Timeline 1989
Return to home
1989 Jan 1,
British PM Margaret Thatcher distanced herself from US vows to punish
whoever bombed Pam Am Flight 103, saying in a TV interview that revenge
"can affect innocent people."
(AP, 1/1/99)
1989 Jan 2, PTL founders Jim and
Tammy Faye Bakker returned to the television pulpit for the first time
in two years, broadcasting from a borrowed house in Pineville, N.C.
(AP, 1/2/99)
1989 Jan 4, US Navy F-14s shot
down 2 Libyan jet fighters over Mediterranean.
(www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm)
1989 Jan 5, Lawrence E. Walsh, the
special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case, asked for a dismissal of
two charges against Oliver North, citing the Reagan administration's
refusal to release material sought by North.
(AP, 1/5/99)
1989 Jan 6, The United States
presented photographic evidence to the U.N. Security Council to justify
its shootdown of two Libyan jet fighters as self-defense, evidence the
Libyan ambassador said was faked.
(AP, 1/6/99)
1989 Jan 7, Emperor Hirohito of
Japan died at age 87 after the longest reign in the history of Japan
(1922-89); he was succeeded by Crown Prince Akihito. Heisei, which
means Peace and Prosperity, was adopted as the new reign name. For the
first time since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority
in the Diet's Upper House. In 1989 Edward Behr authored "Hirohito:
Behind the Myth." In 2000 Herbert P. Bix authored "Hirohito and the
Making of Modern Japan." Hirohito was a marine biologist and collector.
His work included the illustrated book "Crabs of Sagami Bay."
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 1/7/98)(WSJ, 8/30/00,
p.A24)(WSJ, 5/29/01, p.A20)
1989 Jan 8, "42nd Street" closed
at Winter Garden Theater, NYC, after 3,486 performances.
(www.theatermirror.com/TA42sbcp.htm)
1989 Jan 8, Forty-seven people
were killed when a British Midland Boeing 737-400 carrying 126
passengers crashed in central England. The pilots shut down the good
engine and tried to land with a bad one.
(AP, 1/8/99)(WSJ, 10/3/01, p.A20)
1989 Jan 8, Soviet Union promised
to eliminate stockpiles of chemical weapons.
(www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/chron.htm)
1989 Jan 9, The Supreme Court
agreed to consider the Webster abortion case the same day that Surgeon
General C. Everett Koop advised President Reagan he would not issue a
report on the health risks of abortion.
(AP, 1/9/99)
1989 Jan 10, Cuba began
withdrawing its troops from Angola, more than 13 years after its first
contingents arrived.
(AP, 1/10/99)
1989 Jan 11, President Reagan bade
the nation farewell in an address from the Oval Office.
(AP, 1/11/99)
1989 Jan 11, A kindergarten
student was caught with loaded handgun at a Bronx school.
(http://tinyurl.com/zldce)
1989 Jan 12, President-elect Bush
completed the selection of his Cabinet, naming retired Adm. James D.
Watkins secretary of energy and former education secretary William J.
Bennett drug czar.
(AP, 1/12/99)
1989 Jan 12, Idi Amin was expelled
from Zaire (later CongoDRC) and forced to return to Saudi Arabia.
(www.moreorless.au.com/killers/amin.html)
1989 Jan 13, New York City subway
gunman Bernhard H. Goetz was sentenced to one year in prison for
possessing an unlicensed gun that he used to shoot four youths he said
were about to rob him. Goetz was freed the following September.
(AP, 1/13/99)
1989 Jan 13, There was a sit-in at
SF General Hosp. by ACT-UP to call attention to the difficulty of
obtaining foscarnet, a drug to stabilize CMV retinitis, a common AIDS
illness that could lead to blindness.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A13)
1989 Jan 14, President Reagan
delivered his 331st and last weekly radio address, telling listeners,
"Believe me, Saturdays will never seem the same. I'll miss you." In
2001 Peggy Noonan authored the Reagan biography "When character Was
King."
(AP, 1/14/99)(WSJ, 11/15/01, p.A24)
1989 Jan 15, NATO, the Warsaw Pact
and 12 other European countries adopted a human rights and security
agreement in Vienna, Austria.
(AP, 1/15/99)
1989 Jan 16, Three days of rioting
erupted in Miami when a police officer fatally shot a black
motorcyclist, causing a crash that also claimed the life of a
passenger.
(AP, 1/16/99)
1989 Jan 17, Five children were
shot to death at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif.,
by a drifter who then killed himself. Patrick Henry Purdy (27), an
alcoholic with a gun fetish, had gone to school there.
(AP, 1/17/99)(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A1)
1989 Jan 18, The US Supreme Court
upheld a tough, year-old sentencing system for people convicted of
federal crimes, overruling more than 150 trial judges who had struck
down the guidelines.
(AP, 1/18/99)
1989 Jan 18, Astronomers
discovered pulsar in remnants of Supernova 1987A (LMC).
(http://tinyurl.com/gbt2k)
1989 Jan 18, Bruce Chatwin
(b.1940), British travel writer, died of AIDS in France. His books
included "In Patagonia" (1984) "Songlines," "The Viceroy of Ouidah,"
and "On the Black Hill." In 1997 a collection of incidental writing was
published: "Anatomy of Restlessness."
(SFEC, 8/10/97, BR
p.3)(http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/stafflag/brucechatwin.html)
1989 Jan 19, Pres Reagan pardoned
George Steinbrenner for illegal funds for Nixon.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/George_Steinbrenner)
1989 Jan 19, The US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the full Senate
approve the nomination of James A. Baker to be secretary of state.
(AP, 1/19/99)
1989 Jan 19, Israel’s Minister of
Defense Rabin proposed that Palestinians end the intifadah in exchange
for an opportunity to elect local leaders who would negotiate with the
Israeli government.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-6685.html)
1989 Jan 20, George Bush was sworn
in as the 41st president of the United States; Dan Quayle was sworn in
as vice president. Reagan became the 1st pres elected in a "0" year,
since 1840, to leave office alive.
(AP, 1/20/99)
1989 Jan 21, Former Ku Klux Klan
leader David Duke led a field of seven candidates in an open primary to
advance to a runoff election for a Louisiana state House seat.
(AP, 1/1/99)
1989 Jan 21, Billy Tipton
(b.1914), jazz musician, died. Billy passed for a man for over 50 years
with 5 marriages. In 1998 Diane Wood Middlebrook published "Suits Me:
The Double Life of Billy Tipton."
(SFEC, 6/28/98, BR
p.1,8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Tipton)
1989 Jan 22, In Super Bowl XXXIII,
the San Francisco 49ers came from behind to defeat the Cincinnati
Bengals 20-to-16 in Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium.
(AP, 1/22/99)
1989 Jan 23, A challenge to "Who
is a Jew" law was filed in Israeli Supreme Court.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1989 Jan 23, Surrealist artist
Salvador Dali died in his native Spain at age 84. His autobiography was
titled "Secret Life of Salvadore Dali." His work included 2 surrealist
films made with Luis Bunuel: "Un Chien Andalou" and "L'Age d'Or." In
1984 Rafael Santos Torroella (d.2002 at 88), art historian, authored
"La Miel Es Mas Dulce Que La Sangre" (Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood),
considered one of the most important studies of Dali’s art. In 1998
Albert Field (d.2003), Dali expert, published his "Official Catalogue
of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali." In 1999 Ian Gibson published
"The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali."
(AP, 1/23/99)(WSJ, 1/25/99, p.A16)(SFEC, 7/16/00,
p.T4)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A26)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A25)
1989 Jan 24, Physicians 1st
reported a case of AIDS transmitted by heterosexual oral sex.
(www.aegis.com/news/Lt/1989/LT890104.html)
1989 Jan 24, Confessed serial
killer Theodore Bundy was put to death in Florida's electric chair for
the 1978 kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.
(AP, 1/24/99)
1989 Jan 25, Michael Jordan scored
his 10,000th NBA point in his 5th season.
(www.nba.com/jordan/mj8889.html)
1989 Jan 25, The US Senate Armed
Services Committee opened confirmation hearings on the nomination of
John Tower to be secretary of defense.
(AP, 1/25/99)
1989 Jan 26, L. Douglas Wilder,
the lieutenant governor of Virginia, launched his successful campaign
to become the first elected black governor of a U.S. state.
(AP, 1/26/99)
1989 Jan 27, President Bush held
an informal White House news conference in which he defended a widely
criticized pay raise for Congress scheduled to go into effect the
following month.
(AP, 1/27/99)
1989 Jan 28, In Antarctica an
Argentine navy ship, the Bahia Paraiso, was wrecked on rocks next to
DeLaca Island, near the US Palmer Station scientific base. It was still
leaking diesel fuel in 1996 and had decimated imperial cormorant and
kelp gull bird population.
(SFC, 1/4/97,
p.A19)(www.antarcticmarc.com/bahia.html)
1989 Jan 28, In Hungary official
Imre Pozsgay described the 1956 Hungarian Revolution as a popular
uprising, a startling contradiction of the official Communist view that
the revolt was a counter-revolution.
(AP, 1/28/99)
1989 Jan 29, West German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union suffered a major
setback in West Berlin municipal elections.
(AP, 1/29/99)
1989 Jan 30, Former criminal
defense lawyer Joel Steinberg was convicted in NYC of first-degree
manslaughter in the 1987 death of his illegally adopted 6-year-old
daughter, Lisa. On March 24 he was sentenced from 8 1/3 to 25 years in
prison.
(AP,
1/30/99)(www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/lisa_steinberg/12.html)
1989 Jan 30, Ilene Misheloff (13)
disappeared in Dublin, Ca., while walking home from school.
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.A18)(SFC, 1/29/09, p.A1)
1989 Jan 31, Jury selection began
in the trial of former National Security Council aide Oliver North,
charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. He was later
convicted on three counts, but those convictions were set aside, and
the case was not retried.
(AP, 1/31/99)
1989 Jan 31, Jack Douglas
(b.1908), humorist and comedy writer, died. His several books included
“My Brother Was an Only Child” (1960), “Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver”
(1960), and “Rubber Duck” (1979).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Douglas_%28writer%29)
1989 Jan, In South Africa Abu
Baker Aswat, a Soweto doctor, was killed. Thulani Dlamini was later
convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Dlamini testified in
1997 that Winnie Madikizela Mandela paid him for the murder.
(SFC, 12/3/97, p.C2)
1989 Jan, In Spain ETA called a
unilateral truce to help ultimately unsuccessful peace talks in Algeria.
(AP, 3/22/06)
1989 Jan, In Tibet Choekyi
Gyaltsen, the Panchen Lama, died in Tashilumpo Monastery. In 2000
Isabel Hilton authored "The Search for the Panchen Lama."
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A12)(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.W9)
1989 Jan-1989 Feb, Robert Young
(20) of Oakland, Ca., shot and killed 3 people over three weeks in
drug-related incidents. He was sentenced to death in 1990, but a
psychologist testified that Young had an IQ of 75. In 2006 the
California Supreme court ordered new legal proceedings for possible
exemption from death due to his being mentally retarded.
(SFC, 10/14/06, p.B2)
1989 Feb 1, In his first
diplomatic mission of the Bush administration, Vice President Dan
Quayle began a trip to Venezuela and El Salvador.
(AP, 2/1/99)
1989 Feb 2, President Bush met at
the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, after
which both leaders sounded upbeat about U.S-Japanese relations.
(AP, 2/2/99)
1989 Feb 3, John Cassavetes
(b.1929), Greek-American actor and film director, died. His films
included "Gloria" (1980), "Love Streams" (1984) and "A Woman Under the
Influence." An unproduced script was later made into the 1997 film
"She’s So Lovely," by his son. In 2006 Marshall Fine authored
“Accidental Genius,” a biography of Cassavetes.
(WSJ, 8/29/97,
p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cassavetes)(WSJ, 3/3/06, p.W6)
1989 Feb 3, Gen’l. Andres
Rodriguez (d.1997 at 73) staged a coup to oust Gen’l. Alfredo
Stroessner. Stroessner, president of Paraguay for more than three
decades, was overthrown in the military coup. Some 300 people were
killed.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.A3)(AP, 2/3/99)(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A10)
1989 Feb 4, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze wrapped up four days of high-level talks
in China, the first visit by a Soviet foreign minister in three
decades.
(AP, 2/4/99)
1989 Feb 5, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
(b.1947) became the 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points.
(www.brainyhistory.com/years/1989.html)
1989 Feb 5, The Soviet Union
announced that all but a small rear-guard contingent of its troops had
left Afghanistan.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1989 Feb 6, Lech Walesa began
negotiating with Polish government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Round_Table_Agreement)
1989 Feb 6, Pulitzer Prize-winning
historian Barbara W. Tuchman died in Greenwich, Conn., at age 77.
(AP, 2/6/99)
1989 Feb 7, Bowing to public
outrage, both US houses of Congress voted to kill their scheduled 51
percent pay increase.
(AP, 2/7/99)
1989 Feb 7, In Argentina
devaluation caused a wild panic in the financial district of Buenos
Aires.
(www.studybuddy.nl/english/start.html)
1989 Feb 8, Jockey Chris Antley
(1966-2000) began a record of 64 consecutive winning days.
(www.standardbredcanada.ca/news/iss0506/sears0512.html)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144
people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with
Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1989 Feb 9, President Bush, in his
first major speech to Congress, proposed a $1.16 trillion "common
sense" budget for fiscal 1990.
(AP, 2/9/99)
1989 Feb 10, Ron Brown was elected
chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black
to head a major U.S. political party.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1989 Feb 10, In Jamaica Michael
Manley (1924-1997) re-emerged and trounced Seaga in national elections.
He dropped his anti-imperialist rhetoric and espoused capitalism,
private investment and good relations with the US. He began an economic
overhaul program.
(SFC, 3/8/96, p.A21)(WSJ, 4/29/97,
p.A19)(http://tinyurl.com/fx5ps)
1989 Feb 11, Reverend Barbara C.
Harris became the first woman consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal
Church, in a ceremony held in Boston.
(AP, 2/11/99)
1989 Feb 12, The special
prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case and the Justice Department reached
an agreement on protecting classified materials aimed at allowing the
trial of Oliver North to proceed.
(AP, 2/12/99)
1989 Feb 12, Thomas Bernhard
(b.1931), Austrian novelist and playwright, died. He hated petty and
conservative Austrian qualities and was known as a teller of difficult
truths. His 1963 novel “Frost” was published in the US in 2006.
(SSFC, 10/22/06,
p.M4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard)
1989 Feb 12, In Belfast Pat
Finucane, a lawyer active in the defense of IRA suspects, was shot and
killed by a lone gunman as he sat down to dinner with his family at
home. The Ulster Defense Association claimed responsibility but nobody
was ever charged. In 1999 a report asserted that the British army was
linked to the slaying. A suspect (48) was arrested in 1999. In 2003 a
London police report said the British Army and police were involved in
the murder. In 2004 Ken Barrett (41), former Protestant paramilitary
and police informer in Northern Ireland, was sentenced to 22 years in
prison for the murder of Finucane.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A3)(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A12)(AP,
4/17/03)(AP, 9/16/04)
1989 Feb 12, In Pakistan 5 Moslem
rioters were killed in Islamabad protesting the "Satanic Verses" novel.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_(novel))
1989 Feb 13, The judge in the
Iran-Contra trial of Oliver North sent the jury home amid a continuing
disagreement between the prosecution and defense over protecting
classified materials.
(AP, 2/13/99)
1989 Feb 14, Iran's Ayatollah
Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The
Satanic Verses," a novel condemned as blasphemous. Several translators
of the book were later killed or wounded.
(TMC, 1994, p.1989)(SFEC, 8/31/97, p.A2)(AP, 2/14/99)
1989 Feb 14, Union Carbide agreed
to pay $470 million to the government of India in a court-ordered
settlement of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster.
(AP, 2/14/99)
1989 Feb 15, The Soviet Union
announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more
than nine years of military intervention.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)(AP, 2/15/98)
1989 Feb 16, Investigators in
Lockerbie, Scotland, said a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player
was what brought down Pan Am Flight 103 the previous December, killing
all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground.
(AP, 2/16/99)
1989 Feb 17, Iran's President Ali
Khamenei said Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," could
save himself from a death sentence pronounced by Ayatollah Khomeini if
he were to apologize for his book, which was regarded as blasphemous.
(AP, 2/17/99)
1989 Feb 18, Author Salman
Rushdie, under a death sentence from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for his
book "The Satanic Verses," expressed regret for any distress he'd
caused Muslims.
(AP, 2/18/99)
1989 Feb 19, Iran's Ayatollah
Khomeini rejected the apology of "Satanic Verses" author Salman
Rushdie, exhorting Muslims to "send him to hell" for committing
blasphemy.
(AP, 2/19/99)
1989 Feb 20, US agents and NYC
police arrested 12 people and confiscated 100 lbs heroin at 3 homes in
Queens.
(http://tinyurl.com/h637t)
1989 Feb 20, Members of the
European Economic Community decided to withdraw their top diplomats
from Iran to protest Ayatollah Khomeini's order for Muslims to kill
author Salman Rushdie.
(AP, 2/20/99)
1989 Feb 21, President Bush called
Ayatollah Khomeini's death warrant against "Satanic Verses" author
Salman Rushdie "deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior."
(AP, 2/21/99)
1989 Feb 21, Fifty four members of
the 14 K triad were arrested in 4 countries (US, Canada, Hong Kong and
Singapore). Some 800 pounds of heroin were seized, supposedly worth a
billion dollars at street prices. US police estimated that Chinese
organized crime, and not the Mafia, provided 70 to 80 per cent of all
heroin smuggled into New York City.
(www.alternatives.com/crime/tri14k.html)
1989 Feb 22, Iran's Ayatollah
Khomeini, who had sentenced author Salman Rushdie to death, said
economic sanctions would not change his stance, and that publication of
Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" was a sign from God that Iran should not
reach out to the West.
(AP, 2/22/99)
1989 Feb 23, The US Senate Armed
Services Committee voted against recommending the nomination of John
Tower to become secretary of defense.
(AP, 2/23/99)
1989 Feb 23, Algeria adopted a
new, relatively liberal constitution. It disestablished the ruling
party and made no mention of socialism, while promising freedom of
expression, association, and assembly.
(WSJ, 12/3/96,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Algeria)
1989 Feb 24, A cargo door blew off
a United Air Lines Boeing 747-100 flying near Hawaii; the explosive
release of pressure pulled nine passengers to their deaths.
(AP, 2/24/99)
1989 Feb 24, In Utah a
150-million-year-old fossil egg, still inside the mother, was found by
CAT scan to contain the oldest dinosaur embryo.
(http://tinyurl.com/fme92)
1989 Feb 24, Writer Salman Rushdie
was sentenced to death by the Iranian government for writing Satanic
Verses.
(HN, 2/24/99)
1989 Feb 24, A state funeral was
held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who died the month before at age 87.
(AP, 2/24/99)
1989 Feb 25, President Bush left
Japan, where he had attended the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, and
arrived in China for a three-day visit.
(AP, 2/25/99)
1989 Feb 26, The musical "Jerome
Robbins' Broadway" opened at Imperial Theater in NYC for 634
performances.
(www.theatredb.com/QShow.php?sid=s0355)
1989 Feb 26, US Defense
Secretary-designate John Tower, dogged by questions about a possible
drinking problem, publicly pledged not to drink any alcohol during his
term of office if confirmed by the Senate.
(AP, 2/26/99)
1989 Feb 26, President Bush's
visit to China was marred by the refusal of Chinese authorities to
allow dissident Fang Lizhi to attend a banquet hosted by Bush.
(AP, 2/26/99)
1989 Feb 27, President Bush warned
of what he called the "fool's gold" of trade protectionism as he
addressed South Korea's National Assembly before returning home.
(AP, 2/27/99)
1989 Feb 27, Konrad Lorenz
(b.1903), Austrian zoologist (Nobel 1973), died. He studied instinctive
behaviour in animals, especially in grey geese and is considered to be
the founder of modern ethology. He discovered the principle of
imprinting in psychology. His books included “King Solomon’s Ring”
(1952).
(www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0830309.html)
1989 Feb 28, In Chicago Richard M.
Daley, son of Mayor Richard J. Daley who served as mayor for 21 years,
defeated acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer in a Democratic primary election.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A3)(AP, 2/28/99)
1989 Feb 28, Humorist-poet Richard
Armour (82) died in Claremont, Calif.
(AP, 2/28/99)
1989 Feb, The Slovenes formed an
opposition party to Communist rule.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1989 Feb, In Paraguay Gen’l.
Andres Rodriguez (d.1997 at 73) staged a coup to oust Gen’l. Alfredo
Stroessner.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.A3)
1989 Feb, In Venezuela Carlos
Andres Peres took office and instituted bold reform plans. Increases in
fuel costs and government reforms in Venezuela sparked extensive
rioting and looting with hundreds of people killed.
(WSJ, 4/15/96, p.A-1) (WSJ,
5/22/96, p.A-16)(WSJ, 4/27/98, p.A16)
1989 Mar 1, The Senate
overwhelmingly approved Dr. Louis W. Sullivan to be secretary of health
and human services and Adm. James D. Watkins to be secretary of energy.
(AP, 3/1/99)
1989 Mar 1, Charlie Francis, the
coach of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson (b.1961), testified that Johnson
began using steroids in 1981.
(SC,
3/1/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Johnson_(athlete))
1989 Mar 1, The 1987 divorce
between Julianne Phillips and Bruce Springsteen (b.1949) was finalized.
(www.stoneponylondon.net/timeline.htm)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen)
1989 Mar 1, Prairie Meadows
racetrack in Polk County near Des Moines, Iowa, opened for business. It
lost money until it was converted to a casino in April, 1995.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, B1,11)
1989 Mar 1, Three teenagers in New
Jersey assaulted a mentally retarded girl with a broom and a baseball
bat as up to ten classmates watched. They were sentenced to up to 15
years in a youth facility in 1997. In 1997 Prof. Bernard Lefkowitz
wrote "Our Guys," an investigation of the events surrounding the crime.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A3)(SFEC,11/16/97, BR p.3)
1989 Mar 2, Madonna's "Like a
Prayer" premiered on worldwide Pepsi commercial.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1989 Mar 2, Gloria Estefan
(b.1957) and the Miami Sound Machine received the 1st star on the Latin
Star Walk on Calle Ocho, the main street of Little Havana in Miami, Fl.
(http://tinyurl.com/czkup)
1989 Mar 2, Exxon Houston ran
aground in Hawaii and spilled 117,000 gallons of oil.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1989 Mar 2, Representatives from
the 12 European Community nations agreed to ban all production of CFCs
(chlorofluorocarbons) by the end of this century.
(AP, 3/299)
1989 Mar 3, US Senate Republican
leader Bob Dole suggested that Defense Secretary-designate John Tower
be given the opportunity to appear before the Senate to answer
allegations against him.
(AP, 3/3/99)
1989 Mar 3, Robert McFarlane,
former US National Security Advisor under Pres. R. Reagan, got a
$20,000 fine and 2 years probation for the Iran-Contra affair.
