1989

From Peaceful Beginnings

1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The world population growth in absolute numbers is believed to have been the highest ever around this time. [1]

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Events

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January

January 7 - Last day of the Showa period due to the death of Emperor Hirohito (aka Emperor Showa after his death) in Japan. Akihito became Emperor of Japan, and the Heisei period had begun from the following day.
January 8 - the Kegworth Air Disaster - A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport - 44 dead
January 16–18 - Race riots in Overtown, Miami
January 10 - Cuban troops begin withdrawing from Angola
January 10 - Assistant Australian Federal Police commissioner Colin Winchester is shot dead in the driveway of his Canberra home
January 17 - A gunman kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in Stockton, California
January 20 - George Herbert Walker Bush succeeds Ronald Wilson Reagan as President of the United States of America
January 24 - Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair
January 30 - American Olympic medalist Bruce Kimball is sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing two teenagers in a drunk driving accident

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February

February 1 - Joan Kirner becomes Victoria's 1st female Deputy Premier after resignation of Robert Fordham, over VEDC (Victorian Economic Development Co-operation) Crisis
February 2 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column leaves Kabul ending nine years of military occupation
February 3 - Military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay
February 3 - After a stroke, P.W. Botha resigns party leadership and the presidency of South Africa
February 10 - Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party
February 11 - Barbara Clementine Harris is consecrated first female bishop in the Episcopal Church (United States of America)
February 14 - Union Carbide agrees to pay USD $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster
February 14 - Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini encourages Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
February 14 - The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit
February 15 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops had left Afghanistan
February 16 - Pan Am flight 103: Investigators announce that the cause of the crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player
February 24 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a three-million-US dollar bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie
February 24 - A United Airlines Boeing 747 bound to New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii rips open during flight, sucking 9 passengers and crew out of the first class section. Luckily most passengers and crew were still belted to their seats at the time
February 27 - Venezuela is rocked by the Caracazo.

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March

The Exxon Valdez

March 1 - The Berne Convention is ratified and enters into force with regard to the United States
March 1 - A curfew is imposed in Kosovo where protests continue at the alleged intimidation of the Serb minority
March 1 - Louis Wade Sullivan starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President George H. W. Bush
March 1 - James D. Watkins starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Energy, serving under President George H. W. Bush
March 1 - The Politieke Partij Radicalen, Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij, Communistische Partij Nederland and the Evangelische Volks Partij amalgamate to form Netherlands political party the GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft)
March 2 - 12 European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end century
March 4 - Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming Time Warner
March 4 - The Purley rail crash - 5 dead, 94 injured
March 4 - First ACT (Australian Capital Territory) elections held
March 7 - Iran breaks off diplomatic relations with United Kingdom over Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses"
March 9 - A strike forces financially-troubled Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy
March 14 - Gun control: President George H. W. Bush bans the importation of assault rifles into the United States
March 14 - Christian General Michel Aoun declares a 'War of Liberation' to rid Lebanon of Syrian forces and their allies.
March 15 - Surgeon Bimal Ghosh removes a huge gallbladder weighing 10.4 kg (23 lbs) at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA
March 18 - In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found in the Great Pyramid of Giza
March 20 - Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke weeps on national television as he admits marital infidelity.
March 23 - Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce cold fusion at the University of Utah
March 23 - A 300m (1,000 ft) diameter Near-Earth asteroid misses the Earth by 500,000 km (400,000 miles)
March 24 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground
March 27 - The first free elections for the Soviet parliament go against the Communist Party.

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April

April 4 - Richard M. Daley elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois
April 6 - National Safety Council of Australia chief executive John Friedrich is arrested after defrauding investors to the tune of $235 million
April 7 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea - 41 dead
April 9 - Massacre of Georgian demonstrators by Red Army soldiers in Tbilisi's central square during a peaceful rally; 20 citizens are killed (most of them young women), many injured. The use of toxic gas by the Soviets was alleged. [2]
April 15 - Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in European football, takes place
April 16 - The Dilbert comic strip is syndicated for the first time.
April 19 - Gun turret explodes on the US battleship Iowa - 47 dead
April 20 - NATO debates modernising short range missiles; although the US and UK are in favour, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl obtains a concession defering a decision.
April 21 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Students in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Nanjing started to strike.
April 21 - Nintendo begin selling the Game boy in Japan
April 25 - End of term for Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail as the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia
April 26 - Sultan Azlan Muhibbudin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Yusuff Izzudin Shah Ghafarullahu-lahu, Sultan of Perak, becomes the 9th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia

