Year '1989' ('
MCMLXXXIX') was a
common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989
Gregorian calendar).
Events of 1989
January
★
January 7 -
Showa period ends, due to the death of
Emperor Hirohito (aka
Emperor Showa) in
Japan.
Akihito becomes
Emperor of Japan, beginning the
Heisei period the following day.
★
January 8 - The
Kegworth Air Disaster: A
British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to
East Midlands Airport, leaving 44 dead.
★
January 10 -
Cuban troops begin withdrawing from
Angola.
★
January 10 - Assistant AFP Police Commissioner Colin Winchester gunned down in driveway of Canberra home
★
January 12 - George Bush names
William Bennett to be his Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and
James Watkins as Secretary of Energy.
★
January 16-
January 18 -
Race riots occur in
Overtown,
Miami.
★
January 17 - The
Stockton massacre: Patrick Edward Purdy kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in
Stockton, California.
★
January 18 - The
Communist Party of Poland votes to legalize
Solidarity.
★
January 20 -
George H. W. Bush succeeds
Ronald Reagan as the 41st
President of the United States of America.
★
January 20 - The Soviets begin to airlift supplies to Afghanistan as they pull out.
★
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 2 teenagers in a drunk driving accident.
February
★
February 1 - Joan Kirner becomes Victoria's first female Deputy Premier, after the resignation of Robert Fordham over the VEDC (Victorian Economic Development Co-operation) Crisis.
★
February 2 -
Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last
Soviet Union armored column leaves
Kabul, ending 9 years of military occupation.
★
February 2 - Satellite television service
Sky Television plc is launched in Europe.
★
February 3 - A military coup overthrows
Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of
Paraguay since 1954.
★
February 3 - After a
stroke,
Pieter Willem Botha resigns his party's leadership and the presidency of
South Africa.
★
February 7 - The
Los Angeles, California City Council bans the sale or possession of semiautomatic weapons.
★
February 10 -
Ron Brown is elected chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, becoming the first
African American to lead a major
United States political party.
★
February 11 -
Barbara Clementine Harris is consecrated as the first female bishop of the
Episcopal Church in the 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 Satanic Verses'' author
Salman Rushdie.
★
February 14 - The first of 24
Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit.
★
February 15 -
Soviet war in Afghanistan: The
Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have 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 23 - After protracted testimony, the U.S.
Senate Armed Services Committee rejects, 11-9, President Bush's nomination of
John Tower for Secretary of Defense.
★
February 24 -
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a US $3-million bounty on the head of ''
The Satanic Verses'' author
Salman Rushdie.
★
February 24 -
United Airlines Flight 811, a
Boeing 747 bound to
New Zealand from
Honolulu, Hawaii, rips open during flight, sucking 9 passengers and crew out of the first class section.
★
February 24 - After 44 years,
Estonian flag is raised to the
Pikk Hermann castle tower.
★
February 27 -
Venezuela is rocked by the
Caracazo.
March
★
March 1 - The
Berne Convention, an international
treaty on
copyrights, is ratified by the
United States.
★
March 1 - A
curfew is imposed in
Kosovo, where protests continue over the alleged intimidation of the
Serb minority.
★
March 1 -
Louis Wade Sullivan starts his term of office as
U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
★
March 1 -
James D. Watkins starts his term of office as
U.S. Secretary of Energy.
★
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 - Twelve
European Community nations agree to ban the production of all
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.
★
March 3 -
Jammu Siltavuori abducts and murders two 8 year old girls in Myllypuro suburb in
Helsinki,
Finland
★
March 3 -
Portugal wins the
FIFA U-20 World Cup defeating
Nigeria on the final by 2-0 in
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia.
★
March 4 -
Time, Inc. and
Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming
Time Warner.
★
March 4 - The
Purley Station rail crash in
London leaves 5 dead and 94 injured.
★
March 4 - The first ACT (
Australian Capital Territory) elections are held.
★
March 7 -
Iran breaks off
diplomatic relations with the
United Kingdom over
Salman Rushdie's ''
The Satanic Verses''.
★
March 9 - A strike forces financially troubled
Eastern Air Lines into
bankruptcy.