(www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm)
1989 Mar 3, Machinists struck
Eastern Airlines and pilots honored the picket lines.
(SC,
3/3/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Airlines)
1989 Mar 4, Time Inc. and Warner
Communications Inc. announced a deal valued at $14 million to merge
into the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate. The
supreme court of Delaware had judged that Time’s directors could reject
a $200-per-share hostile offer from Paramount, forcing shareholders to
accept a $138 friendly bid from Warner.
(AP, 3/4/99)(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.B1)(Econ, 3/11/06, p.69)
1989 Mar 4, Eastern Airlines
machinists went on strike and were joined by pilots and flight
attendants.
(AP, 3/4/99)
1989 Mar 5, Machinists striking
Eastern Airlines withdrew an immediate threat to picket the nation's
railroads, after a federal judge issued an order temporarily
prohibiting rail workers from honoring the Eastern picket lines.
(AP, 3/5/99)
1989 Mar 6, With nearly 90 percent
of its pilots honoring the picket lines of striking machinists, Eastern
Airlines shut down operations on all but three routes.
(AP, 3/6/99)
1989 Mar 6, Harry Andrews
(b.1911), English actor, died in Sussex, England. His films included
“Helen of Troy” (1956) and “Equus” (1977).
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0028674/)
1989 Mar 7, US Secretary of State
James A. Baker III met with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze
in Vienna, Austria. Baker agreed to visit Moscow the following May to
discuss prospects for a summit between Pres. Bush and Soviet Pres.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
(AP, 3/7/99)
1989 Mar 7, Britain dropped
diplomatic relations with Iran over Salmon Rushdie's book.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_(novel))
1989 Mar 8, In Lebanon daily
artillery barrages between Christian and Syrian forces and their
militia allies began in Beirut; at least 930 people were killed before
a cease-fire took hold the following September.
(AP, 3/8/99)
1989 Mar 9, Wendy Wasserstein's
"Heidi Chronicles," first produced by the Seattle Repertory Theater,
opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theater.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4538)
1989 Mar 9, The Senate rejected
President Bush's nomination of John Tower to be defense secretary by a
vote of 53-47.
(AP, 3/9/99)
1989 Mar 9, Eastern Airlines filed
for bankruptcy.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1989 Mar 9, Soviet Union
officially submitted to jurisdiction of the World Court.
(http://tinyurl.com/fc24t)
1989 Mar 9, Robert Mapplethorpe
(42), US photographer, died.
(www.mapplethorpe.org/foundation.html)
1989 Mar 10, One day after the
Senate rejected the defense secretary nomination of John Tower,
President Bush announced he would nominate Wyoming Rep. Dick Cheney,
who was later confirmed.
(AP, 3/10/99)
1989 Mar 11, Former World Bank
head John J. McCloy, who had advised several presidents, died in
Stamford, Conn., at age 93.
(AP, 3/11/99)
1989 Mar 12, Some 2,500 veterans
and supporters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand that
officials remove an American flag placed on the floor as part of a
student's exhibit.
(AP, 3/12/99)
1989 Mar 13, The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration began a quarantine of all fruit imported from Chile
after traces of cyanide were found in two Chilean grapes.
(AP, 3/13/99)
1989 Mar 13, The space shuttle
Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a five-day mission.
(AP, 3/13/99)
1989 Mar 13, In Canada a
transformer failure on one of the main power transmission lines in the
HydroQuebec system precipitated a catastrophic collapse of the entire
power grid. The string of events that produced the collapse took only
90 seconds from start to finish. There was no time for any meaningful
intervention. The transformer failure was a direct consequence of
ground induced currents from a space weather disturbance high in the
atmosphere. 6 million people lost electrical power for 9 or more hours.
(www.windows.ucar.edu/spaceweather/blackout.html)
1989 Mar 14, In a policy shift,
the Bush administration announced an indefinite ban on imports of
semiautomatic assault rifles.
(AP, 3/14/99)
1989 Mar 15, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev convened a two-day meeting of the Communist
Party's Central Committee to decide on agricultural reforms.
(AP, 3/15/99)
1989 Mar 16, The Soviet Communist
Party's Central Committee approved sweeping agricultural reforms and
elected the party's 100 members to the Congress of People's Deputies, a
new legislative body.
(AP, 3/16/99)
1989 Mar 17, The Senate
unanimously confirmed Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney to be secretary
of defense, following the failed nomination of former Sen. John Tower.
(AP, 3/17/99)
1989 Mar 18, The space shuttle
Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing a
five-day mission.
(AP, 3/18/99)
1989 Mar 19, Alfredo Cristiani of
the right-wing ARENA party was elected president of El Salvador,
defeating Fidel Chavez Mena of the Christian Democratic Party.
(AP, 3/19/99)
1989 Mar 19, Muslim gunners fire
rockets into Christian areas of Lebanon.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1989 Mar 20, Baseball Commissioner
Peter Ueberroth confirmed that his office was investigating "serious
allegations" involving Cincinnati Reds Manager Pete Rose. Ueberroth's
successor, A. Bartlett Giamatti, later banned Rose from baseball for
betting on games.
(AP, 3/20/99)
1989 Mar 21, Randall Dale Adams,
whose conviction for killing a police officer was overturned after the
documentary "The Thin Blue Line" challenged evidence, was released from
a Texas prison.
(AP, 3/21/99)
1989 Mar 22, US Supreme Court
upheld 1 person 1 vote rule of NYC Board of Estimate.
(http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=489&invol=688)
1989 Mar 22, National Football
League Commissioner Pete Rozelle announced plans to retire.
(AP, 3/22/99)
1989 Mar 22, Fawn Hall, Oliver
North's former secretary, began two days of testimony at North's
Iran-Contra trial in Washington.
(AP, 3/22/99)
1989 Mar 22, Ann Harrison (15) was
abducted as she waited for a school bus in front of her home in
Raytown, Missouri. African-Americans Roderick Nunley and Michael Taylor
forced her into a stolen car, raped and stabbed her to death. They left
her body in the boot of the car. Taylor and Nunley were convicted and
sentenced to death. In 2006 their execution was postponed pending a
decision on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual
punishment.
(Econ, 7/22/06,
p.36)(http://columbiamissourian.com/news/story.php?ID=18038)
1989 Mar 23 Fawn Hall, former
secretary to onetime National Security Council aide Oliver North,
completed two days of testimony at North’s Iran-Contra trial.
(AP, 3/23/99)
1989 Mar 23, Stanley Pons and
Martin Fleischmann, Univ. of Utah scientists, claimed they had produced
atomic fusion at room temperature.
(SS, 3/23/02)(WSJ, 9/5/03, p.B1)
1989 Mar 24, Good Friday. The
nation's worst oil spill occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran
aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and began leaking 11
million gallons of crude. The Exxon Valdez struck ground in Alaska’s
Prince William Sound and spilled 10.6 million gallons of oil. It was
later renamed the Mediterranean and operated between Europe and the
Middle East. Exxon then spent some $2.5 billion to clean up the spill
and filed suit against Lloyd’s of London for reimbursement under a $210
million insurance policy. In 1996 a jury in Houston voted that Lloyd’s
and some 250 other underwriters should compensate Exxon $250 million.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill fouled approximately 1,000 miles of Alaska
shoreline. The oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling
some 11 million gallons of crude oil. An estimated 250,000 seabirds
were killed. The Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil in
Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/23/97)(TMC, 1994, p.1989)(SFC, 5/5/96,
p.A-11)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(HNQ, 8/14/99)
1989 Mar 25, In the wake of the
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska's chief
environmental officer, Dennis Kelso, criticized cleanup efforts as too
slow.
(AP, 3/25/99)
1989 Mar 26, The first free
elections took place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin was elected.
Voters in the Soviet Union filled 1,500 of more than 2,000 seats in the
new Congress of People's Deputies, beginning embarrassing defeats for
the Communist Party.
(AP, 3/26/99)(HN, 3/25/98)
1989 Mar 27, Boris N. Yeltsin and
other anti-establishment candidates claimed victory in parliamentary
elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies.
(AP, 3/27/99)
1989 Mar 28, President Bush sent
three high-ranking officials to Alaska to "take a hard look" at the
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. '
(AP, 3/28/99)
1989 Mar 29, In the 61st Academy
Awards the movie "Rain Man" won Academy Awards for best picture, best
director Barry Levinson and best actor Dustin Hoffman; Jodie Foster was
named best actress for "The Accused."
(AP, 3/29/99)
1989 Mar 29, In the 9th Golden
Raspberry Awards: Cocktail won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Golden_Raspberry_Awards)
1989 Mar 29, I.M. Pei's glass
pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opened in Paris.
(SFC, 6/16/96, T-5)(http://tinyurl.com/emvfc)
1989 Mar 29, Michael Milken, junk
bond king, was indicted in NYC for racketeering.
(http://tinyurl.com/hf4fb)
1989 Mar 30, "The Heidi
Chronicles" by Wendy Wasserstein won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; in
the journalism category, the Anchorage Daily News won the public
service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native
Alaskans.
(AP, 3/30/99)
1989 Mar 31, The FBI announced it
would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill in
Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1989 Mar, The first versions of
HTML that launched the Web appeared. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World
Wide Web. His document describing the initial project was titled:
“Information Management: A Proposal.”
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W26)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.4)(Econ,
3/10/07, p.32)
1989 Apr 1, Alaska Gov. Steve
Cowper announced that a "strike force" of state officials and local
fishermen were taking over some of the cleanup operations following the
massive Exxon Valdez oil spill.
(AP, 4/1/99)
1989 Apr 1, In Canada the Oka
conflict began when some 200 Mohawks from the Kanesatake reserve
marched though the town of Oka protesting plans to expand the village's
nine-hole golf course to 18 holes, saying expansion encroaches on their
burial ground. A 78-day standoff began on July 11, 1990 and ended Sep
26, 1990. The Oka Crisis cost the Quebec government an estimated $180
million not including the cost of the army.
(http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-99-500/conflict_war/oka/clip1)
1989 Apr 1, A Japanese 3 percent
consumption, or sales tax, took effect. It earned Sadanori Yamanaka
(d.2004) the nickname "Mr. Consumption Tax." Yamanaka led the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party's tax commission for eight years, beginning in
1979.
(AP, 2/20/04)
1989 Apr 2, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev began a visit to Cuba amid differences with President
Fidel Castro over the type of reforms Gorbachev was instituting in the
Soviet Union.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1989 Apr 3, The University of
Michigan Wolverines won the NCAA championship by defeating Seton Hall
in overtime, 80-79.
(AP, 4/3/99)
1989 Apr 4, Democrat Richard M.
Daley was elected mayor of Chicago, defeating Republican Edward R.
Vrdolyak and independent Timothy C. Evans.
(AP, 4/4/99)
1989 Apr 5, Joseph Hazelwood,
former captain of the Exxon Valdez supertanker that leaked nearly 11
million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, surrendered
to authorities in New York.
(AP, 4/5/99)
1989 Apr 5, The government of
Poland signed an agreement restoring the independent labor movement
Solidarity after a seven-year ban.
(AP, 4/5/99)
1989 Apr 6, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev met with British PM Margaret Thatcher in London, holding
daylong talks that were characterized as argumentative, but friendly.
(AP, 4/6/99)
1989 Apr 7, A week after the Exxon
Valdez oil spill disaster, President Bush pledged federal assistance to
help in the clean-up.
(AP, 4/7/99)
1989 Apr 7, A Soviet
nuclear-powered submarine, the Komsomolets, caught fire and sank in the
Norwegian Sea, claiming 42 of 69 lives.
(AP, 4/7/99)(SFC, 8/14/00, p.A13)
1989 Apr 8, The Soviet Union
acknowledged that one of its nuclear submarines, the Komsomolets,
caught fire and sank 210 miles north of Norway the day before. 42 of 69
lives were reported lost.
(AP, 4/8/99)(SFC, 8/14/00, p.A13)
1989 Apr 9, Hundreds of thousands
of people marched in Washington, D.C, demanding continued access to
safe and legal abortion.
(AP, 4/9/99)
1989 Apr 9, Boxer Mike Tyson
struck a parking attendant when asked to move his car.
(http://boxing.about.com/od/records/a/tyson_timeline_2.htm)
1989 Apr 9, Troops under Gen’l
Lebed killed 18 protestors, including 16 women and children, in
Tbilisi, Georgia. Colonel Gen’l. Igor Rodionov ordered troops to break
up anti-Kremlin protests in Tbilisi.
(WSJ, 6/18/96, p.A12)(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A11)(WSJ,
8/7/96, p.A15)
1989 Apr 10, Federal drug czar
William J. Bennett unveiled details of the Bush administration's plan
for fighting drug abuse and drug-related crime in the nation's capital.
(AP, 4/10/99)
1989 Apr 10, In Ohio Jeffrey
Lundgren (b.1950), a self-proclaimed prophet, led his cult in planning
and executing murders of the Avery family in order to bring about a
prophecy he interpreted from the Old Testament. Lundgren was convicted
of five counts of murder and executed on October 24, 2006 at the
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Lundgren)
1989 Apr 11, Mexican officials
unearthed the remains of 12 of 13 victims of a drug-trafficking cult
near Matamoros. The dead included University of Texas student Mark
Kilroy, who had disappeared while on spring break.
(AP, 4/11/99)
1989 Apr 12, NY State leaders
agreed to raise unemployment benefits to $245 per week.
(http://tinyurl.com/zevt2)
1989 Apr 12, Abbie Hoffman (52),
radical activist, was found dead at his home in New Hope, Penn. He
suffered from bipolar mental illness that was only diagnosed in 1980.
In 1996 Jonah Raskin wrote: "For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of
Abbie Hoffman." In 1994 Jack Hoffman, Abbie’s brother, wrote a
biography, as did Marty Jezer in 1992. His wife, Anita, died in 1998.
She wrote "Trashing," a fictional memoir of her activity as a Yippie.
In 1999 Larry Sloman published "Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the
Countercultural Revolution in America."
(SFC, 12/29/96, BR p.5,6)(SFC, 12/31/98, p.D4)(SFEC,
2/14/99, BR p.7) (AP, 4/12/99)
1989 Apr 12, Former middleweight
boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson died in Culver City, Calif., at age
67.
(AP, 4/12/99)
1989 Apr 13, US House Speaker Jim
Wright delivered an emotional defense of his conduct against ethics
charges, declaring he would "fight to the last ounce of conviction and
energy" he possessed.
(AP, 4/13/99)
1989 Apr 14, Testimony concluded
in the Iran-Contra trial of former National Security Council staff
member Oliver L. North.
(AP, 4/14/99)
1989 Apr 14, Former winery worker
Ramon Salcido killed 6 relatives, including his wife and daughters, and
a co-worker in Sonoma County. He was tried and convicted in Oct. 1990
by Judge Littrell (d.1997) and sentenced to death. In 2007 Salcedo was
still on death row with his case in the appeal process.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.E2)(AP, 4/14/99)
1989 Apr 15, In Sheffield,
England, 96 people died in a crush of soccer fans at Hillsborough
Stadium after police allowed spectators to pour onto a crowded terrace.
(AP, 4/15/08)(Econ, 4/18/09, p.61)
1989 Apr 15, In China Hu Yaobang,
former party chief, died. Thousands of students in Shanghai and Beijing
took to the streets to mourn his death. The protests culminated in the
June 5 Tiananmen Square massacre.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(AP, 4/15/99)
1989 Apr 16, Spain's ambassador to
Lebanon (Pedro Manuel de Aristegui) was killed by shellfire that broke
out between Christian militiamen and an alliance of Syrian and Muslim
gunners.
(AP, 4/16/99)
1989 Apr 17, The US House Ethics
Committee released its report accusing Speaker Jim Wright of violating
House rules on the acceptance of gifts and outside income -- charges
denied by the Texas Democrat.
(AP, 4/17/99)
1989 Apr 17, Solidarity in Poland
was legalized.
(HFA, '96, p.28)
1989 Apr 18, Thousands of Chinese
students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party
headquarters in Beijing.
(AP, 4/18/99)
1989 Apr 19, A female jogger (28)
was raped and beaten in Central Park and 6 teen-agers were later
charged in the near-fatal attack; 5 black and Latino youths (14-16)
were convicted in a case that attracted worldwide headlines. In 2002
DNA evidence identified Matias Reyes (31) as the rapist. 3,254 other
rapes were reported in the park in 1989.
(NG, 5/93, p.16)(AP, 4/19/99)(SFC, 9/6/02, p.A3)
1989 Apr 19, The battleship USS
Iowa's number 2 turret exploded while on maneuvers northeast of Puerto
Rico. 47 sailors were killed and a $4 million investigation was
launched. The Navy attempted to lay the blame on Clayton Hartwig, a
seaman described as gay soldier disappointed in a gay affair. In 1999
Charles C. Thompson II published "A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion of
the USS Iowa and Its Cover-Up."
(AP, 4/19/97)(SFEC, 6/13/99, BR p.1,8)(HN, 4/19/00)
1989 Apr 19, Daphne Du Maurier
(b.1907), English writer, died. Her books included “Jamaica Inn” (1936)
and “Rebecca” (1938).
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dumaurie.htm)
1989 Apr 19, Adnan Khashoggi, a
Saudi financier, was arrested in Switzerland at the request of the US
Government, which is seeking his extradition to New York to stand trial
on charges of racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice. He faced
charges stemming from ''illegal property dealings'' on behalf of
Ferdinand E. Marcos, the ousted President of the Philippines, and his
wife, Imelda. In 1992 Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos were found not
guilty of racketeering by a jury in Manhattan.
(http://tinyurl.com/qp8da)(www.maykuth.com/Archives/marcos90.htm)
1989 Apr 20, Ramon Salcido, a
California winery worker later convicted of killing six relatives and a
co-worker, was deported from Mexico to the U.S.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1989 Apr 20, The case of Oliver
North went to the jury in his Iran-Contra trial.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1989 Apr 21, Tens of thousands of
people crowded into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, cheering students who
waved banners demanding greater political freedoms.
(AP, 4/21/99)
1989 Apr 21, In the Philippines
there was a communist guerrilla ambush on Col. James Nicolas Rowe. His
car was raked with bullets near his office in the Manila suburb of
Quezon City, killing him and wounding his driver. Donato Continente and
co-defendant Juanito Itaas, who admitted being a member of the
communist New People's Army, were convicted and sentenced to life in
prison in 1991. The Supreme Court later affirmed Itaas' sentence and
reduced Continente's to 14 years after establishing he was an
accomplice. Continente was released in 2005.
(AP, 6/28/05)
1989 Apr 22, The Xinhua News
Agency reported the first outbreak of violence stemming from China's
pro-democracy protests, in the provincial capital of Xian.
(AP, 4/22/99)
1989 Apr 23, Troy Aikman of UCLA
became the first player chosen in the NFL draft in New York City as he
was selected by the Dallas Cowboys.
(AP, 4/23/99)
1989 Apr 23, Students in Beijing
China announced class boycotts.
(www.christusrex.org/www1/cbs/tiananmen_content.html)
1989 Apr 24, President Bush led a
memorial service at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia for the 47
sailors killed in a gun-turret explosion aboard the USS Iowa.
(AP, 4/24/99)
1989 Apr 24, Richard M. Daley was
inaugurated as the 45th mayor of Chicago.
(AP, 4/24/99)
1989 Apr 24, Thousands of students
went on strike in Beijing.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1989 Apr 25, Japanese Prime
Minister Noboru Takeshita announced his resignation in order to take
responsibility for his involvement in Japan's Recruit stock scandal.
(AP, 4/25/99)
1989 Apr 26, Lucille Ball
(b.1911), Actress-comedian and star of I Love Lucy, died at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 77. She left behind a
manuscript that was published in 1996 titled "Love, Lucy." "The
tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field...
often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood." In 1993 Tom Gilbert
wrote :"The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz." Lucille Ball was
married to Gary Morton (d.1999 at 74) for 29 years. In 2003 Stefan
Kanfer authored "Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of
Lucille Ball."
(SFC, 9/23/96, D1)(SFC, 4/1/99, p.C4)(AP,
4/26/99)(WSJ, 8/15/03, p.W10)
1989 Apr 27, In China more than
150,000 students and workers calling for democracy marched, cheered and
sang as they took over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
(HN, 4/27/98)(AP, 4/27/99)
1989 Apr 27, In South Africa Frans
"Ting-Ting" Masango (1958-2009), an anti-apartheid activist, was
sentenced to death following the historic "Delmas Four" trial. He was
released in 1991 after the ANC was unbanned. In 2008 Peter Harris
authored “In A Different Time, the Story of the Delmas Four.”
(www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=802399)(AP,
9/21/09)
1989 Apr 28, President Bush
announced the U.S. and Japan had concluded a deal on joint development
of a new Japanese jet fighter, the FSX, despite concerns that U.S.
technology secrets would be given away.
(AP, 4/28/99)
1989 Apr 29, In a sign that
student demonstrators in Beijing had gained influence, China's
government conducted informal talks with leaders of the democracy
protests, and then televised the discussions.
(AP, 4/29/99)
1989 Apr 30, President Bush
attended a parade in New York City celebrating the bicentennial of the
American presidency.
(AP, 4/30/99)
1989 Apr 30, Sergio Leone (60),
Italian director (Good, Bad & Ugly), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0001466/)
1989 May 1, The Supreme Court
ruled that an employer has the legal burden of proving that its refusal
to hire or promote someone is based on legitimate and not
discriminatory reasons.
(AP, 5/1/99)
1989 May 1, Disney held a grand
opening for its 135 acre MGM studio in Orlando, Fl.
(www.miamibeach411.com/disney/mgm-studios.htm)
1989 May 2, At a Baltimore
gathering, physicists said they were persuaded that claims of "cold
fusion" were based on nothing more than experimental errors by
scientists in Utah.
(AP, 5/2/99)
1989 May 2, California announced
that San Jose had passed San Francisco in population. In 2003 the
Census Bureau decided to rank San Jose as the seat of the Bay Area.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.4)(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A1)
1989 May 3, An Israeli soldier,
Ilan Saadon, disappeared while hitchhiking north of the Gaza Strip. He
was said to have been kidnapped by Hamas militants. In 1996 his bones
were unearthed south of Tel Aviv.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.C1)
1989 May 3, PLO leader Yasser
Arafat, ending a two-day visit to France, said the PLO charter calling
for the destruction of Israel had been "superseded" by a declaration
urging peaceful coexistence of the Jewish state and a Palestinian
state.
(AP, 5/3/99)
1989 May 3, Christine Jorgensen
(b.1926), Denmark-born 1st transsexual (1952), died in California. Her
book “Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography” was published in
1967, and its film adaptation was released in 1970 as The Christine
Jorgensen Story.
(www.glbtq.com/arts/jorgensen_c.html)
1989 May 4, Fired White House aide
Oliver North was convicted of shredding documents and two other crimes
and acquitted of nine other charges stemming from the Iran-Contra
affair. The 3 convictions were later overturned on appeal.
(AP, 5/4/99)
1989 May 4, The US launched its
Magellan spacecraft to Venus.