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May

May 2 - Hungary dismantles 150 miles of barbed wire fencing, opening its border to Western Europe.
May 9 - Andrew Peacock deposes John Howard as Federal Opposition Leader
May 11 - ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Legislative Assembly meets for 1st time
May 12 - a Southern Pacific Railroad freight train crashes on Duffy Street in San Bernadino, California
May 14 - Mikhail Gorbachev visited China, he was the first Soviet leader to visit China since the 1960s.
May 15 Australia's 1st Private tertiary institution Bond University opens on the Gold Coast
May 15 - Jackie Mann, a 74-year-old former Battle of Britain pilot, is abducted in Beirut
May 19 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Zhao Ziyang met the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
May 20 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The Chinese government declared martial law in Beijing.
May 30 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 10 m (33 ft) high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators
May 30 Ananda Marga Member Tim Anderson is arrested on charges related to the 1978 Hilton Bombing

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June

The Unknown Rebel holds up a column of Chinese tanks sent to crush the student rebellion in Tiananmen Square
Jeff Widener (The Associated Press)

June 1 - The SkyDome (now known as Rogers Centre) is opened in Toronto
June 3 - The Ayatollah Khomeini dies
June 4 - The Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing and is covered live on television
June 4 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland spark off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
June 4 - Train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia kills 645 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline
June 8 - Kurt Waldheim elected president of Austria
June 13 - The wreck of the German battleship Bismarck, which was sunk in 1941, is located 600 miles west of Brest, France
June 14 - Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor is arrested in Beverly Hills, California after slapping a motorcycle police officer. [3]
June 21 - British police arrest 250 citizens for celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge
June 22 - Ireland's first universities established since independence in 1922 are set up: Dublin City University and University of Limerick

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July

July 2 - Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece resigns. New government formed under Tzannis Tzannetakis
July 5 - The television show Seinfeld premiers.
July 6 - At 01:23:45 AM the time and date by British reckoning was 01:23:45 6/7/89. This was also true 12 hours later excepting 24-hour time.
July 19 - A Douglas DC-10 carrying United Airlines flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa killing 112 but due to extraordinary efforts by the pilot and his crew, 184 on board survive
July 19 - The BBC programme "Panorama" accuses Lady Porter Tory Leader of Westminster City Council of "gerrymandering"
July 20 - Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi placed under house arrest
July 26 - A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus, making him the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

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August

Neptune on August 25 1989

August 6 - The comic strip Bloom County ends.
August 7 - US Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX), and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
August 8 - STS-28: The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.
August 9 The asteroid 4769 Castalia is the first asteroid directly imaged, by radar from Arecibo.
August 13 - 13 people die in hot air balloon accident near Alice Springs NT.
August 18 - Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia.
August 19 - Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be Prime Minister, thus becoming the first non-communist in power in 42 years.
August 20 - In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their wealthy parents to death in their family's den.
August 20 - 51 people die when the Marchioness pleasure boat collides with a barge on the River Thames adjacent to Southwark Bridge.
August 23 - Baltic Way, uninterrupted 600 kilometre human chain, in which two million indigenous people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then still occupied by the Soviet Union, joined hands to demand freedom and independence.
August 23 - Hungary removes border restrictions with Austria.
August 23 - All of Australia's 1,645 domestic airline pilots resign over an airline's move to sack and sue them over a dispute.
August 24 - Indonesia's first privately-owned television station, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia, (RCTI) begins broadcasting.
August 25 - Voyager II passes the planet Neptune and its moon Triton.
August 29 - Yusef Hawkins shot in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, sparking racial tensions between African Americans and Italian Americans.

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September

September 5 - President George Bush holds up a bag of cocaine purchased across the street at Lafayette Park in his first televised speech to the nation.
September 10 - The Hungarian government opens the country's western borders to refugees from the German Democratic Republic.
September 21 - Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in South Carolina, causing 7 billion dollars in damage.
September 22 - Deal barracks bombing: IRA bomb explodes at the Royal Marine School of Music in Deal, United Kingdom - 11 dead, 22 injured

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October

October 5 - US TV Evangelist John Nunes is found guilty of embezzlement of $158 million
October 9 - An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.
October 9 - In Leipzig, East Germany protesters demand the legalization of opposition groups and democratic reforms
October 17 - The Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the richter scale, strikes the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose and Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz areas in the American state of California, killing 63.
October 19 - The Guildford Four are freed after 14 years
October 30 - The qualification for the 1990 Football World Cup ends.