★
March 13 - In Québec, 6 million people were without commercial electric power for 9 hours as a result of a huge geomagnetic storm. Some areas in the northeastern U.S. and in Sweden also lost power.
★
March 14 -
Gun control: U.S. President
George H. W. Bush bans the importation of certain guns deemed
assault weapons 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 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 22 -
Clint Malarchuk of the
Buffalo Sabres suffers an almost fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat in one of the most grusome sports injuries of all time.
★
March 22 - Asteroid
4581 Asclepius approaches the Earth at a distance of 700,000 kilomters.
★
March 23 -
Stanley Pons and
Martin Fleischmann announce that they have achieved
cold fusion at the
University of Utah.
★
March 23 - A 300 m (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.
April
★
April 1 -
Margaret Thatcher's new
local government tax, the
Poll tax, is introduced in
Scotland.
★
April 2 - In
WrestleMania V,
Hulk Hogan defeats
Randy Savage (with
Miss Elizabeth in the neutral corner) to become the WWF Champion.
★
April 4 -
Richard M. Daley is elected mayor of
Chicago.
★
April 4 - In
Brussels, Belgium,
NATO celebrates its 40th anniversary.
★
April 6 - National Safety Council of Australia chief executive
John Friedrich is arrested after defrauding investors to the tune of $235 million.
★
April 7 - The
Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets sinks in the
Barents Sea, killing 41.
★
April 9 -
Georgian demonstrators are massacred by
Red Army soldiers in
Tbilisi's central square during a peaceful rally; 20 citizens are killed (mostly young women), many injured.
★
April 15 - The
Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in
European
football, claims the life of 96
Liverpool supporters.
★
April 16 - The ''
Dilbert'' comic strip is syndicated for the first time.
★
April 18 - The Hillsborough disaster claims its 95th victim when 14-year-old Lee Nichol dies in hospital from his injuries.
★
April 19 -
Trisha Meili is savagely attacked while jogging in
New York City's
Central Park; as her identity remains secret for years, she becomes known as the "Central Park Jogger."
★
April 19 - Seven crew members die after a gun turret explodes on the U.S. battleship
''Iowa''.
★
April 20 -
NATO debates modernising short range missiles; although the
U.S. and
UK are in favour,
West German chancellor
Helmut Kohl obtains a concession deferring a decision.
★
April 21 - Students from
Beijing,
Shanghai,
Xian, and
Nanjing begin protesting in
Tiananmen Square.
★
April 21 -
Nintendo begins selling the
Game Boy in
Japan.
★
April 25 - The term of
Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail as the 8th
Yang di-Pertuan Agong of
Malaysia ends.
★
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.
May
★
May 1 -
Disney-MGM Studios at
Walt Disney World opens to the public for the first time.
★
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 - The ACT (
Australian Capital Territory) Legislative Assembly meets for the first time.
★
May 12 - A
Southern Pacific Railroad freight train crashes on Duffy Street in
San Bernardino, California.
★
May 14 -
Mikhail Gorbachev visits
China, the first Soviet leader to do so since the
1960s.
★
May 15 - Australia's first private tertiary institution,
Bond University, opens on the Gold Coast.
★
May 19 -
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989:
Zhao Ziyang meets the demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square.
★
May 20 -
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The Chinese government declares martial law in
Beijing.
★
May 22 - The
Nordland Days in Leningrad region (
Leningrad oblast) open.
★
May 25 - The
Calgary Flames win the
Stanley Cup: The Calgary Flames of the
National Hockey League (NHL) win their first and only Stanley Cup with a 4-2 victory over the
Montreal Canadiens.
★
May 25 - Thirteen days after a Southern Pacific train derails, a Calnev pipeline explodes at the same section of Duffy Street in San Bernardino, California.
★
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.
June
★
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 on the army's approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
★
June 4 -
Ufa train disaster: A
natural gas explosion near
Ufa,
Russia kills 645 as 2 trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
★
June 4 -
Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war
Poland is the first of many anti-
communist revolutions in
Central and
Eastern Europe in 1989 (almost all of them peaceful).
★
June 7 - 176 people are killed in
Surinam's worst air disaster.
★
June 8 -
Kurt Waldheim is elected president of
Austria.