(www.solarviews.com/eng/magellan.htm)
1989 May 5, A federal judge
ordered sweeping changes in the FBI's promotion system, months after
the judge found that the bureau had systematically discriminated
against its Hispanic employees in advancements and assignments.
(AP, 5/5/99)
1989 May 6, Sunday Silence scored
an upset victory over Easy Goer in the 115th Kentucky Derby at
Churchill Downs.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1989 May 7, Both sides claimed
victory in Panama's national elections, with the opposition also
charging a pattern of fraud. Panamanian voters rejected dictator Manuel
Noriega's bid for reelection. Backed by a coalition of civilian
parties, Guillermo Endara (1936-2009) overwhelmingly won the
presidential election, but Noriega refused to recognize the results and
unleashed a wave of repression against his opponents.
(AP, 5/7/99)(AP, 9/29/09)
1989 May 7, Guy Williams (b.1924),
actor (Zorro, Lost in Space), died in Argentina. He was born as Armando
Catalano in NYC.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/g/guy_williams)
1989 May 8, Former President
Carter, a leader of an international team observing Panama's elections,
declared that the armed forces were defrauding the opposition of
victory.
(AP, 5/8/99)
1989 May 8, Slobodan Milosevic was
elected president of Serbia.
(www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm)
1989 May 9, President Bush
complained that Panama's elections were marred by "massive
irregularities," and he called for worldwide pressure on General Manuel
Antonio Noriega to step down as military leader.
(AP, 5/9/99)
1989 May 9, VP Quayle said in
United Negro College Fund speech: "What a waste it is to lose one's
mind" instead of "a mind is terrible thing to waste."
(www.realchange.org/quayle.htm)
1989 May 10, In Panama, the
government of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega announced it had nullified
the country's elections, which independent observers said the
opposition had won by a 3-1 margin.
(AP, 5/10/99)
1989 May 11, President Bush
recalled the US ambassador and planned to dispatch about 1,700 soldiers
and 165 marines in phases to reinforce troops already in Panama.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Panama.htm)
1989 May 11, US Federal Judge
Walter Nixon (61) of Mississippi was impeached by the House of
Representatives. The US Senate voted to remove Nixon from the bench on
November 4, 1989. He had been convicted in 1986 on perjury charges and
sentenced to five years in prison.
(SFC, 9/18/08, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/3qfr28)
1989 May 11, The Franklin Mills
mega-mall, the former Liberty Bell Racetrack, opened in Philadelphia.
(SFC, 5/27/97,
p.A15)(www.northeasttimes.com/2000/1108/franklinmills.html)
1989 May 11, Kenya announced that
it would seek a worldwide ban on the trade of ivory -- a move intended
to preserve its fast-dwindling elephant herds.
(AP, 5/11/99)
1989 May 12, The nation's largest
airline computer reservation system, the American Airlines Sabre
system, shut down for nearly 12 hours, disrupting the operations of
thousands of travel agencies nationwide.
(AP, 5/12/99)
1989 May 12, The MTA declared
victory over graffiti. The last graffiti covered NYC subway car was
retired.
(http://www.africaresource.com/content/view/11/90/)
1989 May 13, In unusually strong
language, President Bush called on the people of Panama and the
country's defense forces to overthrow their military leader, Gen.
Manuel Antonio Noriega.
(AP, 5/13/99)
1989 May 13, Trinidad &
Tobago tied the US 1-1, in 3rd round of 1990 world soccer cup.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1989 May 13, Some 2,000
students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989)
1989 May 14, Moonlighting, TV
Crime Drama, last aired on ABC.
(www.tv.com/moonlighting/show/301/summary.html)
1989 May 14, Peronist candidate
Carlos Saul Menem won Argentina's presidential election. He was a
Muslim who converted to Catholicism, which was previously a requirement
for the presidency. The annual inflation rate was 5000%.
(WSJ, 12/12/95, p.A-15)(Hem., 1/96, p.11)(SFC,
12/24/96, p.A8)(AP, 5/14/99)
1989 May 14, The 2nd day of a
hunger strike for democratic reforms took place in Beijing's Tiananmen
square.
(http://www.tsquare.tv/chronology/)
1989 May 15, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in Beijing for the first Sino-Soviet
summit in 30 years. His 3-day visit was overshadowed by pro-democracy
demonstrations led by Chinese students.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(AP, 5/15/99)
1989 May 16, During his visit to
Beijing, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist
powers.
(AP, 5/16/99)
1989 May 17, Robert Webber
(b.1924), actor (Nuts, SOB, Assassin, 10), died in California.
(www.movieactors.com/actors/robertwebber.htm)
1989 May 17, More than 1 million
people swarmed into central Beijing to express support for Chinese
students fasting for democracy.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1989 May 17, A court in Frankfurt,
West Germany, sentenced Mohammed Ali Hamadi to life in prison for his
role in the 1985 TWA hijacking.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1989 May 18, In China a million
protestors filled Tiananmen Square.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1989 May 18, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded his historic visit to China, which
officially marked the end of a 30-year Sino-Soviet rift.
(AP, 5/18/99)
1989 May 19, The NCAA announced
sanctions against the University of Kentucky's basketball program for
recruiting and academic violations.
(AP, 5/19/99)
1989 May 19, On Wall Street, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average passed the 2500 mark, ending the day at
2,501.10.
(AP, 5/19/99)
1989 May 19, In Argentina shortly
after the presidential elections, stores and supermarkets in several
cities were looted.
(www.studybuddy.nl/english/start.html)
1989 May 20, Comedian Gilda Radner
died in Los Angeles at age 42.
(AP, 5/20/99)
1989 May 20, China declared
martial law in Beijing. During the pro-democracy protests, Beijing
officials ordered CBS and CNN to end their live on-scene reports.
(AP, 5/20/99)
1989 May 21, Thousands of native
Chinese marched in Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo and scores of other cities
in a worldwide show of support for the pro-democracy demonstrators in
Beijing.
(AP, 5/21/99)
1989 May 22, More than 100 top
Chinese military leaders vowed to refrain from entering Beijing to
suppress pro-democracy demonstrations.
(AP, 5/22/99)
1989 May 23, An estimated 1
million people in Beijing and tens of thousands in other Chinese cities
marched to demand that Premier Li Peng resign.
(AP, 5/23/99)
1989 May 24, The US film "Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade" premiered nationwide.
(http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800080788/info)
1989 May 24, China's top army
command published a letter strongly supporting hard-line Premier Li
Peng, who was reportedly locked in a power struggle with rival factions
who opposed his strong stance against student protesters.
(AP, 5/24/99)
1989 May 24, French war criminal
Paul Touvier was arrested in a monastery in Nice.
(www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/touvier-obit.html)
1989 May 25, Weird Al Yankovic
recorded "She Drives Like Crazy."
(SC, 5/25/02)
1989 May 25, Eastern Airlines
graduated its 1st class of non-union pilots.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1989 May 25, The Calgary Flames
won their first Stanley Cup by defeating the Montreal Canadiens in game
six of their championship series.
(AP, 5/25/99)
1989 May 25, Mikhail Gorbachev was
elected Executive President in the Soviet Union.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1989 May 26, Reports began
circulating that House Majority Whip Tony Coelho would resign to spare
himself and the Democratic Party the ordeal of an investigation into
his ethics.
(AP, 5/26/99)
1989 May 26, Danish parliament
allowed legal marriage among homosexuals.
(www.wayoflife.org/fbns/pushing.htm)
1989 May 27, Leaders of the
Chinese student protest movement proposed that demonstrators hold one
more rally, then end their occupation of Tiananmen Square, an idea that
was later abandoned.
(AP, 5/27/99)
1989 May 28, Emerson Fittipaldi of
Brazil won the Indianapolis 500 auto race.
(AP, 5/28/99)
1989 May 29, Student protesters in
Tiananmen Square China constructed a replica of the Statue of Liberty.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1989 May 29, Bowing to public
demand, the Supreme Soviet allowed Boris N. Yeltsin to take a seat in
the standing legislature.
(AP, 5/29/99)
1989 May 30, US Rep. Claude Pepper
(b.1900), D-Fla., a champion of the nation's elderly, died in
Washington, DC, at age 88.
(AP, 5/30/99)
1989 May 30, Student demonstrators
at Tiananmen Square in Beijing erected a 33-foot statue they called the
"Goddess of Democracy."
(AP, 5/30/99)
1989 May 30, In Brazil landless
farmer-workers stormed a farm in the state of Espirito Santo to
pressure for agrarian reform. Jose Machado, the owner, opened fire with
hired guns. Machado and a hired off-duty policeman were killed and four
squatters were injured. In 1997 Jose Rainha, a land reform advocate,
was sentenced to 26.5 years in prison for the killing. Rainha argued
that he was in another state with witnesses and that the squatters
acted in self defense but was still convicted in a 4-3 vote.
(SFC, 6/12/97, p.A14)
1989 May 31, Pres. G.W. Bush met
with Chancellor Kohl and addressed the citizens of Mainz, Germany. He
offered Germany a “partnership in leadership.”
(Econ, 7/8/06,
p.43)(http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga6-890531.htm)
1989 May 31, US House Speaker Jim
Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would
resign. Thomas Foley succeeded him.
(AP, 5/31/99)
1989 May 31, Charles A. Hufnagel
(b.1917), artificial heart valve pioneer, died at his home in
Washington, DC.
(http://tinyurl.com/f5wdx)
1989 May, In Washington DC a
7-year-old boy was raped, stabbed and castrated by a repeat sex
offender. The event gave rise to the nation’s first civil commitment
law for sex offenders.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A8)
1989 May, Afghanistan guerrillas
elect Sibhhatullah Mojadidi as head of their government-in-exile.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1989 May, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the
founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was arrested by Israel and
sentenced to life in prison for involvement in attacks against
Israelis. He was released to Jordan in 1997.
{Israel, Palestine}
(SFC, 10/2/97,
p.A12)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/yassin.html)
1989 May, In Papua New Guinea
fighting on Bougainville Island forced the closure of Bougainville
Copper, one of the world’s ten largest copper mines. It was
jointly owned by RTZ-CRA and the government. Part of the cause for the
civil war was environmental damage caused by the huge Panguna copper
mine and insufficient land royalties paid to landowners.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.A15)(SFC, 10/10/97, p.A13)(WSJ,
3/18/98, p.A14)
1989 May, In Paraguay the first
free presidential elections in 35 years elected Andres Rodriguez as
president.
(SFC, 4/22/97, p.A15)
1989 Jun 1, Former Sunday school
teacher John E. List, sought for 18 years in the slayings of his
mother, wife and three children in Westfield, N.J., was arrested in
Richmond, Va. List was later sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 6/1/99)
1989 Jun 2, President Bush
returned from a European trip, calling it "a triumph of hope" for a
world moving beyond the Cold War.
(AP, 6/2/99)
1989 Jun 2, 10,000 Chinese
soldiers were blocked by 100,000 citizens protecting students
demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square, Beijing
(HN, 6/2/99)
1989 Jun 2, Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto of Pakistan told a joint session of the US Congress that
Pakistan does not have nuclear weapons.
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.A21)
1989 Jun 3, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini (89), Iran's spiritual and supreme leader, died.
(AP, 6/3/97)(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A15)
1989 Jun 3, Japan’s Foreign
Minister Sousuke Uno was named prime minister. He replaced Noboru
Takeshita, who resigned to save his ruling Liberal Democratic Party
from further embarrassment over an influence peddling scandal.
(www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,957926,00.html)
1989 Jun 3, An explosion of a
liquefied gas pipeline engulfed two Trans-Siberian Railroad trains
parked outside the Central Asian city of Ufa in the Soviet Union. 575
people were killed.
(AP, 4/23/04)
1989 Jun 3-1989 Jun 4, Chinese
troops entered Beijing. They fired into the crowd at Tiananmen Square
and killed at least hundreds of demonstrators.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1989 Jun 4, "Jerome Robbins's
Broadway" won best musical at the 43rd annual Tony Awards; "The Heidi
Chronicles" by Wendy Wasserstein won best play.
(AP, 6/4/99)
1989 Jun 4, In China hundreds of
people died as Chinese army troops stormed Beijing to crush the
pro-democracy movement. Hundreds of thousands of discontented Chinese
took to the streets of Beijing, demanding more reform, but the military
crushed the protests in the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Zhao Ziyang was
ousted. The West and Japan cut off aid. Bao Tong was the only Communist
Party official arrested in the Tiananmen Square uprising. He was
released with ill-health in 1996. Han Dongfang, leader of China’s first
independent trade union spent 22 months behind bars for his role in the
pro-democracy uprising. Ren Wanding was also again jailed for giving
speeches in the pro-democracy protests.
(WSJ 12/10/93)(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/4/96,
p.A11)(SFC, 6/10/96, C2)(AP, 6/4/97)
1989 Jun 4, Poland held Eastern
Europe's 1st somewhat free election in 40 years. The 2-part election
(June 4 and 19) resulted in a land-slide victory of the opposition
organized in the Citizens' Committee, which won all 161 seats available
to it in the Sejm, and 99 out of 100 seats in the senate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Citizens'_Committee)
1989 Jun 4, A gas explosion in the
Soviet Union engulfed two passing trains, killing 645.
(AP, 6/4/97)
1989 Jun 5, Chinese soldiers
slaughtered pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In
one of the most remembered images of China's crushed pro-democracy
movement, a lone man stood defiantly in front of a line of tanks in
Beijing until friends pulled him out of the way. In 2001 "The Tiananmen
Papers," a book based on classified documents smuggled out of China,
was published. Zhang Liang was the pseudonym of the compiler. In 2009
Philip Cunningham authored “Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student
Uprising of 1989.”
(HN, 6/5/99)(AP, 6/5/99)(SFC, 1/6/01, p.A7)(SFCM,
3/18/01, p.4)(Econ, 8/22/09, p.75)
1989 Jun 6, In Washington, DC,
Thomas Foley was elected the 49th speaker of the House of
Representatives.
(AP, 6/6/99)
1989 Jun 7, A Suriname Airways
airplane crashed in a tropical forest near the Paramaribo airport
killing 169 people.
(AP, 6/7/99)
1989 Jun 8, Chinese Premier Li
Peng appeared on TV, praising a group of army soldiers, apparently for
their role in crushing the student-led pro-democracy movement.
(AP, 6/8/99)
1989 Jun 9, China began reporting
large-scale arrests in the wake of the crushed pro-democracy movement.
The arrests coincided with the public reappearance of Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping, who was rumored to have been seriously ill.
(AP, 6/9/99)
1989 Jun 11, The government of
China issued a warrant for the arrest of dissident Fang Lizhi, who had
taken refuge inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
(AP, 6/11/99)
1989 Jun 12, The US Supreme Court
expanded the abilities of white males to challenge court-approved
affirmative action plans, even years after they take effect.
(AP, 6/12/99)
1989 Jun 13, The Detroit Pistons
won their first National Basketball Association title, sweeping the Los
Angeles Lakers in four games.
(AP, 6/13/99)
1989 Jun 14, Former President
Reagan received an honorary knighthood from Britain's Queen Elizabeth
II.
(AP, 6/14/99)
1989 Jun 14, US House Democrats
chose Richard Gephardt to be majority leader and William H. Gray to be
majority whip, the highest leadership position in Congress held by an
African American.
(AP, 6/14/99)(HN, 6/14/99)
1989 Jun 14, Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor
was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills motorcycle patrolman.
(AP, 6/14/99)
1989 Jun 15, Three Chinese workers
in Shanghai were sentenced to death for helping to set fire to a train
during recent pro-democracy protests.
(AP, 6/15/99)
1989 Jun 16, Hungarians paid
homage to former premier Imre Nagy and four associates executed for
leading the anti-Soviet revolt of 1956. At least 250,000 people
attended the ceremonial reburial of PM Imre Nagy and four others hanged
31 years earlier and buried face down in unmarked graves. The reburial,
broadcast live on TV from Budapest's Heroes' Square, came as Hungary's
communist leadership and the democratic opposition were beginning to
negotiate the country's transition to democracy. Sandor Racz, a 1956
veteran, called on the world to "help the Soviet Union" withdraw its
troops from Hungary. Viktor Orban, then 26 and later to become prime
minister, also urged the Russians to withdraw but blasted the country's
communist leadership for making the 1956 revolution a taboo subject.
(AP, 6/16/99)(AP, 6/16/09)
1989 Jun 17, In China's crackdown
on the pro-democracy movement, eight people were sentenced to death for
allegedly beating soldiers and burning vehicles in Beijing.
(AP, 6/17/99)
1989 Jun 18, John Wayne Bobbitt
(b.1967) married Lorena L Gallo (b.1970). [see Jan 10, 1994]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorena_Bobbitt)
1989 Jun 18, Greek Premier Andreas
Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement suffered a defeat as the
center-right New Democracy Party finished first in general elections.
(AP, 6/18/99)
1989 Jun 19, Cincinnati Reds
manager Pete Rose sued baseball, arguing that Commissioner A. Bartlett
Giamatti should be prevented from hearing allegations that Rose had
gambled on baseball games.
(AP, 6/19/99)
1989 Jun 19, The government of
Burma renamed the country Myanmar. Rangoon was renamed Yangon.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1989 Jun 20, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev greeted the speaker of Iran's parliament, Hashemi
Rafsanjani, who was visiting Moscow.
(AP, 6/20/99)
1989 Jun 21, The US Supreme Court
ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is
protected by the First Amendment.
(AP 6/21/97)
1989 Jun 22, The government of
Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of the UNITA movement agreed to a
formal truce in their 14-year-old civil war.
(AP, 6/22/99)
1989 Jun 23, The movie "Batman"
premiered across the US.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0096895/releaseinfo)
1989 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court
refused to shut down the "dial-a-porn" industry, ruling Congress had
gone too far in passing a law banning all sexually oriented phone
message services.
(AP, 6/23/99)
1989 Jun 24, In China Communist
Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang (1920-2005) was ousted for
allegedly supporting the protests and put under house arrest. Jiang
Zemin became the third hand-picked successor to Deng Xiaoping. Deng
resigned from his last official post.
(AP, 6/24/99)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.B4)
1989 Jun 25, A judge in Cincinnati
temporarily blocked a hearing by baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett
Giamatti into allegations that Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose had
gambled on baseball games.
(AP, 6/25/99)
1989 Jun 26, The Supreme Court
ruled that the death penalty may be imposed for murderers who committed
their crimes as young as age 16, and for mentally retarded killers as
well.
(AP, 6/26/99)(WSJ, 5/26/04, p.B1)
1989 Jun 27, President Bush,
criticizing a Supreme Court decision upholding the right to desecrate
the American flag as a form of political protest, called for a
constitutional amendment to protect the Stars and Stripes.
(AP, 6/27/99)
1989 Jun 28, China's new Communist
Party chief, Jiang Zemin, said his government would show no mercy to
leaders of the crushed pro-democracy movement, which he termed a
"counterrevolutionary rebellion."
(AP, 6/28/99)
1989 Jun 28, In a speech at Kosovo
Polje Slobodan Milosevic stated that "Yugoslavia is a multinational
community and it can survive only under the conditions of full equality
for all nations that live in it."
(www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10258)
1989 Jun 29, The U.S. House of
Representatives voted unanimously in favor of new sanctions against
China because of its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.
(AP, 6/29/99)
1989 Jun 30, The NY State
Legislature passed the Staten Island secession bill.
(http://tinyurl.com/htf9r)
1989 Jun 30, General Wojciech
Jaruzelski announced he would not run for Poland's new presidency,
saying the people viewed him as the man who imposed martial law.
(AP, 6/29/99)
1989 Jun 30, In Sudan the elected
coalition government was overthrown. Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Sheik
Hassan al-Turabi, brother-in-law of Sadiq el-Mahdi, seized power. They
imposed an Iranian style theocracy along with the strict Muslim Shariah
law on the country including the Christian southern Sudan. The National
Islamic Front (NIF) overthrew a democratic government under prime
minister Sadiq el-Mahdi and have ruled ever since. The Umma Party and
the Democratic Union party established bases in Cairo and Eritrea and
later allied with rebel groups that included the Southern People's
Liberation Party.
(SFC, 4/5/97, p.A12)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A12)(SFC,
12/29/98, p.A6)
1989 Jun, Alfred Winslow Jones
(b.1901), Australia born US journalist and investor, died. He is known
as the father of the hedge fund industry. In 1949 he created the first
hedge fund eliminating market risk by taking off-setting positions,
selling some stocks short while taking a "long" position (i.e. buying)
others.
(http://tinyurl.com/z4qrs)(http://tinyurl.com/k6ywc)
1989 Jun, In Greece political
scandals and a messy divorce forced Papandreou and his party from
office.
(SFC, 6/23/96, p.B6)
1989 Jul 1, The NY State
Legislature passed the Staten Island secession bill.
(http://tinyurl.com/htf9r)
1989 Jul 1, "Playboy" magazine
founder Hugh Hefner married Kimberley Faye Conrad at his mansion in Los
Angeles. The couple separated in 1998.
(AP, 7/1/99)
1989 Jul 1, The 1987 Montreal
Protocol, an international treaty dealing with ozone-destroying
pollutants, went into effect. The treaty sought to cut in half
production of chemicals posing the greatest risk to ozone.
(HNQ, 8/11/99)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A16)
1989 Jul 2, Andrei Gromyko (79),
former Soviet Foreign Minister died in Moscow.
(AP, 7/2/99)
1989 Jul 2, Jean Painleve
(b.1902), French film maker, died. His science and nature films
inspired the Surrealists.
(WSJ, 6/19/00, p.A44)(http://tinyurl.com/z8n2m)
1989 Jul 3, By a 5-4 decision, the
US Supreme Court upheld abortion restrictions in the state of Missouri.
The court ruled that states do not have to provide funds for abortions.
(AP, 7/3/9)
1989 Jul 3, The movie "Batman,"
set a record of quickest $100 million (10 days).
(www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/fastest.htm?page=100&p=.htm)
1989 Jul 3, Jim Backus (76), actor
(Magoo, Gilligan's Island), died of pneumonia.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0000822/bio)
1989 Jul 4, Drew Barrymore
(b.1975), actress, attempted suicide.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/7_4/9/index.html)
1989 Jul 4, Unmanned Russian
Mig-23 crashed in Bellegem-Kooigem, Belgium, and 1 person died. The
pilot had ejected over Poland.
(http://tinyurl.com/ftljd)
1989 Jul 4, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in France for a three-day visit that
included an address to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
(AP, 7/4/99)
1989 Jul 5, The Seinfeld
Chronicles premiered on US TV. [see May 31, 1990]
(www.geocities.com/r_stroup/seinepis.html)
1989 Jul 5, Former National
Security Council aide Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a
suspended prison term for his part in Iran-Contra. The convictions were
later overturned.
(AP, 7/5/99)
1989 Jul 5, South-African Pres
Pieter Botha visited ANC leader Nelson Mandela.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/etc/cron.html)
1989 Jul 6, The U.S. Army
destroyed its last Pershing 1-A missiles at an ammunition plant in
Karnack, Texas, under terms of the 1987 (INF) Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces Treaty.
