The 1990s
The 1990s are a period in history in modern times, lasting from 1990 until 1999. The last decade of the 20th century, they follow the 1980s and precede the 2000s.
Timeline[]
1990[]
January 3: President Manuel Noriega of Panama surrenders to U.S. forces--Panama City.
February 11: Nelson Mandela freed after 27 years in prison--Cape Town.
February 26: Sandinistas defeated in Nicaraguan elections.
March 11: Lithuania declares its independence, beginning the unraveling of the Soviet Union.
April 24: Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
June 4: Dr. Jack Kevorkian assists a suicide for the first time--Portland, Oregon.
June 25: Slovenia declares its independence, beginning the breakup of Yugoslavia.
August 2: Iraq invades Kuwait.
October 3: Reunification of Germany.
1991[]
FBI agent Fox Mulder is assigned to the agency's X-Files project.
Kurt Cobain records "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
January 16: Gulf War begins as the United States starts airstrikes against Iraq.
January 26: Somali Civil War begins.
February 7: Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the first democratically elected President of Haiti.
February 26: Iraqi troops begin withdrawing from Iraq, setting fire to the oil fields as they go.
March 3: Rodney King's beating by L.A. police is captured on videotape.
June 12: Boris Yeltsin elected President of Russia.
July 22: Arrest of cannibal serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer--Milwaukee.
The advanced chimpanzee Caesar--son of Cornelius and Zira--leads an ape revolt.
August 6: Birth of the World Wide Web.
September 19: Discovery of an Iceman in the Italian Alps, frozen since 3300 BCE.
September 26: Biosphere 2 begins operation--Oracle, Arizona.
October 11: Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas quizzed about allegations that he sexually harassed former staffer Anita Hill--Washington, D.C.
November 7: Basketball star Magic Johnson discloses he is HIV positive.
December 26: The Soviet Union formally dissolves itself.
1992[]
United Nations Godzilla Countermeasure Center, colloquially known as G Force, organized to combat the kaiju menace.
January 12: The artificial intelligence HAL 9000 becomes operational--Urbana, Illinois.
February 7: The European Union is established--Maastricht, Netherlands.
March 3: Bosnia declares its independence from Yugoslavia, sparking the Bosnian Civil War.
April 29: Riots erupt as the officers who beat Rodney King are acquitted--Los Angeles.
August 21: Shootout near the cabin of survivalist Randy Weaver results in the death of his wife and son, as well as a federal Marshall.
November 3: Bill Clinton elected President of the United States.
December 6: Much of Tokyo destroyed by the psychic mutant Akira.
1993[]
January 26: Vaclav Havel is elected President of the Czech Republic.
February 26: Terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with a vanload of explosives in the parking garage.
April 19: The Branch Davidian compound burns to the ground in a Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms raid--Waco, Texas.
June 23: Lorena Bobbitt castrates her husband--Manassas, Virginia.
July 19: U.S. policy toward gays in the military becomes Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
July 20: White House staffer Vince Foster allegedly murdered by Hillary Clinton, who smuggles his body to Fort Marcy Park.
Ruby Ridge
October 3: A Black Hawk helicopter shot down in Somalia; 18 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Somali combatants and civilians are killed--Mogadishu, Somalia.
1994[]
Newt Gingrich becomes Speaker of the House
January 1: NAFTA treaty goes into effect; the same day, the Zapatista Rebellion begins in Chiapas, Mexico.
January 6: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg in an effort to help her rival Tonya Harding.
April 5: Kurt Cobain kills himself--Seattle, Washington.
April 7: Rwandan Genocide begins--Kigali, Rwanda.
April 27: Nelson Mandela elected President of South Africa.
May 6: The Channel Tunnel opens, connecting Britain and France.
May 10: Silvio Berlusconi begins his first term as Prime Minister of Italy.
June 12: Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson--Los Angeles.
June 17: O.J. Simpson slowly flees from police in a white Bronco--Brentwood, California.
June 28: The Aum Shinrikyo cult releases nerve gas in a subway--Matsumoto, Japan.
July 15: The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 begins colliding with Jupiter.
September 19: Fermat's Last Theorem is proven--Princeton, New Jersey.
November 8: Republicans led by Newt Gingrich take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
December 14: The Dayton Accords are signed, bringing the Bosnian Civil War to a close.
1995[]
April 19: Timothy McVeigh bombs the Oklahoma City federal building.
November 15: Bill Clinton begins an affair with White House staffer Monica Lewinsky.
1996[]
Buffy Summers (b. 1981) is chosen to be a vampire slayer--Sunnydale, California.
April 3: Ted Kaczynski is arrested as the Unabomber at his cabin--Lincoln, Montana.
1997[]
Snake Plissken escapes from New York.
The Robinson family is lost in space.
March 26: Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult commit suicide in order to make contact with the UFO shadowing the Comet Hale-Bopp--San Diego
June 8: A Terminator 1000 is sent back in time from 2029 to kill John Connor. Two hours earlier, a reprogrammed Terminator 800 is sent back to protect Connor--Los Angeles.
1998[]
May 11: A limited outbreak of the mutagenic t-virus at Umbrella Corporation's Arklay Laboratory--Raccoon City, Missouri.
September 22: The t-virus begins to infect Raccoon City.
October 1: Raccoon City destroyed by nuclear weapon.
1999[]
April 20: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two disgruntled students, carry out a massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School.
A black monolith is discovered on the Moon near a fledgling colony.
Escapees from Monster Island attack world cities, creating a need to destroy all monsters.
Project Mayhem, led by Tyler Durden, launches simultaneous terrorist attacks on the headquarters of the world's credit card companies.
July 4: Giant alien spacecraft hovering over the major cities of Earth are destroyed on the United States' Independence Day.
December 31: We party like it's 1999.