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November

Germans celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.

November 4 - Typhoon Gay devastates the Thai province of Chumphon.
November 7 - Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia and becomes the first elected African American governor in the United States.
November 7 - Cold War: The Communist government of East Germany resigns, although SED leader Egon Krenz remains head of state.
November 7 - David Dinkins becomes the first African American mayor of New York City.
November 7 - In California, convicted murderer Richard Ramirez (the "Night Stalker") is sentenced to death.
November 9 - Cold War: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Germany for the first time in decades (the next day celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down).
November 10 - After 45 years of Communist rule in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov is replaced by Foreign Minister Petar Mladenov, who changes the party's name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
November 10 - Gaby Kennard becomes the first Australian woman to fly non-stop around the world.
November 12 - Brazil holds its first free presidential election since 1960
November 16 - Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter are shot in San Salvador, El Salvador
November 16 - South African President FW de Klerk announces scrapping of Separate Amenities Act
November 17 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins - In Czechoslovakia a peaceful student demonstration in Prague is severely beaten back by riot police. This sparks a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Communist government (it succeeded on December 29)
November 20 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution - The number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
November 21 - North Carolina celebrates its bicentennial statehood.
November 22 - In west Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad and kills him.
November 26-27 night - Group of Bob Denard's mercenaries ousts Ahmed Abdullah Abderemane in the Comoros. Said Mohammed Djohor becomes interim president
November 28 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution - With other Communist regimes falling all around it and with growing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces they will give up their monopoly on political power (elections held in December brought the first non-communist government to Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years)
November 30 - Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a terrorist's bomb (the Red Army Faction claimed responsibility of the murder)
November 30 - A storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida named Richard Mallory takes a ride with Aileen Wuornos and is seen for the last time. Mallory became the first of seven people killed by the female serial killer over the next year.

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December

December 1 - Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist-dominated SED its monopoly on power. Egon Krenz, the Politburo and the Central Committee resign two days later.
December 3 - Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George Herbert Walker Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end.
December 6 - The École Polytechnique Massacre (or Montreal Massacre): Marc Lépine, an anti-feminist gunman, murders fourteen young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.
December 14 - Chile holds its first free election in 16 years.
December 15 - Drug baron Jose Gonzalo Rodriquez Gacha is killed by Colombian police
December 17 - Romania - Timişoara: The start of the uprising that toppled the communist regime in Romania.
December 17 - Brazil holds its first free election in 29 years. Fernando Collor de Mello wins the election.
December 20 - United States invades Panama (Operation Just Cause) to overthrow Manuel Noriega - he takes refuge in the Vatican mission until January 3 1990.
December 22 - After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist dictatorship.
December 22 - Two tourist coaches collide on the Pacific highway north of Kempsey, Australia, 35 killed and 39 injured.
December 25 - Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena are executed.
December 25 - Bank of Japan governors announce a major interest rate hike, eventually leading to the peak and fall of the "bubble economy".
December 28 - A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people.
December 29 - Václav Havel elected the president of Czechoslovakia - a big victory of the Velvet Revolution.
December 29 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

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Unknown Dates

Alan Bond's Bond Corporation goes into receivership with the largest debt in Australian history
Homosexual Acts between consenting adults decriminalized in Western Australia
Rice University celebrates the demisesquicentennial anniversary of its founding
Kamchatka opened to Russian civilian visitors
Retirement of the Alize propeller-driven anti-submarine planes from carrier service in the French Navy
The first national park, in Schiermonnikoog, is established in The Netherlands
Soviet submarine K-173, Chelyabinsk, commissioned
The wreck of the Lady Elgin discovered off Highland Park, Illinois by Harry Zych
Margaret Rey establishes the Curious George Foundation to help creative children and prevent cruelty to animals
Veikko "Jammu" Siltavuori abducts and murders two 8 year old girls in Myllypuro suburb in Helsinki, Finland
Richard C. Duncan introduces the Olduvai theory, about the collapse of the Industrial Civilization
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, is founded in Culver City, California by David and Diana Wilson
The unknown Swede Marcus Schenkenberg is discovered by a photographer when rollerskating on Venice Beach, California
1,000,000th Ford Taurus sold