(AP, 7/6/99)
1989 Jul 6, Janos Kadar, who
helped restore Soviet domination and led Hungary for over 30 years
before being replaced in May 1988, died. This same day Hungary's
Supreme Court finally rehabilitated the 1956 revolutionaries.
(AP, 6/16/09)
1989 Jul 6, A Palestinian grabbed
the steering wheel of an Israeli bus, causing a crash that claimed 15
lives.
(AP, 7/6/99)
1989 Jul 7, The US Labor Dept.
reported that unemployment rose 0.1% in June to 5.2%.
(AP, 7/7/99)
1989 Jul 8, Carlos Saul Menem was
inaugurated as president of Argentina in the country's first transfer
of power from one democratically elected civilian leader to another in
six decades.
(AP, 7/8/99)
1989 Jul 9, West German tennis
players Steffi Graf and Boris Becker won the women's and men's singles
titles at Wimbledon.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1989 Jul 9, President Bush began a
visit to Poland.
(AP, 7/9/99)
1989 Jul 9, Two bombs explode in
Mecca, killing one pilgrim, wounding 16. Saudi authorities blame
Iranian-inspired terrorists and later beheaded 16 Kuwaiti Shiite
Muslims for bombings. Iran denied involvement.
(AP, 2/1/04)
1989 Jul 10, Mel Blanc (81), the
"man of a thousand voices," including such cartoon characters as Bugs
Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweety, Tazmanian Devil,
Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, died in Los Angeles.
(AP, 7/10/99)(SFC, 1/16/03, p.A19)
1989 Jul 11, The American League
won the 60th All-Star Game, defeating the National League 5-3 in
Anaheim, Calif.
(AP, 7/11/99)
1989 Jul 11, Laurence Olivier
(b.1907), British actor, director and producer, died in West Sussex,
UK. In 1991 Donald Spoto authored the biography “Laurence Olivier.” In
2005 Terry Coleman authored the biography “Olivier.”
(AP, 7/11/99)(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M6)(Econ, 10/15/05,
p.92)
1989 Jul 12, President Bush
continued his visit to Hungary, where he held talks with officials and
made a speech at Karl Marx University in Budapest.
(AP, 7/12/99)
1989 Jul 12, A farmer in eastern
France went on a shooting rampage, killing 14 people before being
captured.
(AP, 7/12/99)
1989 Jul 13, Washington, D.C.
attorney Thomas L. Root was rescued after ditching his private plane in
the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas; he had suffered a mysterious
gunshot wound.
(AP, 7/13/99)
1989 Jul 13, Cuba executed four
military officers for conspiring to smuggle drugs to the United States.
Antonio de la Guardia, a colonel in the Interior Ministry, was executed
along with army general Arnaldo Ochoa and 2 other officers in a drug
trafficking case. Gen’l. Patricio de la Guardia, Antonio’s twin, was
sentenced to 30 years in prison. Patricio was released in 1997.
Patricio had led an int’l. para-military brigade in Chile during the
Allende years that was estimated at 15,000 men.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)(AP,
7/13/99)
1989 Jul 13, Abdul Rahman
Qassemlu, Kurd leader in Iran, was murdered.
(http://tinyurl.com/ecm98)
1989 Jul 14, 16th James Bond
movies "License to Kill" premiered in the US.
(www.bondmovies.com/ltk)
1989 Jul 14, Leaders of the seven
richest nations opened a summit in Paris, which was also celebrating
the bicentennial of the French Revolution with pomp and pageantry.
(AP, 7/14/99)
1989 Jul 15, Leaders of the seven
major industrial democracies, meeting in Paris, voiced support for
democracy behind the Iron Curtain and condemned repression in China.
(AP, 7/15/99)
1989 Jul 16, Leaders of the seven
major industrial democracies called at their economic summit in Paris
for "decisive action" against global pollution.
(AP, 7/16/99)
1989 Jul 16, Conductor Herbert von
Karajan (b.1908) died near Salzburg, Austria.
(AP, 7/16/99)
1989 Jul 17, The controversial B-2
Stealth bomber underwent its first test flight at Edwards Air Force
Base in California, two days after a technical problem forced a
postponement.
(AP, 7/17/99)
1989 Jul 17, Isidore Feinstein
Stone (b.1907), author (I.F. Stone's Weekly), died in Boston. In 2006
Myra MacPherson authored “All Governments Lie,” a biography of Stone.
In 2009 D.D. Guttenplan authored “American Radical: The Life and Times
of I.F. Stone.”
(http://tinyurl.com/nm97z)(WSJ, 9/30/06, p.P8)(Econ,
5/16/09, p.90)
1989 Jul 18, Actress Rebecca
Schaeffer (21) was shot to death at her Los Angeles home by obsessed
fan Robert Bardo, who was later sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/18/99)
1989 Jul 19, 111 people were
killed when a United Air Lines DC-10 crashed while making an emergency
landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 185 other people survived.
(AP, 7/19/08)
1989 Jul 20, President Bush called
for a long-range space program to build an orbiting space station,
establish a base on the moon and send a manned mission to the planet
Mars.
(AP, 7/20/99)
1989 Jul 20, In Burma the military
authorities placed Aung San Suu Kyi and her deputy Tin Oo under house
arrest where she was confined for the next 6 years.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.4)(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1989 Jul 21, The State Department
confirmed an ABC News report that Felix S. Bloch, a veteran U.S.
diplomat, was being investigated as a possible Soviet spy. Bloch was
never charged with espionage, but was fired from his job in 1990.
(AP, 7/21/99)
1989 Jul 21, Greg LeMond (US) won
the Tour de France in record time.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1989 Jul 22, Nearly 200,000
Palestinian children returned to classrooms in the West Bank after the
Israeli army lifted an order that had kept their schools closed during
the Palestinian uprising.
(AP, 7/22/99)
1989 Jul 23, Greg LeMond of the
United States won the Tour de France.
(AP, 7/23/99)
1989 Jul 23, Donald Barthelme
(b.1931), US writer, died. His work included over a hundred short
stories and 4 novels. In 2009 Tracy Daugherty authored “Hiding Man: A
Biography of Donald Barthelme.”
(WSJ, 2/21/09,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barthelme)
1989 Jul 23, Japan's ruling
Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the upper house of the
Diet in parliamentary elections.
(AP, 7/23/99)
1989 Jul 24, President Bush said
he was "aggrieved" about allegations that veteran U.S. diplomat Felix
S. Bloch might have spied for the Soviet Union.
(AP, 7/24/99)
1989 Jul 24, Japan’s PM Sousuke
Uno (1922-1998) resigned in the wake of Japan's ruling party's defeat.
Uno resigned amid a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism
focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1989-7/1989-07-24-ABC-11.html)(SFC,
8/20/96, p.A18)
1989 Jul 25, The pilot of the
United DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, July 19, Alfred C.
Haynes, appeared at a news conference in which he dismissed
descriptions of himself as a hero after he and his crew managed to save
184 of the 296 people aboard the crippled aircraft.
(AP, 7/25/99)
1989 Jul 27, Workers at the Nissan
Motor Corp. assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn., voted against
representation by the United Auto Workers.
(AP, 7/27/99)
1989 Jul 27, Charles Stevens (20)
of Oakland, Ca., was arrested on a freeway on-ramp while watching
police attend to the wrecked car of his last murder victim. Over the
last 4 months he had shot to death 4 people and fired at 10 others. In
2007 the California state Supreme Court upheld his death sentence.
(SFC, 6/5/07, p.C2)
1989 Jul 27, Eighty people were
killed when a Korean Air DC-10 crashed in Libya.
(AP, 7/27/99)
1989 Jul 28, Israeli commandos
abducted a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim Hezbollah cleric, Sheik
Abdul-Karim Obeid, from his home in south Lebanon.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.A14)(AP, 7/28/99)
1989 Jul 29, Ji Yun Lee (20) died
in a fire at a church camp near East Stroudsburg, Pa. Her father Han
Tak Lee (54), a South Korean-born operator of a clothing store in NYC,
was arrested for arson. He was convicted of murder on Sep 17, 1990. In
2006 Lee’s attorneys appealed to the state Supreme Court citing new
advances in arson investigations.
(SSFC, 12/10/06, p.A39)
1989 Jul 29, Poland's newly
elected president, Wojciech Jaruzelski, resigned as Communist Party
general secretary and was succeeded by Mieczyslaw Rakowski (1927-2008).
Rakowski, a historian and journalist, remained chairman of the
communist Polish United Workers' Party until the party was dissolved at
its January 1990 congress during the country's bloodless transition to
democracy.
(AP, 7/29/99)(AP, 11/8/08)
1989 Jul 30, In Lebanon, the
pro-Iranian group Organization for the Oppressed on Earth threatened to
kill an American hostage, Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, unless
Israel released Sheik Abdul-Karim Obeid, a cleric seized by Israeli
commandos.
(AP, 7/30/99)
1989 Jul 31, A pro-Iranian group
in Lebanon released a grisly videotape purportedly showing the hanged
body of American hostage William R. Higgins.
(AP, 7/31/97)
1989 Aug 1, The Revolutionary
Justice Organization, a pro-Iranian group in Lebanon which had
threatened to kill American hostage Joseph Cicippio, extended its
deadline a day after another group released a videotape showing a body
said to be that of hostage William R. Higgins.
(AP, 8/1/99)
1989 Aug 2, The House of
Representatives voted against including abortion curbs in a spending
bill for the District of Columbia.
(AP, 8/2/99)
1989 Aug 2, NASA confirmed Voyager
2's discovery of 3 more moons of Neptune designated temporarily
1989 N2 (Larissa), 1989 N3 (Despina) and 1989 N4 (Galatea).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_(moon))
1989 Aug 3, Shiite Muslim
kidnappers in Lebanon suspended their threat to execute another
American hostage, three days after the purported hanging of Lt. Col.
William R. Higgins.
(AP, 8/2/99)
1989 Aug 3, Hashemi Rafsanjani was
sworn in as president of Iran.
(AP, 8/3/99)
1989 Aug 4, Iranian President
Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to help end the hostage crisis in Lebanon,
prompting President Bush to say he was "encouraged."
(AP, 8/4/99)
1989 Aug 5, Five Central American
presidents began meeting in Honduras to discuss a timetable for
dismantling Nicaraguan Contra bases.
(AP, 8/5/99)
1989 Aug 6, "Oh! Calcutta!" closed
at Edison Theater in NYC after 5959 performances.
(www.totaltheater.com/referencialongrunsbroadwayResultList1.asp)
1989 Aug 6, Jaime Paz Zamora was
inaugurated as president of Bolivia.
(AP, 8/6/99)
1989 Aug 7, A small plane carrying
Congressman Mickey Leland, D-Texas, and 15 others disappeared during a
flight in Ethiopia. The wreckage of the plane was found six days later;
there were no survivors.
(AP, 8/7/99)
1989 Aug 8, The space shuttle
Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a secret, five-day
military mission to deploy a new Pentagon spy satellite.
(AP, 8/8/99)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.A6)
1989 Aug 9, Toshiki Kaifu was
elected prime minister of Japan, succeeding Sousuke Uno.
(AP, 8/9/99)
1989 Aug 9, In Mexico, a train
fell into the San Rafael River after a bridge collapsed, killing 112
people.
(AP, 8/9/99)
1989 Aug 10, Poland's Roman
Catholic church suspended an agreement to move nuns from a convent on
the edge of Auschwitz, blaming Jewish groups for creating what it
called an "atmosphere of aggressive demands."
(AP, 8/10/99)
1989 Aug 11, Poland's
Solidarity-dominated Senate adopted a resolution expressing sorrow for
the nation's participation in the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of
Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1989 Aug 12, The Pentagon said it
was stepping up efforts to find missing Texas Rep. Mickey Leland and 15
companions in Ethiopia. The wreckage of the group's airplane, with no
survivors, was found the next day.
(AP, 8/12/99)
1989 Aug 13, The space shuttle
Columbia returned from a secret military mission.
(AP, 8/13/99)
1989 Aug 13, In Australia 2
hot-air balloons crashed at Alice Springs. 13 people were killed.
(www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=52449)
1989 Aug 13, Searchers in Ethiopia
found the wreckage of a plane which had disappeared almost a week
earlier while carrying Texas Congressman Mickey Leland and 15 other
people. There were no survivors.
(AP, 8/13/97)
1989 Aug 14, South African
President P.W. Botha announced his resignation after losing a bitter
power struggle within his National Party.
(AP, 8/14/99)
1989 Aug 15, F.W. de Klerk was
sworn in as acting president of South Africa, one day after P.W. Botha
resigned as the result of a power struggle within the National Party.
(AP, 8/15/99)
1989 Aug 16, A rare "prime time"
lunar eclipse occurred over most of the United States, although clouds
spoiled the view for many.
(AP, 8/16/99)
1989 Aug 17, The Commerce
Department reported the U.S. trade deficit had shrunk to $8.7 billion
in June.
(AP, 8/17/99)
1989 Aug 18, The US Labor
Department reported that the Consumer Price Index rose only 0.2% in
July 1989, easing fears of a recession.
(AP, 8/18/99)
1989 Aug 18, In Colombia, leading
presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated outside Bogota;
the Medellin drug cartel was strongly suspected. On May 12, 2005,
Alberto Santofimio Botero, former justice minister, was arrested in
connection with the assassination. In 2008 a court overturned the
conviction of Alberto Santofimio for lack of evidence.
(AP, 8/18/99)(AP, 12/22/05)(AP, 10/22/08)
1989 Aug 19, Roderick "Cooley"
Shannon (18) was beaten and shot to death at Leland and Rutland
streets. Officers Earl Sanders and Napoleon Hendrix determined that
J.J. Tennison and Anton Goff did the killing and withheld evidence in
the case. Lovinsky Ricard later confessed to the murder, but refused to
testify. Goff and Tennison were convicted in Oct, 1990. In 2003 a
federal judge threw out the conviction and Scheduled Goff and Tennison
for release. In 2004 Tennison sued SF, Earl Sanders and others for 13
years of wrongful imprisonment. In 2009 SF officials tentatively agreed
to pay $4.6 million to Tennison and $2.9 million to Goff.
(SSFC, 3/16/03, p.A13)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.A1)(SFC,
8/27/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A1)(SFC, 7/28/09, p.C2)
1989 Aug 19, Mark MacPhail, an off
duty police officer was killed in Savannah, Georgia. Troy Davis was
convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for killing MacPhail. In 2008
his execution was reprieved for a 3rd time after 7 of 9 witnesses had
recanted their testimony.
(SFC, 10/25/08,
p.A3)(www.fop9.net/markmacphail/)(Econ, 11/29/08, p.35)
1989 Aug 19, The "Pan-European
Picnic" helped precipitate the fall nearly three months later of the
Berlin Wall. Members of Hungary's budding opposition organized a picnic
at the border with Austria to press for greater political freedom and
promote friendship with their Western neighbors. Some 600 East Germans
got word of the event and turned up among the estimated 10,000
participants. They took advantage of the excursion to escape to Austria.
(AP, 8/19/09)
1989 Aug 19, Polish President
Wojciech Jaruzelski formally nominated Tadeusz Mazowiecki to become
Poland's first non-Communist prime minister in four decades.
(AP, 8/19/99)
1989 Aug 20, Entertainment
executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, were murdered in their
Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion. Eric and Lyle Menendez stood accused of
murdering their parents. In their first trial the jury deadlocked, but
in 1996 they were convicted of first-degree murder. They based their
defense on a history of parental abuse.
(SFC, 4/18/96, p.a-15)(WSJ, 3/21/96, p.A-1)
1989 Aug 20, British
conservationist George Adamson, 83, was shot and killed by bandits in
Kenya.
(AP, 8/20/99)
1989 Aug 20, Fifty-one people died
when a pleasure boat sank in the Thames River in London.
(AP, 8/20/99)
1989 Aug 21, The US space probe
Voyager 2 fired its thrusters to bring it closer to Neptune's
mysterious moon Triton.
(AP, 8/21/99)
1989 Aug 21, Colombian soldiers
and police raided the estates of drug lords as part of a crackdown that
followed the shooting death of a presidential candidate.
(AP, 8/21/99)
1989 Aug 22, Nolan Ryan of the
Texas Rangers struck out his 5,000th batter, Rickey Henderson.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Ryan_Nolan.stm)
1989 Aug 22, Black Panther
co-founder Huey P. Newton was shot to death in Oakland, Calif., by a
drug dealer. Gunman Tyrone Robinson was later sentenced to 32 years to
life in prison.
(AP, 8/22/97)(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)
1989 Aug 23, In a case that
inflamed racial tensions in New York City, Yusuf Hawkins, a black
teen-ager, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by
white youths in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
(AP, 8/23/99)
1989 Aug 23, Approximately two
million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km (373 mi) long
human chain across the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania. This original demonstration was organized to draw the
world's attention to the common historical fate which these three
countries suffered. It marked the 50th anniversary of August 23, 1939,
when the Soviet Union and Germany in the secret protocol of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divided spheres of interest in Eastern Europe,
which led to the occupation of these three states.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way)
1989 Aug 24, Commissioner A.
Bartlett Giamatti banned Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose from major
league baseball for gambling.
(AP, 8/24/99)
1989 Aug 24, Voyager II passed
within three thousand miles of Neptune sending back striking
photographs.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(AP, 8/24/99)
1989 Aug 24, British brewery Bass
bought the Holiday Inn hotel chain.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/8_24/7/index.html)
1989 Aug 24, Colombian drug lords
declared "total war" on the government.
(AP, 8/24/99)
1989 Aug 24, Poland appointed
Tadeusz Mazowiecki prime minister, becoming the first country in the
Soviet bloc to name a non-communist prime minister since the late 1940s.
(Reuters, 8/24/01)
1989 Aug 25, Rep. Barney Frank,
D-Mass., acknowledged hiring a male prostitute as a personal employee,
then firing him after suspecting the aide was selling sex from Frank's
apartment.
(AP, 8/25/99)
1989 Aug 25, NASA scientists
received stunning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.
(HN, 8/25/98)
1989 Aug 26, A team from Trumbull,
Conn., became the first American team since 1983 to win the Little
League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.
(AP, 8/26/99)
1989 Aug 26, Irving Stone, US
writer born as Irving Tennenbaum (Love is Eternal, Lust for Life), died
in Los Angeles.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/i/irving_stone)
1989 Aug 27, Some 100 marched
through Bensonhurst, NYC, protesting racial killings.
(www.city-journal.org/article01.php?aid=1615)
1989 Aug 27, The first U.S.
commercial satellite rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., a
Delta booster carrying a British communications satellite.
(AP, 8/27/99)
1989 Aug 27, Chuck Berry performed
his tune Johnny B. Goode for NASA staff in celebration of Voyager II's
encounter with the planet Neptune.
(HN, 8/27/98)
1989 Aug 28, Former televangelist
Jim Bakker's fraud and conspiracy trial opened in Charlotte, N.C.;
Bakker was convicted of all 24 counts the next October and then served
4 ½ years of an 8 year sentence.
(AP, 8/28/99)(SSFC, 7/22/07, p.B7)
1989 Aug 29, Seven bombs believed
set off by drug traffickers exploded in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia.
(AP, 8/29/99)
1989 Aug 30, A federal jury in New
York found "hotel queen" Leona Helmsley guilty of income tax evasion
but acquitted her of extortion. Helmsley served 18 months behind bars,
a month at a halfway house and two months under house arrest.
(AP, 8/30/99)
1989 Aug 30, Dorothy Schiff
(b.1903) former owner of the New York Post, died. In 2007 Marilyn
Nissenson authored “The Lady Upstairs: Dorothy Schiff and the New York
Post.”
(WSJ, 4/7/07,
p.P10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Schiff)
1989 Aug 30, The Cambodian peace
talks in Paris collapsed.
(Hem, 4/96, p.15)(http://tinyurl.com/nz3x5)
1989 Aug 31, Arbitrator Thomas
Roberts ordered Major League sports owners to pay $105 million for
collusion against free agents after the 1985 baseball season.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/chronology/1989AUGUST.stm)
1989 Aug 31, Britain's Princess
Anne and husband Mark Phillips announced they were separating.
(AP, 8/31/99)
1989 Aug, WorldCom, formerly LDDS
Communications, went public through a merger with Advantage Cos.
(WSJ, 6/27/02, p.A11)
1989 Sep 1, A. Bartlett Giamatti
(51), Baseball Commissioner, died of heart attack at his summer home in
Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
(AP, 9/1/99)
1989 Sep 2, In Nicaragua, a
14-party opposition coalition chose Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as its
presidential candidate. Chamorro went on to win the election the
following February.
(AP, 9/2/99)
1989 Sep 3, "Into the Woods"
closed at Martin Beck Theater NYC after 764 performances.
(http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4486)
1989 Sep 3, The United States
began shipping a $65 million package of military aircraft and weapons
to help Colombia's war against drug lords.
(AP, 9/3/99)
1989 Sep 3, In Brazil a Varig
737-300 plane crashed in the Amazon jungle with 52 people aboard. 14
died and 34 were injured.
(http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetGOjg/030989.txt)
1989 Sep 3, A Cubana de Aviacion
jetliner crashed after takeoff in Havana, killing all 126 aboard and 26
people on the ground.
(AP, 9/3/99)
1989 Sep 4, The Air Force launched
its last Titan 3 rocket, which reportedly carried a reconnaissance
satellite. Since 1964, the Titan 3 had sent more than 200 satellites
into space.
(AP, 9/4/99)
1989 Sep 4, Georges Simenon (86),
Belgian/French writer and director (Maigret), died. The Belgian born
writer, authored some 200 novels. Many featured the crime-busting hero
Inspector Maigret.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.D5)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/simenon.htm)
1989 Sep 5, In his first
nationally broadcast address from the White House, President Bush
outlined a plan to fight illicit drugs, which he called the "quicksand
of our entire society."
(AP, 9/5/99)
1989 Sep 6, The Guardian reported
that a French police computer had mixed codes and accused 41,000
Parisians of murder and prostitution rather than traffic fines.
(www.phrack.org/phrack/28/P28-11)
1989 Sep 6, The National Party,
the governing party of South Africa, lost nearly a quarter of its
parliament seats to far-right and anti-apartheid rivals, its worst
setback in four decades.
(AP, 9/6/99)
1989 Sep 7, The US Senate voted
76-8 to approve the Americans with Disabilities Act, forbidding
discrimination in employment, public accommodations, transportation and
communications.
(AP, 9/7/99)
1989 Sep 7, A robbery by 2 bandits
took place at the BofA headquarters. A Brink’s guard was killed and
another wounded along with a passer-by. The bandits escaped on mountain
bikes with undisclosed sums that were later believed to be bearer bonds.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, Z1 p.3)
1989 Sep 8, Former President
Reagan underwent surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to relieve
fluid build-up on his brain after a horse-riding accident.
(AP, 9/8/99)
1989 Sep 9, West German Steffi
Graf won the women's tennis title at the U.S. Open in New York,
defeating second-ranked Martina Navratilova.
(AP, 9/9/99)
1989 Sep 10, Hungary gave
permission for thousands of East German refugees and visitors to
emigrate to West Germany.
