer Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun) dies May 8 at age 43 after suffering an asthmatic attack in Chaing Mai, Thailand. Beijing has banned her Mandarin love songs but recordings have been smuggled into the People's Republic via Hong Kong; alto saxophonist Marshall Walton Royal dies of cancer at Inglewood, Calif., May 8 at age 82; country singer Charlie "Silver Fox" Rich of a pulmonary aneurysm at a Hammond, La., motel July 25 at age 62; Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia gives his final concert July 10 at Chicago and dies of an apparent heart attack at a California drug-rehabilitation center August 9 at age 53; bandleader-comedian Phil Harris dies of a heart attack at his Rancho Mirage, Calif., home August 11 at age 91; comedian-singer-impersonator George Kirby of Parkinson's disease at Las Vegas September 30 at age 71; jazz trumpeter Don Cherry of liver failure at Malaga, Spain, October 19 at age 58; Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters of a heart attack at Hyannis, Mass., October 21 at age 79.
The San Francisco '49ers beat the San Diego Chargers 49 to 26 in Super Bowl XXIX at Miami January 29.
Basketball legend Nat Holman dies at New York February 12 at age 98.
Michael Jordan returns to the Chicago Bulls, wearing No. 45, and scores 19 points against the Indiana Pacers March 19, but the Pacers win 103 to 96 in overtime and Jordan will reclaim his No. 23 jersey for the playoffs. He scores 55 points at Madison Square Garden March 30, helping the Bulls defeat the New York Knicks 113 to 111, but the Bulls are eliminated by the Magic in May, despite good efforts by Jordan and Scotty Pippen (see 1996).
Pete Sampras wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow, Steffi Graf in women's (Graf wins her third successive Grand Slam).
Onetime tennis great Pancho Gonzalez dies of stomach cancer at Las Vegas, Nev., July 3 at age 67; tennis player Bobby Riggs of prostate cancer at Leucadia, Calif., October 25 at age 77.
Wisconsin-born thoroughbred trainer D. (Darrell) Wayne Lukas, 59, becomes the first to win U.S. racing's Triple Crown with different horses (Thunder Gulch in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, Timber Country in the Preakness).
Former sports broadcaster Howard Cosell dies of a coronary embolism at New York April 23 at age 77 (he had a malignant chest tumor removed a few years ago); sportscaster Lindsay Nelson dies of complications from Parkinson's disease and pneumonia at Atlanta June 10 at age 76.
Baseball resumes major-league play April 26 following a truce between team owners and players that has ended a 234-day player strike, but the season is abbreviated from 162 games to 144, making it impossible for anyone to set a record, and outstanding issues remain unresolved. Ballpark attendance drops sharply, and TV viewer ratings slip. Baltimore Orioles infielder Cal Ripken Jr., 35, plays his 2,131st consecutive game September 6, beating the record of the late Yankee "Iron Man" Lou Gehrig.
The Atlanta Braves win the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 2.
The Boston Garden closes September 29 after nearly 67 years as New England's top center for basketball, hockey, the circus, and such (it will be demolished in November 1997); the $160 million, 18,624-seat FleetCenter opens with a gala September 30 to provide a new home for the Bruins of the NHL (they play the New York Islanders October 7 to a 4-4 tie) and the Celtics of the NBA as well as offering a venue for entertainment events and political conventions.
Kennedy family matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy dies at her Hyannisport, Mass., home January 22 at age 104 of complications from pneumonia.
IBM abandons its ironclad dress code February 3, permitting