1989

Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s - 1980s - 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s

Years: 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 - 1989 - 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Events

• January 1 - The Canadian-American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect
• January 7 - Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan
• January 9 - The Sega Genesis is released in New York, New York and Los Angeles, California
• January 10 - Cuban troops begin withdrawing from Angola
• January 20 - George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan as President of the United States of America.
• January 24 - Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair.
• January 30 - The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan is closed and evacuated.
• February 2 - Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column leaves Kabul ending nine years of military occupation.
• 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 1st female bishop in the Episcopalian Church.
• 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 invasion of 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 passenger and crew out of the first class section. Luckily most passengers and crew were still belted to their seats at the time.
• March 1 - The Berne Convention is ratified and enters into force with regard to the United States.
• 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 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 18 - In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found in the Pyramid of Cheops.
• March 23 - Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce cold fusion at the University of Utah.
• March 23 - A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid misses the Earth by 400,000 miles.
• March 24 - The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska
• April 7 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea
• April 15 - Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies of European football, takes place
• May 30 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.
• June 1 - The SkyDome stadium is opened in Toronto
• June 4 - Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing and is covered live on television.
• June 4 - Solidarity wins first free Polish election since WWII, inspiring a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
• July 2 - Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece resigns. New government formed under Tzannis Tzannetakis.
• 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 26 - A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
• August - the asteroid 4769 Castalia is the first asteroid directly imaged, by radar from Arecibo
• 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 18 - Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galan is assassinated near Bogota in Columbia.
• August 19 - Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be Prime Minister, thus becoming the first non-communist in Polish 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 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.
• September 15 - The Sega Genesis is released in the rest of North America
• 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 - An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the richter scale strikes the San Francisco /Oakland area in the United States, killing 63.
• November 7 - Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.
• 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: Communist-controlled 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 35 years of communist rule in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov is replaced by hitherto Prime Minister Petre Mladenov who changes the party's name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
• November 17 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins - In Czechoslovakia a peaceful student demonstration in Prague is severely beaten back by the communist 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 protestors assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
• November 22 - In west Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad, killing him.
• 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 1989 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 female serial killer over the next year).
• December 1 - Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the communist party the leading role in the state (Egon Krenz, the Politburo and the Central Committee resigned two days later).
• December 3 - Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the cold war between their nations may be coming to an end (some commentators from both nations exaggerated the wording and independently declared the Cold War over).
• December 6 - The École Polytechnique Massacre (or Montreal Massacre): an anti-feminist gunman murders fourteen young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.
• December 22 - After a week bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist dictatorship.
• December 25 - Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena are executed.
• December 29 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

• Rice University celebrates the demisesquicentennial anniversary of its founding.
• Fernando Collor de Mello wins the first elections in Brazil in 29 years.
• Kamchatka opened to Russian civilian visitors.
• Richard M. Daley elected mayor of Chicago.
• 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.
• The most known child murder in Finland was done by Veikko "Jammu" Siltavuori, who abducted and murdered two 8 year old girls in Myllypuro suburb in Helsinki.
• Nintendo released its popular handheld video game player, Game Boy

Year in topic

• 1989 in film
  • April 21 - Field of Dreams
  • May 24 - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  • June 2 - Dead Poets Society
  • Batman, directed by Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Kim Basinger.
  • Driving Miss Daisy
  • Born on the Fourth of July

  • Godzilla vs Biollante
• 1989 in literature
  • A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
  • Stephen R. Lawhead writes Arthur part of the Pendragon Cycle.
  • Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye is published.
  • Bill Watterson publishes Yukon Ho!.
• 1989 in music
  • De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising helps invent the field of alternative rap
  • The Band are inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
  • Amon (later Deicide) releases Sacrificial.
• 1989 in sports
  • January 22 - Super Bowl XXIII San Francisco 49ers (20) def. Cincinnati Bengals (16)
  • February 11 - US female Figure Skating championship won by Jill Trenary.
  • March 21 - Sports Illustrated reports allegations that tie Pete Rose to baseball gambling.
  • August 24 - Following allegations that he gambled on baseball, Baseball player Pete Rose is banned from baseball for life by commissioner Bart Giamatti
• 1989 in television
  • The Seinfeld Chronicles premieres on NBC. The show would later be retitled Seinfeld and become one of the most popular sitcoms in television history.
  • The Simpsons premieres on FOX. The characters had first appeared two years earlier as a segment on the Tracey Ullman Show

Births

• January 3 - Alex D. Linz, actor
• June 3 - Freddy Adu, soccer prodigy
• July 23 - Daniel Radcliffe, actor
• October 11 - Michelle Wie, golf prodigy

Deaths

• January 7 - Emperor Hirohito of Japan
• January 23 - Salvador Dalí, artist
• January 24 - Ted Bundy, serial killer (electrocuted)
• February 3 - John Cassavetes, actor, director, writer
• February 6 - Barbara W. Tuchman, historian
• February 11 - George O'Hanlon, actor/director.
• February 27 - Konrad Lorenz
• March 9 - Robert Mapplethorpe, artist
• April 26 - Lucille Ball, actress, comedienne
• April 30 - Sergio Leone, director
• May 14 - E. P. Taylor, Canadian business tycoon
• May 20 - Gilda Radner, comedian, actress
• June 28 - Joris Ivens, filmmaker
• July 10 - Mel Blanc, voice actor
• August 22 - Diana Vreeland, fashion editor
• August 29 - Peter Scott, naturalist, artist, and explorer
• September 1 - Bart Giamatti, academic, Commissioner of Major League Baseball
• October 4 - Secretariat, Triple Crown winner in 1973, two-time Horse of the Year
• October 4 - Graham Chapman, comedian
• November 5 - Vladimir Horowitz, pianist
• November 11 - Kenneth MacLean Glazier, Sr., former minister, former librarian and founder of the Kenneth M. Glazier Canadian Authors Collection at the University of Calgary, former Secretary of the Liberal Party in Alberta
• December 16 - Silvana Mangano, actress
• December 22 - Samuel Beckett, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1969
• December 25 - Nicolae Ceauşescu, former ruler of Romania (executed)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Norman F. Ramsey, Hans G. Dehmelt, Wolfgang Paul
• Chemistry - Sidney Altman, Thomas R Cech
• Medicine - J Michael Bishop, Harold E Varmus
• Literature - Camilo José Cela
• Peace - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
• Economics - Trygve Haavelmo

Referenced By