(AP, 9/10/99)
1989 Sep 11, The exodus of East
German refugees from Hungary to West Germany began, by way of Austria.
(AP, 9/11/99)
1989 Sep 12, David Dinkins,
Manhattan borough president, won New York City's Democratic mayoral
primary, defeating incumbent Mayor Ed Koch and two other candidates on
his way to becoming the city's first black mayor.
(AP, 9/12/99)
1989 Sep 13, Fay Vincent was named
commissioner of Major League Baseball, succeeding the late A. Bartlett
Giamatti.
(AP, 9/13/97)
1989 Sep 13, Desmond Tutu led the
biggest anti-apartheid protest march in S. Africa.
(www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/southafrica.cfm)
1989 Sep 14, ACT-UP AIDS activists
shut down the New York Stock Exchange for a short time when they
chained themselves to a balcony overlooking the floor.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A13)
1989 Sep 14, Joseph T. Wesbecker,
a 47-year-old pressman on disability for mental illness, killed himself
after he shot 8 people dead and wounded 12 at a printing plant in
Louisville, Ky.
(AP, 9/14/99)
1989 Sep 15, Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Robert Penn Warren (b.1905), the first poet
laureate of the United States, died in Stratton, Vt., at age 84. He
authored 16 poetry collections and 10 novels that included the 1946
"All the King’s Men."
(WSJ, 2/27/97, p.A15)(AP, 9/14/99)
1989 Sep 16, Debbye Turner of
Missouri was crowned Miss America at the pageant in Atlantic City, N.J.
(AP, 9/16/99)
1989 Sep 17, In the 41st Emmy
Awards winners included LA Law, Cheers, Dana Delany & Candice
Bergen.
(http://imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Emmy_Awards/1989)
1989 Sep 17, Hurricane Hugo
slammed into several Caribbean islands, including St. Croix, which was
the hardest hit. The 4 day sweep through the Caribbean killed 62.
(AP, 9/17/99)
1989 Sep 18, Hurricane Hugo
reached Puerto Rico, causing extensive damage as it continued to barrel
toward the U.S. mainland.
(AP, 9/18/97)
1989 Sep 19, A Paris-bound French
DC-10, UTA Flight 772, was bombed over the Sahara desert of Niger and
all 170 passengers died. French authorities placed the blame on Libya’s
Abdallah Senoussi, brother-in-law of Moammar Khadafy and chief of
foreign operations for the Libyan secret service. The six Libyan
suspects were named by a French judge in 1998 and tried in absentia in
1999. The attack was in retaliation for French intervention on behalf
of Chad in a war with Libya since the mid 1980s. In 2004 Libya signed a
$170 million compensation accord with families of the people killed. In
2008 a federal judge in Washington ordered Libya and six of its
officials to pay more than $6 billion in damages to the families of 7
Americans killed in the attack.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C3)(SFEC,10/19/97, p.A26)(WSJ,
1/30/98, p.A1)(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A11)(SFC, 3/9/99, p.B10)(AP,
9/19/99)(AP, 1/9/04)(Reuters, 1/16/08)
1989 Sep 20, The musical "Miss
Saigon," premiered in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Boublil)
1989 Sep 20, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev pulled off a major shake-up of the Soviet Communist Party,
dropping three Politburo members.
(AP, 9/20/99)
1989 Sep 20, F.W. de Klerk
(b.1936) was sworn in as president of South Africa. Frederik Willem de
Klerk was the last president (1989-1994) of Apartheid-era South Africa.
(AP,
9/20/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_Willem_de_Klerk)
1989 Sep 21, General Colin Powell
was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1989 Sep 21, Hurricane Hugo,
packing winds of up to 135 mph, crashed into Charleston, S.C.
(AP, 9/21/99)
1989 Sep 21, In Alton, Texas, 21
students died when their school bus collided with a truck and careered
into a water-filled pit.
(AP, 9/21/99)
1989 Sep 22, Irving Berlin, one of
America's most prolific songwriters, died in New York City at age 101.
(AP, 9/22/99)
1989 Sep 22, An IRA-bomb killed 10
British marines in Kent.
(http://tinyurl.com/lsjdw)
1989 Sep 23, President Bush,
saying he was "very pleased" with talks between Secretary of State
James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, told
reporters there would be a superpower summit later in the year.
(AP, 9/23/99)
1989 Sep 24, Residents of
Charleston, S.C., attended church services as they faced a third day of
recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Hugo. Hugo caused 56
deaths in the Caribbean and 29 in the United States. The storm hit
Guadeloupe, Montserrat, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico before
striking South Carolina.
(AP, 9/24/99)(AP, 9/11/04)
1989 Sep 25, President Bush,
addressing the UN General Assembly, offered to slash American stocks of
chemical weapons by more than 80%, provided the Soviets did the same.
(AP, 9/25/99)
1989 Sep 26, In a speech to the UN
General Assembly, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze accepted
President Bush's call for deep cuts in US and Soviet chemical weapon
stockpiles. Shevardnadze called for the total destruction of Soviet and
US chemical weapons.
(AP, 9/26/99)(www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/chron.htm)
1989 Sep 26, The last Vietnamese
soldiers left Cambodia. Vietnam withdrew the last of 26,000 troops.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(PC, 1992 ed, p.1113)
1989 Sep 27, Columbia Pictures
Entertainment Inc. agreed to a $3.4 billion buyout by Sony Corporation.
(AP, 9/27/99)
1989 Sep 28, Deposed Philippine
President Ferdinand E. Marcos died in exile in Hawaii at age 72. He was
the author of 2 books: "The Law of Human Rights in the Philippines" and
"Democracy in the Philippines." Marcos’ corrupt US backed regime in the
Philippines spanned over twenty years. Corazon Aquino was his successor.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A26)(AP, 9/28/97)(SFC, 5/12/97,
p.A18)
1989 Sep 29, In California The
Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 was signed into law. Republican
Gov. George Deukmejian and Democratic lawmakers in control of the
Legislature had negotiated the creation of the Integrated Waste
Management Board to oversee the reduction of waste going to landfills.
(SSFC, 6/14/09, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/l9wx7d)
1989 Sep 29, Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor
was convicted of battery for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer
who had pulled over her Rolls-Royce for expired license plates. As part
of her sentence, Gabor served three days in jail.
(AP, 9/29/99)
1989 Sep 30, Virgil Thomson
(b.1896), US composer and critic, died at age 92. His work
included “4 Saints in 3 Acts” (1934) and "The Mother of Us All,"
products of the collaboration between the closeted gay composer and the
extroverted lesbian poet, Gertrude Stein. In 1997 Anthony Tommasini
wrote "Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle."
(www.glbtq.com/arts/thomson_v.html)(SFEC,10/19/97,
Par p.18)
1989 Sep 30, Thousands of East
Germans who had sought refuge in West German embassies in
Czechoslovakia and Poland began emigrating under an accord between
Soviet bloc and NATO nations.
(AP, 9/30/99)
1989 Sep, Ten workers of the
Kentucky Pyro Mining Co. were killed in a mine explosion of methane
gas. In 1996 3 executives were sentenced to prison for safety-law
violations.
(SFC, 6/13/96, p.A4)(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A7)
1989 Sep, Ramiz Alia, head of
Albania, addressed the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee and
signaled that radical changes to the economic system were necessary.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-134.html)
1989 Sep, Israel outlawed Hamas as
a terrorist organization following dozens of shooting attacks that
killed Israelis.
(SFC, 3/23/04,
p.A11)(www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=13)
1989 Sep, Werner Aspenstrom
(1919-1997), Swedish poet, resigned from the Nobel Academy for
literature, along with novelists Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten, for
the academy’s weak response to the Salmon Rushdie controversy.
Aspenstrom’s work included "Snolegend" (1949) and "Varelser" (1989).
(http://tinyurl.com/nw7gr)
1989 Oct 1, Gen. Colin Powell was
appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the US Dept. of
Defense.
(SSFC, 12/17/00, p.A14)
1989 Oct 1, The San Francisco
Health Department reported the first two documented cases in which men
became infected with the AIDS virus through oral sex.
(http://ww5.aegis.org/news/ap/1990/AP901005.html)
1989 Oct 1, Thousands of East
Germans received a triumphal welcome in West Germany after the
communist government agreed to let them leave for the West.
(AP, 10/1/99)
1989 Oct 1, In Copenhagen,
Denmark, 11 homosexual couples were married. It was the first time any
country allowed such marriages.
(SFC, 5/26/96, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 12/12/98, p.B3)
1989 Oct 2, Nearly 10,000 people
marched through Leipzig, East Germany, demanding legalization of
opposition groups and adoption of democratic reforms in the country's
largest protest since 1953.
{Germany}
(AP, 10/2/99)
1989 Oct 3, Art Shell became the
first African-American to coach a professional football team, the Los
Angeles Raiders.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1989 Oct 3, In a move to stem the
flow of refugees to the West, East Germany suspended unrestricted
travel to Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 10/3/99)
1989 Oct 3, The EU Parliament
issued its “Television Without Frontiers” directive.
(http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=ks&folder=4&paper=11)
1989 Oct 3, Troops loyal to
Panamanian leader General Manuel Noriega crushed a coup attempt by
rebel mid-level officers. The officers, including Maj. Moises Giroldi,
who led the failed coup against Noriega were later executed. Noriega
was convicted in absentia in 1995 and in 1999 Panama sought his
extradition to face trial.
(AP, 10/3/99)(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.A1)(SFC, 1/25/07, p.A14)
1989 Oct 4, Fawaz Younis, a
Lebanese hijacker convicted of commandeering a Jordanian jetliner in
1985 with two Americans aboard, was sentenced in Washington to 30 years
in prison.
(AP, 10/4/99)
1989 Oct 4, Famed race horse
Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, died at Claiborne Farm,
Paris, Ky., at age 19 ½.
(AH, 10/04, p.15)
1989 Oct 5, The Dalai Lama, the
spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, was named winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize.
(AP, 10/5/99)
1989 Oct 5, A jury in Charlotte,
N.C., convicted former PTL evangelist Jim Bakker on all 24 counts of
fraud and conspiracy. He used his television show to defraud followers.
(AP, 10/5/99)
1989 Oct 6, Actress Bette Davis
(81) died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. In 1962 she authored her memoir
“The Lonely Life.” In 2006 Charlotte Chandler authored “The Girl Who
Walked Home Alone,” a personal biography of Davis.
(AP, 10/6/97)(WSJ, 3/4/06, p.P8)(WSJ, 2/21/09, p.W8)
1989 Oct 6, Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev joined in festivities in East Berlin marking the 40th
anniversary of East Germany, while thousands of refugees migrated to
the West.
(AP, 10/6/99)
1989 Oct 7, Hungary's Communist
Party renounced Marxism in favor of democratic socialism during a party
congress in Budapest.
(AP, 10/7/99)
1989 Oct 8, The Oakland A's won
the American League pennant for the second year in a row by defeating
the Toronto Blue Jays.
(AP, 10/8/99)
1989 Oct 9, The San Francisco
Giants won the National League championship by defeating the Chicago
Cubs.
(AP, 10/9/99)
1989 Oct 9, The official Soviet
news agency Tass reported that a spaceship of some kind, complete with
a trio of tall aliens, had visited a park in the city of Voronezh.
(AP, 10/9/99)
1989 Oct 10, South African
President F.W. de Klerk announced that eight prominent political
prisoners, including African National Congress official Walter Sisulu,
would be unconditionally freed, but that Nelson Mandela would remain
imprisoned.
(AP, 10/10/99)
1989 Oct 11, The US House narrowly
approved an amendment to an appropriations bill that would restore
Medicaid for abortions in cases of rape or incest. President Bush later
vetoed the bill, and the veto was upheld.
(AP, 10/11/99)
1989 Oct 11, In California Cathy
Paternoster (32) was shot and killed and her boyfriend Carl Fuerst (41)
was wounded outside their Spring Valley Lake home. In 2009 Eric Fagan
(74) was arrested in connection with the killing of Paternoster, his
girlfriend’s daugher. Police said Fagan had killed Cathy Paternoster so
that her mother, Betty Paternoster, could gain custody of her 3
granddaughters.
(SFC, 10/23/09, p.D4)(www.sbsun.com/news/ci_13618941)
1989 Oct 12, The US House approved
a statutory federal ban on desecration of the American flag. The Senate
defeated the measure a week later.
(AP, 10/12/99)
1989 Oct 12, Jay Ward (b.1920),
cartoonist, died. He and Bill Scott produced the 1959 TV show "Rocky
and His Friends," which featured Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J.
Moose.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB
p.63)(http://members.shaw.ca/fffff/ward.html)
1989 Oct 13, The Dow Jones
Industrial Average plunged 190 points, triggering memories of the 1987
crash.
(AP, 10/13/99)
1989 Oct 14, Colombia extradited
three suspected drug traffickers to the United States as part of a war
on the cocaine cartel.
(AP, 10/14/99)
1989 Oct 15, The NHL's Wayne
Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings surpassed Gordie Howe's scoring record
of 1,850 points, in a game against the Edmonton Oilers.
(AP, 10/15/99)
1989 Oct 15, South African
officials released eight prominent political prisoners, including
Walter Sisulu, a leader of the African National Congress.
(AP, 10/15/99)
1989 Oct 16, President Bush signed
an order cutting federal programs by $16.1 billion under the
Gramm-Rudman budget-reduction law.
(AP, 10/16/99)
1989 Oct 17, The 7.1 Loma Prieta
earthquake [Watsonville] hit the Bay Area minutes before the start of a
World Series game at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. 67 people died
and 3,000 were injured. It caused $7 billion worth of damage. The
Spreckel’s Temple of Music in Golden Gate Park was damaged and later
restored. 28,000 structures were damaged and several freeways ruined.
42 people died on the Cypress Freeway. At the train station in SF Dr.
Margaret McChesney commandeered a tour bus to take frightened
passengers home and navigated the driver safely through barricades of
cars and gangs of marauding youths on 3rd St. In 1999 new measuring
methods changed the magnitude to 6.9.
(SFC, 4/15/96,A-6)(SFC, 10/17/96, A15)(SFC, 7/23/97,
p.A13)(AP, 10/17/97)(AR,9/12/98)(HN, 10/17/98)(SFC, 10/7/99, p.A21)
1989 Oct 18, The space shuttle
Atlantis was launched on a five-day mission that included deployment of
the Galileo space probe on a course for Jupiter.
(SFC, 6/28/96, p.A2)(AP, 10/18/99)
1989 Oct 18, In East Germany after
18 years in power, Erich Honecker resigned from his offices as head of
state and party leader. He was succeeded by Egon Krenz.
(AP,
10/18/97)(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)(http://tinyurl.com/84fnq)
1989 Oct 19, Camilo Jose Cela of
Spain received the Nobel Prize for literature.
(AP, 10/19/99)
1989 Oct 19, The US Senate
rejected a proposed constitutional amendment barring desecration of the
American flag.
(AP, 10/19/99)
1989 Oct 19, The Guildford Four,
cleared from earlier conviction for the 1975 IRA bombings of public
houses in Guildford and Woolwich, England, were cleared of all charges
after 14 years in prison. Sarah Conlon (1926-2008) struggled for years
to clear her son, Gerry Conlon, imprisoned as one of the Guildford Four.
(http://tinyurl.com/7dyb2)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.88)
1989 Oct 20, The Senate convicted
U.S. District Judge Alcee L. Hastings of perjury and conspiracy and
removed him from office. The conviction was later overturned and
Hastings was later elected in Florida to the House of Representatives.
(AP, 10/20/99)(SFC, 9/18/08, p.A6)
1989 Oct 20, Former President
Reagan and his wife, Nancy, began a visit to Japan sponsored by a media
conglomerate.
(AP, 10/20/99)
1989 Oct 20, Smith Dairy at
Orrville, Ohio, made the largest milk shake (1,575.2 gal).
(http://library.thinkquest.org/11960/fun/records.htm)
1989 Oct 20, Anthony Quayle (76),
English actor (Moses, Operation Crossbow), died in London of liver
cancer.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0703033/)
1989 Oct 21, Rescue workers in
Oakland, Calif., pulled longshoreman Buck Helm alive from the wreckage
of the Nimitz Freeway, part of which had collapsed during the Oct. 17
earthquake. Helm died less than a month later.
(AP, 10/21/99)
1989 Oct 22, Survivors of the
Northern California earthquake attended church services as the cleanup
and recovery efforts continued.
(AP, 10/22/99)
1989 Oct 22, Jacob Erwin
Wetterling (b.1978) was abducted in St. Joseph, Minnesota. Neither he
or his abductor have been found. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes
Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, more
simply known as the Jacob Wetterling Act, was passed in his honor.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling)
1989 Oct 22, Khmer Rouge occupied
Pailin in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used the gem mining town of Pailin
near the Thai border to finance its operations with gem and timber
profits.
(http://tinyurl.com/p6u5f)
1989 Oct 22, The Lebanese
parliament agreed on a power-sharing formula between Christians and
Muslims that ended civil war a year later.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1989 Oct 23, In a case that
inflamed racial tensions in Boston, Charles Stuart claimed he and his
pregnant wife, Carol, had been shot in their car by a black robber.
Carol Stuart and her prematurely delivered baby died; Charles Stuart
later died, an apparent suicide, after he was implicated.
(AP, 10/23/99)
1989 Oct 23, Twenty-three people
were killed in an explosion at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s chemical
complex in Pasadena, Texas.
(AP, 10/23/99)
1989 Oct 23, Hungary proclaimed
itself a republic and declared an end to communist rule.
(http://tinyurl.com/qrnfm)
1989 Oct 24, TV evangelist Jim
Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined half-a-million
dollars for fleecing his flock.
(http://atheism.about.com/b/a/211843.htm)
1989 Oct
24, In East Germany Egon Krenz assumed the chairmanship of the Council
of State. [see Dec 3,6]
(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Oct 25, Novelist and critic
Mary McCarthy (b.1912) died in New York at age 77. Her work included:
"The Company She Keeps," "Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood," "The Group,"
and "Ideas and the Novel." In 2000 Frances Kiernan authored the
biography "Seeing Mary Plain."
(AP, 10/25/99)(WSJ, 3/17/00, p.W9)(SFEC, 4/30/00, BR
p.3)
1989 Oct 25, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev began a three-day visit to Finland.
(AP, 10/25/99)
1989 Oct 26, Washington, D.C.
attorney Paul Tagliabue was tapped by NFL team owners to be the
league's new commissioner, succeeding Pete Rozelle.
(AP, 10/26/99)
1989 Oct 27, The third game of the
World Series, delayed by the Northern California earthquake, was played
at Candlestick Park. The Oakland A's defeated the SF Giants, 13-7.
(AP, 10/27/99)
1989 Oct 28, The Oakland A's won
the earthquake-interrupted World Series, completing a four-game sweep
of the San Francisco Giants.
(AP, 10/28/99)
1989 Oct 28, Twenty people were
killed in the crash of a commuter plane on the island of Hawaii.
(AP, 10/28/99)
1989 Oct 29, Angelo Mercurio
(1936-2006), an FBI informant, attended a Mafia induction ceremony at a
suburban Boston home. His evidence helped bring down the crime family
led by Raymond “Junior” Patriarca.
(SFC, 2/13/07, p.B4)(http://tinyurl.com/36ccng)
1989 Oct 29, At least 20,000 East
Berliners observed a minute of silence for those killed while
attempting to flee over the Berlin Wall, the first such public mourning
since Communist Party authorities built the wall in 1961.
(AP, 10/29/99)
1989 Oct 30, Mitsubishi Estate
Co., a major Japanese real estate concern, announced it was buying 51
percent of Rockefeller Group Inc. of New York.
(AP, 10/30/99)
1989 Oct 31, President Bush
announced he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would hold an early
December summit aboard ships in the Mediterranean near Malta.
(AP, 10/31/99)
1989 Oct, Al Martino, pop singer,
was inducted into the Philadelphia Hall of Fame.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, DB p.74)
1989 Oct, The Nobel Prize in
Economics was awarded to Trygve Haavelmo of Norway, for clarification
of the probability theory foundation of econometrics.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A2)(AP, 10/11/09)
1989 Oct, Pres. Menem issued
pardons to 277 of those already convicted or indicted for crimes during
the rule of the military junta, including nearly 40 generals and
several guerrilla leaders.
(Econ, 4/14/07,
p.40)(www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Argentin.htm)
1989 Oct, In El Salvador the CIA
station in San Salvador began providing the Salvadoran security forces
with money to the resettle Marxist guerilla turned informer, Pedro
Antonio Andrade Martinez (aka Mario Gonzalez), in the US. He had been
recently captured and became a highly paid informer for the Salvadoran
armed forces. Information from Andrade later led to the capture,
torture or disappearance of some 200 guerrillas. In 1996 he was
arrested in the US for failure to renew his visa. In 1997 the Clinton
administration sought to deport him.
(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A21)(SFC, 2/22/96, p.A7)
1989 Nov 1, East Germany reopened
its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees
to flee to the West.
(AP, 11/1/99)
1989 Nov 1, A Scandinavian
Airlines System (SAS) and Finnair ban on smoking took effect for all
Nordic flights.
(http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/13/suppl_1/i20)
1989 Nov 2, President Bush and
congressional Republicans dropped their Capitol Hill quest for a cut in
the capital gains tax.
(AP, 11/2/99)
1989 Nov 2, Sister Diana Ortiz was
raped and tortured in Guatemala. She has claimed that a man called
Allejandro appeared in charge and that he spoke colloquial English and
spoke of contacts with the US Embassy. The US government has denied any
connection.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.A-6)(SFC, 5/7/96, p.A-10)
1989 Nov 3, East German leader
Egon Krenz delivered a nationally broadcast speech in which he promised
sweeping economic and political reforms and called on East Germans to
stay.
(AP, 11/3/99)
1989 Nov 4, Up to a million East
Germans filled the streets of East Berlin for a pro-democracy rally.
(AP, 11/4/99)
1989 Nov 4, Typhoon Gay hit India.
It claimed 69 lives there and destroyed or damaged some 20,000 homes.
In total it caused 1,060 direct casualties.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Gay_(1989))
1989 Nov 4, Iran marked the 10th
anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy.
(AP, 11/4/99)
1989 Nov 4, In Japan Yokohama
lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, was kidnapped with his wife and infant son.
He had been leading a legal crusade against the Aum Shinri Kyo cult.
Later top members of the cult admitted to killing the family. In 1998
Kazuaki Okazaki (38) was sentenced to death for the murder. In 2000
Satoru Hashimoto was sentenced to death for the strangling deaths of
the Sakamoto family and for the 1995 sarin gas attacks.
(SFC, 4/24/96, p.A-8)(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A12)(SFC,
7/26/00, p.A14)
1989 Nov 5, Vladimir Horowitz,
Russian-born pianist, died at age 85. His wife, Wanda, (d.1998), was
the daughter of conductor Arturo Toscanini.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.D4)(AP, 11/5/99)
1989 Nov 5, Singer-songwriter
Barry Sadler, 49, died in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
(AP, 11/5/99)
1989 Nov 6, Kitty Dukakis, wife of
Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, was hospitalized after ingesting
rubbing alcohol.