★
June 12 -
Corcoran Gallery of Art removes
Robert Mapplethorpe's photography exhibiton.
★
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.
★
June 16 - A crowd of 250,000 gathers at
Heroes Square in
Budapest for the historic reburial of
Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian prime minister who had been executed in 1958.
★
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,
Dublin City University and the
University of Limerick, open.
July
★
July 2 -
Andreas Papandreou,
Prime Minister of Greece resigns. A new government is formed under
Tzannis Tzannetakis.
★
July 5 - The television show ''
Seinfeld'' premieres.
★
July 9-
July 12 : U.S. President
George H. W. Bush travels to Poland and Hungary, pushing for U.S. economic aid and investment.
★
July 14 - France celebrates the 200th anniversary of the
French Revolution.
★
July 14-
July 16 - At the annual G-7 Summit, leaders call for restrictions on gas emissions
★
July 19 -
United Airlines Flight 232 (
Douglas DC-10) crashes in
Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112; due to extraordinary efforts by the pilot and crew, 184 on board survive.
★
July 20 -
Burmese opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi is 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.
August
★
August 7 - U.S. Congressman
Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in
Ethiopia.
★
August 7 -
Federal Express purchased
Flying Tigers for an amount circa 800 million USD
★
August 8 - ''
STS-28'':
Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' takes off on a secret 5-day military mission.
★
August 9 The
asteroid 4769 Castalia is the first asteroid directly imaged by
radar from
Arecibo.
★
August 13 - A
hot air balloon accident near
Alice Springs, Australia kills 13.
★
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, 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 the family's den.
★
August 20 - Fifty-one people die when the
Marchioness pleasure boat collides with a
barge on the
River Thames adjacent to
Southwark Bridge.
★
August 23 - Two million indigenous people of
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania, then still occupied by the
Soviet Union, join hands to demand freedom and independence, forming an uninterrupted 600 km human chain called the
Baltic Way.
★
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 23 -
Yusef Hawkins is shot in the
Bensonhurst section of
Brooklyn,
New York, sparking racial tensions between
African Americans and
Italian Americans.
★
August 24 - Record-setting
baseball player
Pete Rose agrees to a lifetime ban from the sport following allegations of illegal gambling, thereby preventing his induction into the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
★
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.
September
★
September 5 - U.S. President
George H. W. Bush holds up a bag of
cocaine purchased across the street at
Lafayette Park in his first televised speech to the nation.
★
September 6 - The
South African
general election (the last under
apartheid) returns the
National Party with a much-reduced majority.
★
September 6 -
England holds
Sweden to a 0-0 draw in
Sweden, qualifying for the
1990 FIFA World Cup. The game became famous after
Terry Butcher sustained a deep cut to his forehead early in the game. He received stitches but played on the entire game. By the end of the game, the front of Butcher's white shirt and shorts where almost entirely covered in blood.
★
September 10 - The Hungarian government opens the country's western borders to refugees from the
German Democratic Republic.
★
September 14 - Agreement of cooperation between
Leningrad oblast (
Russia) and
NordlandCounty (
Norway) is signed in Leningrad, by the chairmen
Lev Kojkolainen and
Sigbjørn Eriksen
★
September 17 - Hurricane Hugo heads for small Caribbean islands in South Carolina
★
September 20 -
F. W. de Klerk was sworn in as State President of
South Africa.
★
September 21 -
Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in
South Carolina, causing $7 billion in damage.
★
September 22 -
Deal barracks bombing: An IRA bomb explodes at the
Royal Marine School of Music in
Deal,
United Kingdom, leaving 11 dead and 22 injured.
October
★
October 5 - U.S. televangelist John Nunes is found guilty of embezzling $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 13 - The
Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 190.58 points, or 6.91 percent, to close at 2,569.26 most likely after the
junk bond market collapsed. This mini-crash became known as the
Friday the 13th mini-crash.
★
October 17 - The
Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the
Richter scale, strikes the
San Francisco-
Oakland region of Northern California, killing 63.
★
October 18 - The
Communist leader of
East Germany,
Erich Honecker, is forced to step down as leader of the country after a series of health problems.
★
October 19 - The
Guildford Four are freed after 14 years.
★
October 19- The
Wonders of Life pavilion opens at
Epcot
★
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