1990..........2000
1990
1991
Iraqi troops gave up en masse when UN
coalition ground forces moved into Kuwait on February 24, 1991. A cease-fire was announced
on February 28. Coalition troops marched in victory, while the UN Security Council drafted
the terms that Iraq signed on March 3. Kuwait was free again, but the sanctions against
Iraq were to remain in place until a UN commission could confirm the destruction of its
missiles and facilities for building chemical and nuclear weapons.
Yeltsin Saves Gorbachev
Tanks rumble into Moscow in an attempted coup to unseat Mikhail Gorbachev. Reformist Boris
Yeltsin turns back the tanks and brings back
Gorbachev, who has lost the people's confidence and will soon resign.
1992
Beginning in 1990, the ethnic groups that
had been forced together in communist Yugoslavia splintered into warring republics.
Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia separated in 1991; Bosnia and Herzegovina declared
independence in 1992. Then ethnic factions within the republics launched into brutal
fighting over territory - Serbs battled Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Throughout 1992,
Americans were horrified by photos of the killings in Sarajevo, the historic capital
where, ironically, World War I began.
On April 29, 1992, rioting began in South
Central LA within minutes of the announcement that four white policemen had been found
innocent of brutally beating motorist Rodney King - an event famously captured on
videotape and replayed to television viewers throughout the trial. Three days later,
neighborhoods all over the city lay smoldering. The violence revealed terrible splits in
urban society. Resentment of Korean shopkeepers turned murderous; even black-owned
businesses weren't spared.
The term "compassion fatigue" was heard in relation to the strife and starvation
in the East African nation of Somalia. Stories of border wars, refugees, and famine had
emanated from the country since the 1970s. Civil war began in the early 1980s and so
disrupted farming that some 1.5 million Somalis faced starvation. An international relief
effort led by the United States in 1992 became embroiled in the political fighting, but
has also been credited with saving 300,000 lives.
1993
The tiniest of objects - the silicon
microchip, holding thousands of transistors in an integrated circuit - set off the
information age in the 1970s. The Intel Corp. boosted the growth of the personal computer
by developing the microprocessor, a central processing unit on a chip. For the next 20
years, Intel retired generations of PCs by producing faster and more powerful chips, from
the 4004 in 1971 to the Pentium in 1993, sparking the PC revolution: by 1999, about 80
million Americans were wired.
An 8th-grader tinkering with a mainframe computer grows up to be a software tycoon with a
personal fortune of $80 billion. So goes the fabled life story of William H. Gates III
(1955- ), cofounder and CEO of Microsoft Corp., who was a central figure in the personal
computer boom of the 1980s. That was the decade in which PCs (running Microsoft's
operating systems) entered millions of homes and businesses. In the mid-1990s, the company
focused on the Internet as use of the World Wide Web soared.
Arafat and Rabin Sign Accord
A glimmer of hope shines in the Middle East when PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime
Minister
Yitzhak Rabin sign a peace accord.
1994
Nelson Mandela (1918- ), leader of the
African National Congress, casts a ballot in South Africa's first all-race elections, in
which he was elected president. Thirty years earlier, he was jailed for conspiring to
overthrow the apartheid-based government. As a political prisoner, he became an
international symbol of resistance to South Africa's racist system. When Mandela was freed
in 1990, he rose to the status of statesman, leading the country in its peaceful
transition to multiracial rule.
During Nirvana's tour in 1993, Kurt Cobain
was sick and depressed, weary of false adulation and commercial pressures, and despondent
over his failing marriage. In March 1994 came reports of an apparent suicide attempt in
Rome. On April 8, his body was found at his Seattle home; a shotgun, heroin kit, and
suicide note were by his side. When the candlelight vigils, myth making, and conspiracy
theories settled, clear-eyed critics commemorated the premature loss of an exceptionally
gifted songwriter.
In the 1990s, the central African nation of Rwanda gave the world a horrific demonstration
of ethnic violence. The two main groups - the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority - share a
language and culture, but for generations one group oppressed the other until civil war
set off waves of retaliatory massacres. The numbers are incomprehensible: in just a few
months in 1994, 500,000 to 1 million Rwandans - primarily Tutsi - were massacred, and
nearly 1.5 million fled to refugee camps.
1995
Football god O.J. Simpson enjoyed the luxury
of color-blind celebrity worship until his 1994 trial for the murder of his white wife and
her male friend. Pundits and pollsters pounced on the obvious: his acquittal, despite
compelling evidence, revealed a deep racial divide in the country. Blacks were jubilant,
whites incredulous. In the end, nearly everyone agreed the verdict was not about an
accused sports hero but about wildly divergent, racially determined perceptions of the
criminal justice system.
Bomb Kills 168 in Oklahoma
Anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh
parks a van filled with explosives outside the
Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 68, including dozens of
children at a day-care center.
1997
following Princess Diana's fatal car
accident in Paris, August 31, 1997. Mourners blamed her dramatically violent death on
paparazzi, but paradoxically, they helped to make her funeral the biggest media sensation
in recent history. Building an enormous shrine to a woman they knew only through images
and news stories, mourners piled bouquets, candles, photos, and memorabilia in front of
Kensington Palace, Diana’s London home.
Scorned by critics and adored by preteen
females, the British pop group the Spice Girls were the darlings of the UK before they
descended on America. Willing subjects of the media, the five (Posh, Scary, Baby, Sporty,
and Ginger, who has since moved on to other pursuits) were everywhere in 1997 and 1998,
including on hundreds of Internet sites. Fans learned that Ginger Spice, for example,
worked as a model, aerobics instructor, and barmaid before discovering her musical talent.
China Takes Back Hong Kong
The British return control of the colony of Hong Kong to China after 150 years.
Dolly Sees Double
Scottish geneticists announce the successful cloning of a sheep, and introduce Dolly to
the world.
1998
The third-youngest man to become president
of the United States, the first Democrat to be reelected to the office since Franklin
Roosevelt, and the second president in the history of the country to be impeached:
whatever else historians say of Bill Clinton (1946- ), they will surely analyze his
impeachment, spurred by a damaging affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Titanic Sails into Record Books
Titanic,the movie about the famous luxury-liner disaster, breaks all box-office records.
1999
The Great One Says Good-bye
Michael Jordan retires from basketball, a sport he brought to life during his remarkable
career. He left
the game with the No.1 points - per - game average and 29,277 points.
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