(AP, 11/6/99)
1989 Nov 6, Word Perfect 5.1 was
released.
(www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/chronology.html)
1989 Nov 6, The Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, initiated by Australia, began as an
informal Ministerial-level dialogue group with 12 members: Australia,
Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines,
Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United States.
(SFEC,11/23/97,
p.A21)(www.apec.org/apec/member_economies.html)
1989 Nov 7, NYC elected it's 1st
black mayor, David N. Dinkins, and female comptroller, Elizabeth
Holtzman.
(AP,
11/7/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dinkins)
1989 Nov 7, L. Douglas Wilder won
the governor's race in Virginia, becoming the first elected black
governor in US history.
(AP, 11/7/97)
1989 Nov 7, Richard Ramirez,
convicted of California's "Night Stalker" killings, was sentenced to
death.
(AP, 11/7/99)
1989 Nov 8, In an attempt to
strengthen his 3-week-old leadership, East German Communist Party chief
Egon Krenz ousted the old guard of the ruling Politburo, replacing them
with reformers.
(AP, 11/8/99)
1989 Nov 9, The Berlin Wall was
broke open. Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing
citizens to travel freely to the West. Joyous Germans danced atop the
Berlin Wall. Over its 28-year history at least 136 people were
confirmed killed trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin, according
to official figures. However, a prominent victims' group claimed that
more than 200 people were killed trying to flee from East to West
Berlin. Peter Wyden in this year authored "Wall: The Inside Story of
Divided Berlin." In 2004 William F. Buckley authored "The Fall of the
Berlin Wall."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall)(SFC,
5/30/96, p.A12)(AP, 11/9/97)(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A27)(WSJ, 3/18/04,
p.D10)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.25)
1989 Nov 9, Turgut Ozal became the
8th president of Turkey elected by the Grand National Assembly of
Turkey.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgut_%C3%96zal)
1989 Nov 10, In Bulgaria Communist
ruler Todor Zhivkov was thrown out of office after a 35-year
dictatorship. The ouster was led by Foreign Minister Petar Mladenov who
later became president.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.B3)(SFC, 5/2/97,
p.A14)(www.bulgaria.com/history/rulers/zhivkov.html)
1989 Nov 10, Workers began
punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, a day after East Germany abolished
its border restrictions.
(AP, 11/10/99)
1989 Nov 11, In a telephone
conversation with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, East German
leader Egon Krenz ruled out any possibility reunification.
(AP, 11/11/99)
1989 Nov 12, The Broadway musical
"Grand Hotel," written by George Forrest and Robert Wright, opened at
the Martin Beck Theater for 1018 performances. William A. Drake's 1932
screenplay was based on his own play adaptation of Vicki Baum's novel
Menschen im Hotel.
(SFC, 10/13/99,
p.C2)(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4254)
1989 Nov 12, Abortion rights
advocates rallied in cities across the country, including Washington,
D.C.
(AP, 11/12/99)
1989 Nov 12, A triple conjunction
of Neptune and Saturn took place.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_conjunction)
1989 Nov 13, IBM and Microsoft
expanded their partnership and agreed to develop software for MS-DOS,
MS OS/2, and MS LAN.
(Wired, 12/98, p.197)
1989 Nov 14, The U.S. Navy,
alarmed over a recent string of serious accidents, ordered an
unprecedented 48-hour stand-down.
(AP, 11/14/99)
1989 Nov 15, Solidarity leader
Lech Walesa was cheered by American lawmakers as he told a joint
meeting of Congress that U.S. aid to Poland "will not be wasted, and
will never be forgotten."
(AP, 11/15/99)
1989 Nov 16, Six Jesuit priests
and two other people were slain by uniformed gunmen at the Jose Simeon
Canas University in El Salvador in an attack later blamed on army
troops. Later 19 Salvadoran soldiers, trained at the US Army School of
the Americas, were linked to the killing. In 2006 US police in Los
Angeles arrested a Salvadoran ex-lieutenant convicted of killing the 6
Jesuits. In 2009 a Spanish judge opened an investigation into 14
ex-Salvadoran military officials and considered indicting them over the
killings.
(AP, 11/16/99)(SFC, 9/21/96, p.A3)(WSJ, 10/27/06,
p.A1)(AP, 1/13/09)
1989 Nov 17, A US Senate Ethics
Committee hired an outside counsel to look into allegations of
improprieties against six senators.
(AP, 11/17/99)
1989 Nov 17, The Cosmic Background
Explorer Satellite (COBE) was launched. It provided evidence for the
"Big Bang" that spawned the universe 10-20 billion years ago. Dr. David
T. Wilkinson (1935-2002) was the driving force behind the launch.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(SFC, 9/16/02, p.A20)
1989 Nov 17, Emerson Buckley
(b.1917), conductor and composer, died.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/11_17/7/index.html)
1989 Nov 17, In Prague,
Czechoslovakia, a protest began as a legal rally to commemorate the
death of Jan Opletal, but turned instead into a demonstration demanding
democratic reforms. Riot police stopped the students halfway in their
march, in Narodni trida. After a stand-off in which the students
offered flowers to the riot police and showed no resistance, the police
began beating the young demonstrators with night sticks. The six-week
period between November 17 and December 29, 1989, also known as the
"Velvet Revolution" brought about the bloodless overthrow of the
Czechoslovak communist regime.
(http://archiv.radio.cz/history/history15.html)
1989 Nov 18, Pennsylvania became
the 1st state to restrict abortions after Supreme Court gave states the
right to do so.
(http://tinyurl.com/fef7u)
1989 Nov 18, Longshoreman Buck
Helm died at a hospital in Oakland, almost a month after he was pulled
from a section of the Nimitz Freeway flattened by the northern
California earthquake.
(AP, 11/18/99)
1989 Nov 19, Funeral services were
held in El Salvador for six Jesuit priests slain by uniformed gunmen.
(AP, 11/19/99)
1989 Nov 20, More than 200,000
people rallied peacefully in Prague, Czechoslovakia, demanding
democratic reforms and the ouster of Communist Party leader Milos
Jakes.
(AP, 11/20/99)
1989 Nov 21, A law banning smoking
on most domestic flights signed by President Bush.
(http://tinyurl.com/gf6zq)
1989 Nov 21, The proceedings of
Britain's House of Commons were televised live for the first time.
(AP, 11/21/99)
1989 Nov 22, Eastern Airlines
pilots and flight attendants ended their strike. President Bush vetoed
a bill that would set up panel to investigate walkout. The strike by
machinists continued.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1989-11/1989-11-22-ABC-11.html)
1989 Nov 22, The space shuttle
Discovery blasted off at night.
(AP, 11/22/99)
1989 Nov 22, President Rene Moawad
of Lebanon was assassinated less than three weeks after taking office.
(AP, 11/22/99)
1989 Nov 23, Lucia Barrera de
Cerna, a housekeeper who said she had witnessed the slaying of six
Jesuit priests and two other people at the Jose Simeon Canas University
in El Salvador, was flown to the U.S. under heavy security.
(AP, 11/23/99)
1989 Nov 23, At least 300,000
people jammed Prague's Wenceslas Square to demand democratic reforms in
Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1989 Nov 24, Czechoslovakia's
hard-line Communist party leadership resigned after more than a week of
protests against its policies.
(AP, 11/24/99)
1989 Nov 24, In Peshawar,
Pakistan, Abdulla Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian intellectual, was
assassinated in a car bombing reportedly ordered by Osama bin Laden for
suspected CIA ties.
(SFC, 8/19/98,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Yusuf_Azzam)
1989 Nov 24, Romanian leader
Nicolae Ceausescu was unanimously re-elected Communist Party chief.
Within a month, he was overthrown in a popular uprising and executed
along with his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day.
(AP, 11/24/04)
1989 Nov 25, More than 500,000
demonstrators gathered in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where they scoffed at
a Communist Party shakeup and cheered Alexander Dubcek, the reformer
ousted in 1968.
(AP, 11/25/99)
1989 Nov 26, In the Comoro Islands
Pres. Ahmed Abdallah was assassinated in his presidential palace in
Moroni. In 1999 Bob Denard (Gilbert Bourgeaud), a French mercenary and
head of the presidential guard, and Dominique Malacrino were put on
trial for the killing. Denard was acquitted.
(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A15) (SFC, 5/20/99,
p.A13)(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Ahmed_Abdallah)
1989 Nov 26, El Salvador broke
relations with Nicaragua after a weapons-loaded plane from that country
was downed in El Salvador.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1989 Nov 26, In a national
referendum, voters decided that Hungary's next president would be
chosen by parliament, following free elections.
(AP, 11/26/99)
1989 Nov 27, A bomb, blamed by
police on drug traffickers, destroyed a Colombian jetliner minutes
after takeoff from Bogota's international airport. 107 people were
killed.
(AP, 11/27/99)
1989 Nov 28, Romanian gymnast
Nadia Comaneci arrived in New York after escaping her homeland by way
of Hungary.
(AP, 11/28/99)
1989 Nov 29, The Czechs ended the
Communist party's 40-year monopoly on power. The revolution in
Czechoslovakia was called the "Velvet Revolution" because of the little
violence.
(HFA, '96, p.18)(SFEC, 2/2/97, DB. p.34)(AP,
11/29/99)
1989 Nov 29, India president Rajiv
Gandhi resigned.
(http://tinyurl.com/grzg4)
1989 Nov 30, President Bush left
Washington for his first summit with Soviet President Mikhail S.
Gorbachev that took place aboard ships off the Mediterranean island of
Malta.
(AP, 11/30/99)
1989 Nov 30, Alfred Herrhausen,
chairman of West Germany's largest bank, was killed in a bombing
claimed by the Red Army Faction. No Red Army member was charged and in
2007 officials began to focus on Stasi, the East German police.
(AP, 11/30/99)(Econ, 4/29/06, p.88)(WSJ, 9/15/07,
p.A1)
1989 Nov, Rebellion erupted in
India-held Kashmir and small arms sniping between Indian soldiers and
rebels became routine. Many of the Islamic separatists trained in
Pakistan
(SFC, 6/12/99, p.A12)(SFC, 6/8/02, p.A20)
1989 Nov, In Mexico Jose Madariaga
joined Raul Salinas and TV exec Abraham Zabludovsky in buying Mexicana
de Autobuses SA, a bus manufacturing company, for $4.4 million.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1989 Nov, Turkey’s Pres. Turgut
Ozal (1927-1993) alarmed Syria and Iraq when he announced that the flow
of the Euphrates River would be held back for a month to fill the
Ataturk dam. Flow was increased for 2 months before the cutback to
offset the loss.
(NG, 5/93, p.49)(http://tinyurl.com/2mmycb)
1989 Dec 1, Alvin Ailey (b.1931),
leader of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Blues Suite,
Revelations), died. In 1996 Jennifer Dunning wrote his biography:
"Alvin Ailey, A Life in Dance."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.4)(WSJ, 5/13/98,
p.A20)(www.the-ballet.com/ailey.php)
1989 Dec 1, East Germany's
Parliament abolished the Communist Party's constitutional guarantee of
supremacy.
(AP, 12/1/99)
1989 Dec 1, In an extraordinary
encounter, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Pope John
Paul II at the Vatican.
(AP, 12/1/99)
1989 Dec 2, President Bush and
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held the first talks of their
wind-tossed Malta summit aboard the Soviet cruise ship "Maxim Gorky."
(AP, 12/2/99)
1989 Dec 2, V.P. Singh was sworn
in as prime minister of India.
(AP, 12/2/99)
1989 Dec
3, The East German SED Politburo resigned. 3 days later Communist
leader Egon Krenz stepped down as Chairman of the Council of State.
(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Dec 3, In Malta Presidents
George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold
War.
(HN, 12/3/02)
1989 Dec 4, President Bush briefed
NATO leaders in Brussels, Belgium, on the just-concluded Malta summit
with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
(AP, 12/4/99)
1989 Dec 5, East Germany's former
leaders, including ousted Communist Party chief Erich Honecker, were
placed under house arrest.
(AP 12/5/97)
1989 Dec 5, A French TGV train
reached a world record speed of 482.4 kph.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_world_speed_record)
1989 Dec 6, In Canada 14 women
were shot to death at the University of Montreal's school of
engineering by Marc Lepine, who then took his own life.
(AP, 12/6/97)
1989 Dec
6, Egon Krenz resigned as leader of East Germany. In 1997 Krenz was
convicted with 2 colleagues of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of
those who tried to flee across the Berlin Wall prior to its demise.
(WSJ, 11/9/99, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/akpba)
1989 Dec 7, East Germany's
Communist Party agreed to cooperate with the opposition in paving the
way for free elections and a revised constitution.
(AP, 12/7/99)
1989 Dec 8, Communist leaders in
Czechoslovakia offered to surrender their control over the government
and accept a minority role in a coalition Cabinet.
(AP, 12/8/99)
1989 Dec 9, President Bush's
national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary of
State Lawrence Eagleburger began a surprise visit to Beijing, six
months after China's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1989 Dec 10, Czechoslovakia's
president, Gustav Husak, resigned after swearing in a coalition cabinet
in which Communists were relegated to a minority role.
(AP, 12/10/99)
1989 Dec 11, President Bush,
facing criticism at home for sending two U.S. officials to China,
defended the diplomatic overture despite the Beijing government's
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators the previous June.
(AP, 12/11/99)
1989 Dec 12, In New York, hotel
queen Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison for tax
evasion. Helmsley served 18 months behind bars, plus a month at a
halfway house and two months of house arrest.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1989 Dec 12, Amid international
criticism, Britain forcibly removed 51 Vietnamese from Hong Kong and
returned them to their homeland.
(AP, 12/12/99)
1989 Dec 13, In Alaska Mt. Redoubt
began erupting. Nearly every one of the volcanic events during the
1989-90 eruption of Redoubt Volcano generated lahars in the Drift River
Valley.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/About/What/Monitor/Hydrologic/AFMRedoubt.html)
1989 Dec 13, South African
President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African
National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape
Town.
(AP, 12/13/99)
1989 Dec 14, Opposition leader
Patricio Aylwin, representing the left and center opposition alliance,
was elected president in Chile's first free election since 1970.
However the generals maintained great power that included the right to
veto political decisions.
(AP, 12/14/02)(WSJ, 1/9/96,
p.A-10)(http://web.mit.edu/17.508/www/week8.html)
1989 Dec 14, Nobel Peace laureate
(1975) Andrei D. Sakharov died in Moscow at age 68.
(AP, 12/14/99)
1989 Dec 15, GM and SAAB agreed to
form a 50-50 joint auto-making company, called Saab Automobile A.B. GM
acquired the rest of SAAB a decade later.
(http://tinyurl.com/oktgl)(Econ, 1/31/09, p.72)
1989 Dec 15, Mt. Redoubt erupted
in Alaska and sent baseball-sized pieces of pumice over 20 miles from
the volcano. A 747 jet flew into its ash cloud, lost all four engines
and dropped 4,000 feet before it recovered. No one was hurt but the
plane sustained $80 million in damage.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.31)
1989 Dec 15, Drug trafficker
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha was killed in northern Colombia following a
shootout with police.
(AP, 12/15/99)
1989 Dec 15, A popular uprising
that resulted in the downfall of Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu began as
demonstrators gathered in Timisoara to prevent the arrest of the
Reverend Laszlo Tokes, a dissident clergyman.
(AP, 12/15/99)
1989 Dec 16, US Federal appeals
court judge Robert S. Vance was killed by a mail bomb at his Alabama
home. Walter Leroy Moody Junior was later sentenced to death for
killing Vance, and received seven life terms on federal charges in that
killing and the death of civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson.
(AP, 12/16/99)
1989 Dec 17, The cartoon series
“The Simpsons” premiered on Fox TV.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons)
1989 Dec 17, More than 100,000
Soviet citizens turned out to honor the late human rights advocate
Andrei D. Sakharov, a day before he was buried in Moscow.
(AP, 12/17/99)
1989 Dec 18, Robert E. Robinson,
an attorney and alderman in Savannah, Ga., was killed by a mail bomb
similar to a device that had claimed the life of a federal judge in
Alabama two days earlier. Walter Leroy Moody Junior was later convicted
of both bombings, and is on Alabama's death row.
(AP, 12/18/99)
1989 Dec 19, Police in
Jacksonville, Fla., disarmed a parcel bomb at the local NAACP office,
the fourth in a series of mail bombs to turn up in the Deep South. One
bomb killed a Savannah, Ga., alderman, and another a federal judge in
Alabama. Walter L. Moody Jr. was convicted in both bombings.
(AP, 12/18/99)
1989 Dec 20, The United States
launched Operation Just Cause, sending troops into Panama to topple the
government of Gen. Manuel Noriega. Guillermo Endara replaced Noriega.
The US ended on Feb 13, 1990. It cost $182 million and left 23 US
casualties with 320 wounded. A 1997 book: "The Memoirs of Manuel
Noriega" by Noriega and Peter Eisner told his version.
{USA, Panama}
(SFEC, 4/13/97, BR p.3)(AP, 12/20/99)(WSJ, 9/22/99,
p.A8)(HN, 12/20/99)
1989 Dec 21, VP Quayle sent out
30,000 Xmas cards with the word beacon spelled beakon.
(www.totse.com/en/ego/no_laughing_matter/danforth.html)
1989 Dec 21, Kentuckian Larry
Mahoney was convicted on 27 counts of manslaughter for a 1988 collision
with a church bus. It was the nation's most deadly drunken-driving
accident.
(http://tinyurl.com/kuvl3)
1989 Dec 21, Romanian President
Nicolae Ceausescu delivered what turned out to be his final public
speech. The hard-line Communist ruler was visibly stunned as his
listeners began booing. Ceausescu fled from power and was executed four
days later.
(AP, 12/21/99)
1989 Dec 22, Samuel Beckett (83,
playwright, died in Paris. His work included the novel "The Unnamable."
In 1997 2 biographies of Beckett were published: "Damned to Fame" by
James Knowlson and "Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist," by Anthony
Cronin. In 1999 Maurice Harmon published "No Author Better Served: The
Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider." Schneider
(d.1984) was Beckett's American director.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A23)(WSJ, 7/11/97, p.A12)(SFEC,
1/17/99, BR p.7)(AP, 12/22/99)
1989 Dec 22, In Romania there was
a revolt and miners riots. Romania's hard-line Communist ruler, Nicolae
Ceausescu, was toppled in a popular uprising following 23 years of
dictatorial rule. Ion Ileascu and other top Communist functionaries of
Ceausescu seized control. Ileascu ruled until Nov 1996.
(SFC, 11/18/96, p.A10)(SFC, 11/20/96, p.C4)(AP,
12/22/97)(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A11)
1989 Dec 23, Ousted Romanian
President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were captured as they
were attempting to flee their country.
(AP, 12/23/99)
1989 Dec 24, Charles Taylor, a
member of the Gio tribe and a former cabinet minister under Samuel Doe,
led a small group of fighters across the border from the Ivory Coast
into Liberia. Within a few months he had looted and terrorized much of
the countryside and reached the capital. Taylor led the NPFL or
National Patriotic Front. The NPFL was composed mainly of the Mano and
Gio tribes from northern Nimba County.
(SFC,
4/16/96,p.A-9)(SFC,4/17/96,p.A-8)(SFC,1/30/97,p.A9)(SFC,7/19/97, p.A9)
1989 Dec 24, Ousted Panamanian
ruler Manuel Noriega, who had succeeded in eluding US forces, took
refuge at the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City. It took
weeks of negotiation and loud rock music played incessantly outside the
embassy by American forces before Noriega agreed to give himself up.
(AP, 12/24/99)
1989 Dec 25, Billy Martin (61),
former baseball manager, died in a truck crash in Fenton, NY.
(AP, 12/25/99)
1989 Dec 25, In Canada a 6.3
earthquake, the Ungava event, struck northern Quebec and was later
attributed to retreating ice sheets from 10,000 years earlier.
(WSJ, 6/9/06, p.A11)
1989 Dec 25, The Bank of Japan
raised interest rates to slow the heated economy.
(Econ, 7/22/06, p.66)
1989 Dec 25, Ousted Romanian
President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed
following a popular uprising. His regime had mobilized some 700,000
informants to keep tabs on the population of 23 million people.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.B1)(AP, 12/25/97)(SSFC, 8/20/06,
p.A20)
1989 Dec 26, Romanian television
broadcast videotape of ousted President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife,
Elena, at their secret trial and footage of Ceausescu's body after his
execution. That same day, a provisional government took control of
Romania.
(AP, 12/26/99)
1989 Dec 27, President Bush, on a
visit to Beeville, Texas, said he was determined to bring deposed
Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to justice "for poisoning the children
of the United States" with illegal drugs.
(AP, 12/27/99)
1989 Dec 28, Alexander Dubcek,
former Czechoslovak Communist leader deposed in 1968 in a Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact invasion, was named chairman of the country's parliament.
(AP, 12/28/99)
1989 Dec 29, Playwright Vaclav
Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia, the country's first
non-Communist leader in more than four decades.
(AP, 12/29/99)
1989 Dec 30, A Northwest Airlines
DC-10, target of a telephoned threat, flew safely from Paris to Detroit
amid extra-tight security.
(AP, 12/30/99)
1989 Dec 31, "Me & My Girl," a
revival of the 1937 British musical, closed at Marquis Theater, NYC,
after 1420 performances.
(http://tinyurl.com/k3y4d)
1989 Dec 31, The Japanese Nikkei
Index peaked at 38,915. The DJIA was at 2753.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.C1)
1989 Dec 31, Israeli PM Yitzhak
Shamir fired Science Minister Ezer Weizman, accusing him of meeting
with officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
(AP, 12/31/99)
1989 John Cage made his color spit
bite aquatint "75 Stones" at Crown Point Press.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, DB p.37)
1989 Bruce Conner (1933-2008)
created his lithograph collage "Bombhead."
(SFEM, 5/28/00, p.17)(SFC, 5/4/09, p.E3)
1989 Sculptor Arturo Di Modica
placed his 7,000-pound sculpture of a charging bull in front of the New
York Stock Exchange. It was soon moved to the foot of Broadway, where
it remained on “temporary” display. In 1998 he registered a copyright
on the bull.
(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.C3)
1989 Tilted Arc, a sculpture by
Richard Serra, was hauled off to a city warehouse after being displayed
at Federal Plaza in Manhattan. It had become a symbol of the bullying
demands of public art.
(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)
1989 Wayne Thiebaud made his color
etching "Steep Street" at Crown Point Press.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, DB p.37)
1989 Martin Sherman wrote the play
"A Madhouse in Goa."
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A12)
1989 California’s Gov. Brown and
journalist Dick Adler co-authored "Public Justice, Private Mercy: A
Governor’s Education on Death Row."
(SFC, 1/13/03, p.A1)
1989 Thomas Chinn (d.1997 at 88)
published "Bridging the Pacific, San Francisco Chinatown and Its
People," a History of Chinatown.
(SFC, 9/16/97, p.A18)
1989 Stephen R. Covey authored
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
(WSJ, 10/27/07, p.W6)
1989 Miles Davis wrote his
autobiography.
(SFC,11/14/97, p.C12)
1989 David Hackett Fischer
authored “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, a look at
early American settlers from their origins as: Puritans, Quakers,
Cavaliers, and Scots-Irish.
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.39)
1989 Stanley Fischer and Olivier
Blanchard authored “Lectures on Macroeconomics.”
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.78)
1989 Peggy Lee wrote her biography
"Peggy Lee."
(SFC, 8/28/96, E10)
1989 Caroline Reynolds Milbank,
fashion historian, authored "New York Fashion."
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1989 Wayne Newton authored "Once
Before I Go.".
(SFC, 8/28/96, E10)
1989 Robert Allen wrote "The Port
Chicago Mutiny." It described a 1944 explosion at Port Chicago, now the
Concord Naval Weapons Station in Ca., that killed 320 seamen. The Navy
court-martialed 50 black sailors for refusing to go back to work after
the catastrophe.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.3)
1989 Joseph Garber (1943-2005)
authored his novel “Rascal Money.” It was initially intended as a
nonfiction work titled “In Search of Shabiness,” a response to the Tom
Peters book “In Search of Excellence.”
(SSFC, 6/5/05, p.A21)
1989 Prof. Charles M. Hardin
(1908-1997) wrote "Constitutional Reform in America."
(SFC, 7/4/97, p.E2)
1989 Oscar Hijuelos published his
novel "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love." It was made into a movie in
1992.
(SFC, 2/22/99, p.E5)
1989 Michael Lewis authored
“Liar’s Poker,” his semi-autobiographical account of his work with
Salomon Brothers in the 1980s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_Poker)(Econ,
1/24/09, SR p.16)
1989 Prof. Nicholas Howe
1953-2006) of UC Berkeley authored “Migration and Mythmaking in
Anglo-Saxon England.”
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.B6)
1989 "Prisoners of Ritual: An
Odyssey into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa" by Hanny
Lightfoot-Klein was published.
(NH, 8/96, p.65)
1989 James M. McPherson wrote
"Battle Cry of Freedom," a Pulitzer Prize winning work on the Civil War.
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A17)
1989 Vance Packard (1914-1996)
wrote "The Ultra Rich: How Much Is Too Much."
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B6)
1989 Jimmy M. Skaggs wrote
"Clipperton: A History of the Island the World Forgot."
(NH, 12/96, p.70)
1989 Allan Gurganus published his
novel "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."
(SFC,11/21/97, p.C6)
1989 Kazuo Ishiguro won this
year's Booker Award for his novel: "The Remains of the Day."
(WSJ, 10/11/95, p. A-12)
1989 In Japan Shintaro Isihara and
Akio Morita, former chairman of Sony, co-authored "The Japan That Can
Say No." It argued that Japan should challenge US hegemony and act as a
geopolitical free agent.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A10)
1989 Tooru Joe Kanazawa (d.2002 at
95) authored "Sushi and Sourdough," a glimpse into the world of
Japanese immigrants in Alaska’s salmon canneries in the 1920s.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A16)
1989 Kanan Makiya authored
"Republic of Fear," a portrayal of Saddam Hussein's brutality, under
the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil while in exile in the US. The book became
a best seller in 1990, a year after its publication, when Saddam
invaded Kuwait.
(AP, 7/29/03)
1989 James Michener wrote his
novel "Caribbean."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1989 James Michener wrote "Six
Days in Havana" with John Kings.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1989 Patrick Rance (d.1999)
authored "The French Cheese Book."
(SFC, 8/30/99, p.A24)
1989 Maureen Reagan (d.2001 at
60), daughter of Pres. Ronald Reagan, authored the autobiography "First
Father, First Daughter."
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A20)
1989 Jose Saramago of Portugal
authored "The History of the Siege of Lisbon."
(SFC, 10/9/98, p.A2)
1989 Gunther Schuller authored
“The Swing Era.”
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W10)
1989 In China Wang Shuo published
“Whatever You Do, Don’t Treat Me as a Human.” He had began a literary
movement known as "hooligan literature" in the 1980s. His novels
included "The Operators." In 1996 the government halted the printing of
his books on the basis of moral decay.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.B9)
1989 "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy
Tan was published.
(SFEC, 8/18/96, BR p. 2)
1989 Donald Trump authored “The
Art of the Deal.”
(SSFC, 11/14/04, Par p.30)
1989 The Broadway musical "Grand
Hotel" was written by George Forrest and Robert Wright.
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.C2)
1989 Hans van Manen created his
ballet "Black Cake."
(SFC, 4/4/00, p.B1)
1989 Astor Piazzolla (d.1992),
bandoneon player, recorded his album "Five Tango Sensations."
(BAAC, 1/96, p.4,5)(Esq., 5/91, p.60,61)
1989 The TV miniseries "Lonesome
Dove" starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.
(SFC, 5/28/01, p.C1)
1989 The TV show Singstation,
featuring gospel music, began airing around Chicago.
(WSJ, 10/15/96, p.A12)
1989 Bill Monroe received the
first Grammy Award for the Best Bluegrass Recording of the year.
(SFC, 9/10/96, p.A17)
1989 Milli Vanilli, a duo composed
of Rob Pilatus (d.1998 at 32) and Fabrice Morvan, won a Grammy for Best
New Artist after their hits "Blame It on the Rain" and "All or
Nothing." It was later learned the duo lip-synched the songs that were
done by uncredited studio musicians and the award was revoked in 1990.
John Davis and Brad Howell did the vocals, but did not want to travel.
Producer Frank Farian then hired Pilatus and Morvan.
(SFC, 4/6/98, p.A26)(BS, 5/3/98, p.6F)
1989 Nirvana with Kurt Cobain
released its debut album "Bleach" on the Sub Pop label.
(SFC, 7/30/97, p.E6)
1989 The Texas Tornados were
formed with Doug Sahm (d.1999 at 58) on steel guitar, Augie Meyers
(vocalist), Freddie Fender (guitar) and Flaco Jimenez (accordion).
(SFC, 11/20/99, p.A22)
1989 Sir Michael Tippett (84),
British composer, composed his 5th opera, "New Year." It premiered in
Houston, Texas.
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)(http://tinyurl.com/gpbwl)
1989 In Chicago the AT&T
Corporate Center was completed. The 60-story building was designed by
architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.B10)
1989 In Las Vegas the 3,044-room,
$630 million Mirage Casino was completed.
(WSJ, 1/21/97, p.A18)
1989 The Olympia & York Real
Estate Dev. Co. opened the 1,500 room Marriott Hotel in downtown SF. It
was quickly dubbed the Jukebox Marriott for its garish design by Daniel
Mann Johnson & Mendenhall.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, SFE Mag. p.26)
1989 Dallas opened The Sixth Floor
Museum dedicated to the 1963 assassination of JFK. It was located on
the 6th floor of the former School Book Depository near the site of the
murder.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C8)
1989 Philip Berman (d.1997 at 82),
art collector and philanthropist, became chairman of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. He had prospered and retired from the trucking business
and led a capital campaign that raised $63.4 million for the museum
between 1989 and 1993.
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.A22)
1989 The National Film
Preservation Board began selecting 25 films for entry to a national
list of film treasures.
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.E6)
1989 Kathy Keeton Guccione (d.1997
at 58), associate founder of Penthouse Magazine, founded the health
magazine "Longevity."
(SFC, 9/25/97, p.B2)
1989 In Chicago Marc Smith founded
the National Poetry Slam at the Green Mill outsider poetry readings.
(WSJ, 9/10/98, p.A20)
1989 The Studio for Creative
Inquiry was founded at Carnegie-Mellon Univ. in Pittsburgh, Pa.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A12)
1989 The Center for
Nonproliferation Studies was founded by William Potter based at the
Monterey Inst. for Int’l. Studies. Potter was a Soviet specialist
worried about weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands.
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A21)
1989 Kalle Lasn founded the Media
Foundation in Vancouver to produce alternative advertising.
(WSJ, 11/19/97, p.A1)
1989 The Lannan Lifetime
Achievement Award was established to honor writers whose work was of
exceptional quality. J. Patrick Lannan Sr. (d.1983), entrepreneur and
financier, founded the Lannan foundation in 1960.
(SFC, 10/5/99,
p.B2)(www.lannan.org/lf/about/history/)
1989 The National Computer
Security Association (NCSA) was founded.
(Wired, 10/96, p.88)
1989 In San Francisco the music
group “Those Darn Accordions” formed and played their first gig at the
Paradise Lounge. The group included Clyde Forsman (1915-2009), who
quickly gained notoriety for his full body tattoos.
(SFC, 6/12/09,
p.B6)(www.thosedarnaccordions.com/clyde.php)
1989 The Getty family gave $15
million to the Univ. of California at Berkeley to build and renovate
the biology and anthropology facility in the Life Sciences Building.
(SFC, 1/8/95, p.7)
1989 In California the Hess
Collection in Napa opened as a combination winery and modern art
museum. Donald Hess, a Swiss water wizard, had acquired the former
Theodore Gier Winery in the 1970s.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.T5)
1989 The new Pelican Bay prison
opened in northern California.
(SFC, 9/20/96, p.A24)
1989 21 tons of cocaine powder
were found in a San Fernando Valley warehouse. It was the largest
single US seizure of drugs.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, A13)
1989 The city of Berkeley Ca.,
passed a ban on Styrofoam.
(SFC, 4/29/08, p.A1)
1989 The Miss America beauty
pageant began to require that contestants have an issue on which to
speak if selected.
(SFEC, 9/15/96, p.A6)
1989 The PASS (Promoting
Achievement in School through Sport) organization was founded.
(SFEM, 5/11/97, p.10)
1989 William Edgar Bowers (d.2000
at 75) won the $10,000 Bollingen Prize from Yale Univ. for his poetry.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A23)
1989 John Casey won the National
Book Award for the novel "Spartina."
(USAT, 11/19/97, p.22A)
1989 Michael Dorris (d.1997 at
52), a Modoc Indian descendent, won the National Book Critics Circle
Award for his work: "The Broken Cord." It described the problem of
fetal alcohol syndrome.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A2)
1989 Bharati Mukherjee won a
National Book Critics Circle award for her short-story collection "The
Middleman and Other Stories."
(SFEC, 6/1/97, BR p.1)
1989 The biography "Machiavelli in
Hell" by Sebastian de Grazia won the Pulitzer Prize.
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.C11)
1989 Alberto Calderon (1920-1998),
born in Argentina, won the Wolf Prize, the highest award in
mathematics. He contributed to developing singular integrals and with
his mentor, Antoni Zygmund, founded the Chicago school of analysis.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A26)
1989 The Dalai Lama won the Nobel
Peace Prize.
(WSJ, 12/2/98, p.A22)
1989 Sidney Altman, Canadian-born
US physicist, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his studies of
ribonucleic acid.
(SFC, 8/5/97,
p.A3)(www.almaz.com/nobel/chemistry/1989a.html)
1989 J. Michael Bishop and Harold
E. Varmus of the UC San Francisco won the Nobel Prize in medicine for
their 1976 discovery of a family of genes, oncogenes in chickens, that
helped scientists understand how cancer develops. In 1998 Robert
A. Weinberg published "One Renegade Cell," a primer on the discovery of
oncogenes.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A9)(SFC, 2/6/98, p.A1)(WSJ,
11/25/98, p.A16)
1989 The Financial Action Task
Force (FATF) was created. It is an inter-governmental body whose
purpose is the development and promotion of national and international
policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The FATF
is therefore a "policy-making body" created in 1989 that works to
generate the necessary political will to bring about legislative and
regulatory reforms in these areas.
(http://tinyurl.com/yo2ha2)(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-12)
1989 Pres. Bush required a
presidential waiver for the sale of commercial satellites to China. He
later approve the export of 9 such satellites for launch on Chinese
rockets.
(SFC, 5/25/98, p.A3)
1989 Shirley Temple was appointed
US ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
(SFC, 1/26/06, p.E3)
1989 US Congress approved a ban on
refitting of US registered ships abroad.
(WSJ, 11/25/97, p.A1)
1989 Senior US Defense Dept.
officials tried to cancel the experimental Osprey military aircraft but
Congress continued to fund the program.
(SFC, 4/11/00, p.A3)
1989 The US Office of the
Inspector General was created to investigate alleged wrongdoing by
Justice personnel in various agencies.
(SFC, 1/21/99, p.A3)
1989 The right-wing ARENA party of
El Salvador began to be supported by the US government.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.A-19)
1989 The Resolution Trust Corp., a
US government owned asset management company, was created to take over
failing savings and loans institutions. Alan Greenspan served on the
board.
(Econ, 8/9/08,
p.68)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Trust_Corporation)
1989 The late Manhattan real
estate developer Seymour Durst put the National Debt Clock up in New
York City to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion
debt. In 2008 the clock ran out of digits to record the growing figure
as it passed $10.2 trillion.
(AP, 10/9/08)
1989 Bart Chamberlain (1914-2007,
Alabama oil man, fled to Switzerland following court ordered penalties
of $25 million for oil sales that circumvented price controls.
(WSJ, 6/2/07, p.A5)
1989 The Teamsters settled a suit
brought by the government that charged ties to the Mafia. The union
agreed to rank-and-file elections for president and to an independent
review board.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C9)
1989 O.J. Simpson was convicted of
battering his wife, Nicole Simpson.
(SFC, 6/22/96, p.A8)
1989 An int'l. accord on coffee
prices was lifted. When entire inventories were sold the market was
flooded and prices dropped.
(SFC, 1/30/99, p.A12)
1989 A Seattle ballot initiative
limited new buildings in the downtown core to 540 feet and to varying
heights in other parts of the city. In 2006 the City Council repealed
the limits.
(WSJ, 4/5/06, p.B4)
1989 Bank of America declared its
first dividend since 1985 and expanded retail operations into Nevada
and Washington. It became the first major California bank to open all
branches on Saturdays.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1989 Chrysler was the first car
maker to install air bags in all vehicles.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1989 The DC-10, a wide-bodied,
3-engine aircraft, was taken out of production. A total of 446 were
built since 1970, when American Airlines began using them.
(SFC, 4/27/00, p.A24)
1989 Ford acquired Jaguar.
(Econ, 9/25/04, p.77)
1989 The Hearst Corp. formed
Hearst Entertainment & Syndication to oversee activities in cable
TV, syndication and entertainment. Hearst also acquired Phoenix
Entertainment Group and renamed it Hearst Entertainment. Hearst
Magazines Int'l. was formed to pursue publishing opportunities
worldwide.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1989 The Honda Accord was the
best-selling car in the US.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1989 Uniroyal Chemical Inc.
purchased by Avery Inc. was taken private in a management-led buyout.
It was renamed Uniroyal Chemical Corp.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1989 America Online (AOL) made its
debut. In 1998 Kara Swisher wrote "aol.com: How Steve Case beat Bill
Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web.
[see Control Video in 1982]
(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.1,8)
1989 Cray Computing Corp. was
founded by Seymour Cray. It went bankrupt in 1995.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, C12)
1989 Crazy Eddie Inc. went broke.
The retail electronics chain burned out in scandal of missing
inventory, stolen cash and bogus merchandise bookings. In 1990 assets
were frozen and founder Eddie Antar disappeared under charges of
bilking investors out of $74 mil. He was nabbed in Israel in 1992 and
sent to a US prison.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A1,8)
1989 Creative Labs introduced the
SoundBlaster sound card that became a standard in personal computers.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.B1)
1989 Del Monte fresh fruits was
sold to London-based Polly Peck for $804 million. The rest of Del Monte
was sold to a group of investors that included senior management and
Merrill Lynch for $1.47 billion.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.B1)
1989 Federal Express bought the
Flying Tiger Airlines, the largest cargo line in the world. Jules
Watson (d.2001 at 84) was one of the founders of Flying Tiger.
(SFC, 8/18/01, p.E3)
1989 General Dynamics began
building the Seawolf nuclear submarines. Each one cost about $2.1
billion.
(WSJ, 12/13/99, p.A6)
1989 Phil Harvey founded DKT
Int’l. to provide contraceptives at knock-down prices to some of the
poorest parts of the world. His PHE group included Adam & Eve,
America’s biggest mail order and online retailer of sexual toys.
(Econ, 10/9/04, p.62)
1989 Intel shipped the first 486
microprocessor, an enhanced version of the 386. It held more than 1
million transistors and included a built-in floating point unit and 8K
of internal RAM.
(TAR, 1996, p.28)
1989 Nintendo Co. of Japan
launched its Game Boy product, a portable, hand-held game system with
interchangeable game packs. The game was designed by Gunpei Yokoi
(d.1997 at 56).
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(SFC, 10/11/97, p.A19)
1989 The Pillsbury Company was
purchased in a hostile takeover by Grand Met, a British conglomerate.
(Hem., 1/97, p.36)
1989 Quaker Oats modernized Aunt
Jemima, making her thinner, eliminating her bandanna, and giving her a
perm and a pair of pearl earrings.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima)
1989 SmithKline Beckman merged
with Beecham Group PCL of Britain to create the world’s 2nd largest
drug company.
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.B2)
1989 Sony Corp. paid $4.8 billion
to take over Columbia Pictures. Jon Peters and Peter Guber worked their
way into positions of co-chiefs and promptly lost huge sums over the
next few years. Their legacy left Sony with losses of $3.2 billion and
a $520 million write-off for abandoned projects. The fiasco is
chronicled in the 1996 book "Hit and Run" by Nancy Griffin and Kim
Masters.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A12)
1989 Philip Anschutz with backing
from Morgan Stanley picked up the Southern Pacific Railroad for just
over $1 billion.
(WSJ, 6/18/96, p.A17)
1989 CDMA (Code division multiple
access), a wireless technology, was introduced by Irwin Jacobs. It was
supposed to cram more calls onto wireless networks than available
analog systems.
(WSJ, 9/66/96, p.A1,6)
1989 Don Eigler of IBM used a
scanning-tunneling microscope to manipulate 35 xenon atoms to spell out
IBM.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.10)
1989 Ralph Merkle, computer
scientist at Xerox PARC, evaluated intellectual processing power 3
different ways. An average of his methods indicated that the brain runs
about 1 quadrillion operations per second. With computing power
doubling every 18 months, he reasoned that hardware would catch up with
brainpower around 2020.
(Wired, 8/96, p.204)
1989 The Group O AIDS virus was
identified in West Africa. It had marked genetic differences from the
more common Group M strains that were responsible for a worldwide
pandemic.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A5)
1989 Scientists used "positional
cloning" to identify the gene that causes cystic fibrosis.
(WSJ, 6/11/01, p.A1)
1989 The Hepatitis C virus was
first isolated. It causes an infection of the liver that is usually
lifelong and incurable. Scientists in 1999 found evidence of the virus
in frozen blood samples from 1948.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A4)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)
1989 Merck Corp. announced the
discovery of the 3-dimensional structure of the enzyme protease. It was
seen as a promising target for attacking the virus that causes AIDS.
(WSJ, 11/5/96, p.A1)
1989 The P53 gene was found to act
as a tumor suppressor gene.
(SFC, 11/12/96, p.A5)
1989 Dr. Ray White led a team that
found the NF-1 gene. A mutation of the gene was found to be responsible
for neurofibromatosis.
(WSJ, 2/27/97, p.B1)
1989 There was an outbreak of the
deadly Ebola virus among 450 primates in Reston, Va.
(FB, 9/12/96, Neighbors p.1)
1989 Vladimir Pasechnik defected
to the US from the Soviet Biopreparat biological weapons program. He
revealed that the Soviet program was ten times larger than US estimates.
(WSJ, 3/10/98, p.A22)
1989 Tim Berners-Lee wrote a
proposal at CERN, Switzerland, that a global hypertext space be created
in which any network-accessible information could be referred to by a
single "Universal Document Identifier". In 1990 he wrote a program
called WorldWideWeb.
(SFEC, 3/15/98,
p.W26)(http://www3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html)
1989 Jeff Hawkins developed
software for the GridPad, the first computer was a pen-based interface.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.31)
1989 Dean Kamen, inventor, started
a robotics competition for high-schoolers, for Inspiration and
Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST).
(NW, 4/24/03, p.44)
1989 Brewster Kahle founded WAIS,
a company named after the Wide Area Information Server protocol, to
make software for online publishing. The protocol was an early form of
internet search engine, which had been developed by Thinking Machines
with Apple, Dow Jones and KPMG. In 1995 AOL bought the firm.
(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.34)
1989 The nickel-metal-hydride
battery appeared on the market.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)
1989 Jeremy Burroughs, Cambridge
scientist, discovered that certain plastic polymers emit light while
conducting electricity. The light emitting polymers (LEP) opened up a
new field for the visual display of data.
(WSJ, 12/3/96, p.B6)
1989 Jack Jewell at Bell Labs
figured out how to make vertical cavity surface emitting lasers
practical. They were first described by Prof. Kenichi Iga at the Tokyo
Institute of Tech. in the late 1970s. They became fabricated like
computer chips were capable of transmitting data at 6 Gbps.
(Wired, 2/98, p.77)
1989 Scientists confirmed the
existence of sprites and blue jets, the odd light effects of pulses of
electromagnetic energy emitted above thunderstorms.
(SFC, 12/16/96, p.B1)
1989 Caltech's Kip Thorne and
colleagues theorized that general relativity permits wormholes, tunnels
that cut across regions of space-time, and showed that with enough
negative energy, they can be propped open.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.B1)
1989 The Univ. of Phoenix enrolled
8 students in the world’s first online campus.
{Education, USA}
(LT, 9/30/96, p.76)(www.uopphx.edu/online)
1989 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR), began its World Values Survey to be conducted
every 5 years.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1989 The world fish catch peaked
at 86.4 million metric tons.
(SFC, 7/7/96, A10)
1989 The Russian wheat aphid
arrived from Mexico and began to damage US wheat fields.
(SFC, 8/17/00, p.A2)
1989 The UN Convention on Int’l.
Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a total ban on the trade of
ivory and elephant hide. In 2007 the ban was extended for another 9
years.
(WSJ, 1/7/97, p.A1)(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A20)(SFC,
4/18/00, p.A9)(Econ, 3/8/08, p.85)
1989 The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the World Meteorological
organization and the UN Environment Program at the request of the G7.
(Econ, 6/2/07, SR p.3)(http://tinyurl.com/3xx4te)
1989 Buffalo clover, last seen in
1907, emerged in some topsoil delivered to a botanist’s backyard. In
1788 historian S.P. Hildreth penned an image of the fertile frontier
that described the plant: "Buffalo clover... nearly knee-high...
afforded a rich pasture."
(NG, Jan. 94, p.144)
1989 Gene Savoy, explorer,
discovered pottery and monolithic tablets in the cloud forest of
northern Peru that he said showed native contact with ancient cultures
in other parts of the world. The area was the homeland of the
Chachapoya Indian kingdom.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A13)
1989 Hurricane Hugo caused $8
billion in damage and killed 35 people. Most of the damage was in South
Carolina where winds reached 135-mph. Damage was $4.2 billion.
(SFC, 9/6.96, p.A12)(SFEC, 9/15/96, p.A10)
1989 In Noblesville, Ind., the
parents of Brian and David Setters were shot to death. The brothers
took over the family insurance business. In 1998 the 2 brothers were
charged with the murder.
(SFC, 10/1/98, p.A3)
1989 An AK-47 assault rifle was
used in an assault on school children in Stockton, Ca.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A9)
1989 In Kansas City, Mo., a
firebomb was thrown into a house and 6 people died.
(SFC,12/6/97, p.A7)
1989 A federal judge and a civil
rights lawyer in Alabama were killed by a mail bomb. Walter Leroy Moody
was convicted in 1991 on federal charges and sentenced to life. In 1996
Moody was convicted on state charges with recommended execution and
sentenced to be executed in 1997.
(WSJ, 11/6/96, p.A1)(WSJ,2/11/97, p.A1)
1989 Lester "Benny" Binion,
founder of the Las Vegas Horseshoe Casino, died.
(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A1)
1989 Jay DeFeo, SF artist, died.
Her work "The Rose" weighed a ton and in 1965 was moved out of a house
and later to the SF Art Institute where it languished for 26 years.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, DB p.8)
1989 Gilda Radner (42), comedian
and wife of Gene Wilder, died.
(SFC, 11/8/96, p.C10)
1989 In Afghanistan the Mujahedeen
drove the Russians out of the country.
(SFC, 9/23/96, A9)
1989 In Afghanistan Osama bin
Laden formed al Qaeda.
(SSFC, 5/9/04, p.M6)
1989 Argentina broke with the past
and positioned itself as a US ally. Castro’s Cuba was denounced and
frigates were sent to support Desert Storm.
(SFC, 10/12/97, p.A15)
1989 The central bank of Argentina
suffered losses in Q2 worth 23.5% of GDP.
(Econ, 4/30/05, p.74)
1989 In Australia ATSIC was
established by Bob Hawke's Labor government through the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 (the ATSIC Act). It took
effect on 5 March 1990. It provided a means of self-determination for
indigenous people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Commission)(SFC,
4/20/04, p.F1)
1989 In Belgium Marc Dutroux
(b.1956) was sent to prison for 13 years for abducting and raping 5
girls. He was released after serving 3 years and quickly reverted to
his former self. He was again arrested in 1996 for kidnappings in 1995.
(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A10)
1989 Arce Gomez was captured in
eastern Bolivia and extradited to the United States, where he was
convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 30 years. Gomez, known
as "the minister of cocaine," took part in the July 1980 coup led by
then-Gen. Luis Garcia Meza and backed by drug traffickers. In 2009
Gomez was returned to Bolivia to serve a 30-year prison sentence for
crimes including genocide and political assassinations.
(AP, 7/10/09)
1989 In Britain Channel Four began
its "Out on Tuesday" series, the first regular gay and lesbian
programming.
(SFC, 5/21/97, p.D3)
1989 Britain’s economics began a
current account reversal. British property values dropped after a
decade-long rise. Prices did not recover for almost a decade.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.64)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.66)
1989 Michal Porulski (74), a
Polish Catholic artist and Holocaust survivor, died in St. Mary's
Hospital near Hereford, England, of pneumonia and tuberculosis. He
spent time in Dachau and left behind ink and watercolor drawings of his
experiences there.
(AP, 9/16/07)
1989 To avoid assimilation 300,000
Turks left Bulgaria.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A11)
1989 In Burma the military
authorities placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest where she was
confined for the next 6 years.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.4)
1989 In Cameroon representatives
of King Seidou Njimoluh Njoya, the 18th monarch of the kingdom of
Foumban, announced that Joseph Ngoupou (39) would succeed his father as
chief of the village of Koupa Ngagnou. Mr. Ngoupou lived in Maryland
and worked there as an engineer.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.A1)
1989 In Canada a human rights
tribunal ruled that equal rights must be provided for women. This
opened Canadian military jobs for women except for submarine duty.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.B2)
1989 Canada ceased issuing C$1
notes. Canada had replaced the C$1 note with a coin in 1987 and the C$2
note with a coin in 1996.
{Canada, Money}
(WSJ, 11/6/97,
p.A22)(www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/1997/swe9704.html)
1989 Sebastian Pinera (b.1949),
Chilean businessman and politician, was elected senator in Chile. His
fortune in 1996 was estimated at $300 mil.
(WSJ, 3/26/96, p.A-10)
1989 In China the low-level
Gezhouba Dam on the Yangtze River was completed.
(NH, 7/96, p.38)
1989 The US and the EU imposed an
arms embargo on China to protest the post-Tiananmen clampdown.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.27)
1989 Chinese scientists and
scholars in New York founded the non-profit group “Human Rights in
China.”
(WSJ, 2/13/06, p.A9)
1989 In China Beijing and Shanghai
began holding a biannual auto show.
(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/19/content_8011178.htm)
1989 In Colombia a Time Magazine
investigative team that included Tom Quinn (1943-1996) found evidence
indicating that Gen’l. Guillermo Medina Sanchez, national police chief,
had taken money from drug traffickers.
(SFC, 10/21/96, p.A17)
1989 In Colombia the M-19 rebel
group agreed to disarm.
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A20)
1989 In Colombia drug kingpin Jose
Rodriguez Gacha was killed.
(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A10)
1989 In Croatia Franjo Tudjman
began airing his views on Zagreb Radio 101.
(WSJ, 7/25/96, p.A1)
1989 El Salvador military officers
Colonel Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, director of the National Guard
and Gen’l. Jose Guillermo Garcia, the minister of defense, retired to
Florida. In 2002 a Florida jury found Casanova and Garcia responsible
for torture and atrocities committed in 1983 and ordered payment of
$54.6 million to 3 victims living in Florida. [see El Salvador Dec 4,
1980]
(SFC, 7/24/02, p.A12)
1989 Lori Helene Berenson, an
American, began work in El Salvador as the personal secretary to Leonel
Gonzalez, top commander of the FMLN guerrillas. She stayed for about
for about 4 1/2 years and moved to Peru.
(WSJ, 12/27/96,
p.A7)(www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1881)
1989 The Finnish ministry of
Public health suggested a sex vacation to thwart stress.
(www.sexpo.fi/briefhistory.htm)
1989 In France construction of the
new Tres Grand Bibliotheque (aka TGB, the national library) was begun
in Paris. It was designed by Dominique Perrault and the first quarter
was scheduled to open in 1997.
(WSJ, 8/28/97, p.A12)
1989 In France the I.M. Pei glass
pyramid next to the Louvre Museum was built.
(SFC, 6/16/96, T-5)
1989 Gerard Fusil, a French
journalist, conceived "adventure racing" as a sport.
(WSJ, 5/19/00, p.A1)
1989 In France Christine
Deviers-Joncour was hired by state-owned Elf oil company to use her
wiles on foreign minister Roland Dumas to go along with a sale of 6
French-made warships to Taiwan. In 1998 she published "The Whore of the
Republic," and told her story.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.A14)
1989 The National Geographical
Institute of France calculated that Europe’s geographical center was in
Lithuania, close to Vilnius.
(WSJ, 7/14/04, p.A7)
1989 Pernod Ricard SA acquired the
Australian wine brand Jacob’s Creek.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1989 A cable car accident killed 8
people in the Isere region of the French Alps.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A10)
1989 Bernard Villemot (b.1911),
French poster artist, died. In 1945-1946 he carried out many posters
for the Red Cross.
(SFC, 10/21/06,
p.F3)(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villemot)
1989 In Berlin, Germany, the Love
Par festival was begun to celebrate techno music.
(SFC, 8/18/97, p.E4)
1989 In Haiti Guy Francois
(d.2006), commander of the feared Dessalines Battalion in
Port-au-Prince, was accused of conspiring with other officers in a
failed attempt to topple dictator Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril. The plot was
foiled and Francois fled to Venezuela. He later returned.
(AP, 9/15/06)
1989 Iceland stopped whaling.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A8)
1989 Jon Asgeir Johannesson (20)
and his unemployed father opened a discount grocery store, Bonus, in
Reykjavik, Iceland. Until this time dominant grocery chains had kept
food prices high throughout the nation.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.A1)
1989 India again had a
non-Congress government but it fell before the end of its 5-year term.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-10)
1989 PepsiCo. Inc. began
operations in India.
(WSJ, 9/12/06, p.A6)
1989 In Iran Grand Ayatollah
Hossein Ali Montazeri protested the execution of thousands of political
prisoners. This frustrated Ayatollah Khomeini and caused him to dump
Montazeri as heir apparent.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)
1989 In Israel Dov Moran founded
M-Systems, the original maker of USB flash drives (1999). He sold the
business to SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion.
(www.twst.com/notes/articles/lzt068.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Systems)
1989 Japan’s PM Sousuke Uno
resigned over a scandal involving his geisha mistress. Criticism
focused on allegations that he treated her in a miserly fashion.
(SFC, 8/20/96, p.A18)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)
1989 Ahmad Chalabi (b.1944),
founding head of Petra Bank (1977), fled Jordan following a bank
scandal that involved an Iraqi account in exile. 13 people were
convicted including 9 Chalabis. Ahmed, who claimed the charges were
politically motivated, was sentenced in absentia to 22 years hard labor
for embezzling $300 million of state funds.
(Econ, 10/4/03, p.44)(WSJ, 11/7/05, p.A4)
1989 Javed Hussain Shah completed
6 months of training in Afghanistan and led a Kashmiri insurgent group
later dubbed the Jihad Force. He fought along with al-Qaida members and
later became a Kashmiri legislator.
(SSFC, 6/23/02, p.A13)
1989 Nursultan Nazarbaev succeeded
Gennady Kolbin as head of Kazakhstan.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.59)
1989 Soviet nuclear test
explosions ended in Kazakhstan. Between 1949 and the cessation of
atomic testing in 1989, 456 explosions were conducted at the STS,
including 340 underground shots and 116 atmospheric.
(SFC,11/20/97,
p.B2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipalatinsk_Test_Site)
1989 Kazakhstan’s population
numbered about 16.5 million people. By the late 1990s it fell to 14.9
million as the economy declined.
(Econ, 3/24/07, p.47)
1989 Chingiz Aitmatov (b.1928),
Kyrgyzstan writer and member of the Soviet Parliament, returned home to
help mediate a conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. His novels
included “The Day Lasts More Than a 100 Years” (1980).
(WSJ, 2/24/05, p.D8)
1989 Laos opened to foreign
tourists for the first time since 1975.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.T4)
1989 Rafik Hariri financed a
gathering of Lebanese politicians at the Saudi city of Taif to hammer
out a deal to disband militias and distribute power more equitably. The
Taif Agreement maintained sectarian divisions in government and led to
the end of the civil war. It stipulated that Syria withdraw its troops
to the border and leave within 2 years.
(SFC, 9/28/98, p.A10)(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A13)(Econ,
2/19/05, p.43)
1989 In Lebanon PM Michel Aoun
waged a “war of liberation” against Syrian forces. Pro-Syrian
legislator Elias Hrawi was elected president.
(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A8)
1989 In Liechtenstein, the 6th
smallest country in the world, Prince Hans-Adam II assumed the throne
upon the death of his father.
(WSJ, 7/22/97, p.A1)
1989 In Lithuania Dr. Saulius
Caplinskas started an AIDS Center in Vilnius. In 1997 there were 60
reported cases of HIV, but the actual number was estimated to be
between 200-300.
(SFC, 4/16/97, p.A10)
1989 In Mexico Gerardo de
Prevoisin led an investor group in the buyout of Aeromexico. In 1994 he
was forced out as chairman and in 1996 was accused of embezzling $72
mil.
(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A6)
1989 In Mexico Ernesto Zedillo as
a Cabinet secretary granted a $7 mil payment to Maseca, a corn-flour
maker, run by Roberto Gonzalez Barrera, a close friend of Pres. Carlos
Salinas. It was supposed to be compensation money for government
failure to pay subsidies in the late 1980s, although 16 mil was paid in
1988.
(SFC, 7/6/96, p.A10)
1989 In Mexico Raul Salinas under
the name of Juan Guillermo Gomez Gutierrez approached the Swiss Pictet
Bank to open an account. Later info came out that Raul Salinas lent
$29.8 mil for 6 years at 12% to Mr. Salinas Pliego for use in TV
Azteca. News also surfaced that Jose Madariaga Lomelin, chairman of BBV
Probursa SA, a banking group, and Abraham Zabludovsky, an executive
with Grupo Televisa SA, invested in a bus manufacturing company with
Raul Salinas.
(WSJ, 6/7/96, p.A11)(SFC, 7/8/96, p.A6)
1989 In Mozambique Frelimo dropped
its socialist ideas in favor of a free-market economy.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A12)
1989 Gen. Khin Nyunt, Myanmar’s
prime minister and intelligence chief, brokered a ceasefire and
autonomy deal with Sai Leun (Lin Mingxian), warlord of Mongla, who
built the area into a gambling destination for Chinese tourists.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.41)
1989 In Namibia the South West
Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) ended its rebellion against South
African rule with the UN supervised elections that elected Sam Nujoma
as President.
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.20A)
1989 Ter Beek (d.2008 at 64)
became defense minister in a centrist coalition led by PM Ruud Lubbers
and served until 1994. He worked to streamline the Dutch military in
the aftermath of the Cold War, including scrapping the draft.
(AP, 9/30/08)
1989 New Zealand became the 1st
country to introduce inflation targets.
(Econ, 2/26/05, p.76)
1989 The central bank of Nicaragua
suffered losses worth 13.8% of GDP.
(Econ, 4/30/05, p.74)
1989 Pakistan ordered 60 F-16
fighter jets from the US and paid for 28 of them. The US Congress
stopped the sale in 1990.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A18)
1989 Lashker-e-Tayyaba was created
in Pakistan to fight against India in Kashmir. Pres. Musharraf banned
Lashker-e-Tayyaba in January, 2002, under pressure from the US.
(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A10)
1989 In Peru squatters occupied a
Lima site known as Puruchuco-Huaquerones. As they built homes they kept
bumping into Inca mummy bundles.
(Arch, 7/02, p.16)
1989 Eduardo Nycander and Kurt
Holle co-founded Rainforests Expeditions in Peru to use tourism to
foster conservation.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.42)
1989 In Romania some 1,200 deaths
occurred during the revolution after the army officially changed sides.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A11)
1989 In Saudi Arabia the $140
million King Fahd Cultural Center was completed on the outskirts of
Riyadh. It has never been opened to the public and was maintained by a
fulltime staff of 180 people.
(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A20)
1989 The Milosevic regime in
Yugoslavia made constitutional changes to consolidate power over the
provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. Kosovo, whose 1.9 million people are
90% Albanian, lost its autonomy and was placed under Serbian rule. The
constitution passed without the approval of the parliament of Kosova.
The Serbs fired most Albanians and closed many enterprises. Muslim
unrest followed and Kosovo was occupied. 90% of the population of
Kosovo was made up of some 2.2 million ethnic Albanians.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 5/11/96, p.A-10)(WSJ,
8/5/96, p.A13)(SFC, 12/10/97, p.C2)(www, Albania, 1998)
1989 Bujar Bukoshi was elected the
prime minister of the Kosovo Regional Government.
(WSJ, 4/28/99, p.A14)
1989 Wealthy émigrés
lent the Milosevic regime some $87 million as a "Loan for the
Regeneration of Serbia." Lenders never got back their investment.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A14)
1989 In Serbia Radio B-92 was
founded by a Youth Council that vanished in the dissolution of
Yugoslavia. It got a legal license for 15 days but has not had legal
status since. It continued to operate and was the only independent
station broadcasting in 1996.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A12)
1989 The Zastava car plant in
Kragujevac, Serbia, produced 180,950 cars. In 1999 NATO bombed parts of
the plant which also made arms.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.47)
1989 In South Africa Eugene de
Kock’s covert Vlakplaas unit began to be exposed in newspapers and
court proceedings.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A8)
1989 In South Africa Rev. Frank
Chikane almost died after his underwear was laced with poison. In 2007
Adriaan Vlok, former security minister, and Johann van der Merwe,
former police chief, faced charges of attempted murder.
(Econ, 8/4/07, p.41)
1989 In South Africa Winnie
Mandela sent a young man to the mission of Paul Verryn, a Methodist
minister, to try to trap him into a sexual liaison. She then kidnapped
4 youths from the mission and beat them until they agreed to accuse the
minister of having sex with them.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B2)
1989 The African Management
Services Company (AMSCO) was formed in South Africa by the Int’l.
Finance Corp., the private sector arm of the World Bank, to help small
African firms become competitive. In 2004 Ayisi Makatiani took over the
leadership of AMSCO.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.58)
1989 Stompie Seipei (14) was
kidnapped and killed by the Mandela United Football Club, the
bodyguards of Winnie Mandela. Jerry Richardson was convicted of the
murder and sentenced to a life sentence. In 1997 he reported to the
truth commission that Mrs. Mandela asked him to do it. Dr. Abu-baker
Asvat, who examined Stompie, was also murdered. The events were later
described in the 1997 book "Katiza’s Journey" by Fred Bridgland.
Bodyguard Katiza Cebekhulu in 1997 testified that he saw Winnie Mandela
plunge a shiny object into Stompie. Pelo Mekgwe, one of the 4 young men
brought to the Mandela house, testified in 1997 that chief bodyguard
Jerry Richardson ordered him to help kill Lerothodi Ikaneng, who
survived a cut throat.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.C2)(SFC,11/26/97, p.C4)(SFC,
12/4/97, p.C2)
1989 In South Korea the National
Council of Regional and Industrial Trade Unions formed. The nationwide
May Day rally was the first one since 1945.
(www.socialistworld.net/publications/southkorea/sk13.html)
1989 In South Korea some 400,000
workers downed their tools in strikes that lasted months.
(SFC, 1/10/97,
p.A14)(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-12349.html)
1989 The Supreme Soviet issued a
resolution that criticized the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as "a
personal decision by (Soviet leader Josef) Stalin that contradicted the
interests of the Soviet people."
(AP, 5/6/05)
1989 The Spanish government paid
$350 million for half of the (German-Hungarian) Thyssen-Bornemusza art
collection and provided a substantial gallery to house the collection.
In 2007 David R.L. Litchfield authored “The Thyssen Art Macabre.”
(Econ, 3/3/07, p.88)
1989 In Spain the 300-sq. km.
Donana wetland, the richest in Europe, was declared a national park.
The belt around Donana was managed by the regional government of
Andalusia. The Madrid government managed the park.
(WSJ, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1989 A devastating draught
prompted the international community to launch a massive relief effort
called Operation Lifeline Sudan.
(SFC, 4/15/96,A-8)
1989 In Zurich, Switzerland,
authorities experimented with an open access to drugs program, which
caused an escalation in drug dealing and violence.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, p.A21)
1989 Mintimer Shaimiyev became
First Secretary of Tatar Regional CPSU Committee in Kazan, Tatarstan.
(Econ, 6/2/07,
p.56)(www.kcn.ru/tat_en/politics/dfa/presid/car.htm)
1989 The government of Thailand
granted investment incentives to the Sahaviriya group to build the
first mills for making steel.
(WSJ, 8/27/96, p.A10)
1989 Trinidad and Tobago appealed
for an Int’l. World Court to help it and other small countries fight
int’l. drug trafficking.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.A16)
1989 In Zimbabwe the Communal
Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) was
established as a compromise settlement between park rangers and local
communities.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A12,14)
1989 In Zimbabwe elephant floppy
trunk disease was first reported around Lake Kariba. Initial paralysis
at the tip of the trunk gradually moved up and resulted in total
paralysis. Scores of cases were reported in 2000 in South Africa and
Zimbabwe.
(SFC, 2/26/00, p.A8)
1989 The Int’l. Convention on the
Rights of the Child was established to protect the economic, social and
civil rights of children. The US and Somalia did not ratify the
Convention.
(SFEC, 10/8/00, Z1 p.4)
1989 The Save Outdoor Sculpture
(SOS), organization was founded as a non-profit and largely volunteer
organization. It is housed in Washington at the National Institute for
the Conservation of Cultural Property (NIC). The SOS has 15,000 works
entered into its Inventory of American Sculpture.
(Smith., 4/1995, p.140)(http://tinyurl.com/hrt5r)
1989-1990 Extreme violence shook Colombia when
guerillas and drug traffickers mounted a brutal anti-government
campaign known as narcoterrorism. Three pres. candidates were killed
including the popular Luis Carlos Galan.
(WSJ, 5/3/96, p.A-11)
1989-1990 Clashes in Mauritania between Africans and
Arabs led to tens of thousands of blacks fleeing or being deported.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.62)
1989-1990 In Mexico Javier Coello Trejo served as
deputy attorney general and was the first drug czar under Pres. Carlos
Salinas de Gortari.
(SFC, 2/19/96, p.A11)
1989-1990 In Norway Jan P. Syse (d.1997 at 66) served
as prime minister of a conservative-led coalition government. He led
the conservative party from 1988-1991.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.C2)
1989-1990 In Slovenia Janez Drnovsek served as the
Communist president.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A11)
1989-1990 In Sri Lanka the government staged an
offensive against the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, People’s
Liberation Front), a Marxist rebel group. In 1997 the government
admitted that nearly 17,000 people died or vanished during the
offensive. Human rights groups estimated that some 60,000 people were
killed or disappeared.
(WSJ, 9/4/97, p.A1)(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A3)
1989-1990 In Sri Lanka a group of 25 high school
students disappeared. It was later learned that school principle
Dayananda Lokugalappathi had convinced the military that the students
were linked to the JVP. In 1999 a court sentenced 6 soldiers and the
principle to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 2/11/99, p.C3)
1989-1991 About 2 million small arms were imported
legally into the US, including semiautomatic weapons that could be
bought in US gun stores for $250-400.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A9)
1989-1991 Somaliland fought a civil war with the
regime of Somali Pres. Mohamed Siad Barre.
(SFC, 4/15/98, p.C2)
1989-1992 Warren Zimmerman was the US ambassador to
Yugoslavia. He later wrote "Origins of a Catastrophe" that documents
this period.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, p.C13)
1989-1992 Susan McDougal worked as a bookkeeper and
personal assistant for conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife. McDougal was
later charged with embezzlement of $150,000 and tax fraud. Her trial
began in 1998. She was acquitted.
(SFC, 9/9/98, p.A3)(SFC, 11/24/98, p.A1)
1989-1992 South Ossetia defended itself from Georgia
with aid from Russia and about 1,000 people died in the fighting. Some
25-40,000 people fled the area.
(SFC, 9/1/98, p.A10)
1989-1993 It is estimated that Chinese military
companies exported more than 3 million guns to the US.
(SFC, 5/26/96, p.A-13)
1989-1993 In Libya an outbreak of Old World Screwworm
was eradicated by a coordinated int’l. effort.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A7)
1989-1995 The US Congress established a program to
ease the nursing shortage and allowed foreign nurses to work at
hospitals under one-year visas where US workers were not available.
(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A10)
1989-2002 Some 6,000 people disappeared in
Indian-Kashmir over this period. Violence over this time claimed some
60,000 lives.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A16)
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