Timeline of Events

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1990

• The Immigration Act of 1990 is signed by George Bush, its eight titles constituting a major revision to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
• South African government frees Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison.
• Iraqi troops invade Kuwait and seize petroleum reserves, setting off Persian Gulf War.
• East and West Germany reunite.
• The Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) merge and form the Republic of Yemen.
• Sandinistas are voted out of power in Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro inaugurated as Nicaraguan president.
• Charles Taylor, a former junta member driven out of Liberia after being accused of embezzlement, returns with an invasion force of 150 Libyan trained guerrillas, plunging the country into civil war.
• Clean Air Act passed by the Bush administration.

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1991

• Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance founded, a nationwide organization formed under the auspices of the AFL-CIO.
• U.S. led coalition forces launch massive air strikes against Baghdad and follow with brief ground offensive to liberate Kuwait. Cease-fire ends Persian Gulf War with UN forces victorious after six-week war.
• Soviet leader Gorbachev dissolves Warsaw Pact military alliance.
• The government of South Africa repeals apartheid laws.
• Burmese Daw Aung San Suu Kyi receives Nobel Peace Prize.
• Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia win independence.
• Haitian troops seize President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in uprising.
• Professor Anita Hill accuses Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, after Congressional hearings Thomas is confirmed for the Supreme Court.
• U.S. indicts two Libyan intelligence officers, accusing them of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.
• With President Gorbachev's resignation, constituent republics form Commonwealth of Independent States, thereby breaking up the Soviet Union.

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1992

• As part of U.N. action, U.S. Marines sent to Somalia with orders to feed starving citizens and control warlords.
• President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin declare an official end to the Cold War in speeches before the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
• Four police officers acquitted in Los Angeles beating of Rodney King; rioting erupts in South-Central Los Angeles.
• Yugoslav Federation breaks up; factions in Bosnia and Herzegovina begin bloody civil war.
• North American Free Trade Agreement announced, object to remove barriers for trade of goods and services and enable U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies to operate according to market principles.
• Republicans re-nominate George Bush and Dan Quayle.
• William Jefferson Clinton elected president, Al Gore vice president, denying George Bush, Sr. a second term.
• "The Year of the Woman" sees a record number of women winning public office.
• The first Mexican-American woman, Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), and first Puerto Rican woman, Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Carol Moseley Braun becomes first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
• Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado becomes the first Native American member elected to the Senate.
• U.S. forces leave Philippines, ending nearly a century of U.S. military presence in the former colony.
• George Bush pardons former Reagan administration officials involved in Iran-Contra affair.
• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed.
• Hurricane Andrew causes major damage to southeast Florida.

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1993

• Clinton agrees to compromise on military's ban on homosexuals.
• Federal agents besiege Texas Branch Davidian religious cult, standoff in Waco, Texas ends with assault on compound.
• Arrests are made in the bombing of World Trade Center in New York.
• President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka is assassinated, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) thought to be responsible.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed to Supreme Court.
• Midwest hit with massive rainfall, extensive flood damage causes huge loses.
• Israeli-Palestinian accord reached.
• Maastricht Treaty is ratified, creating the European Union.
• Jean Chretien sworn in as Canada's 20th prime minister.
• South Africa adopts majority rule constitution.
• Clinton signs Brady Bill regulating firearms purchases.
• Toni Morrison wins Nobel prize for literature.
• Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers labor leader, dies at 66.
• Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 enacted.
  

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1994

• Major earthquake jolts Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, leaves 51 dead.
• Clinton ends trade embargo on Vietnam.
• CIA official Aldrich Ames charged as Soviet spy.
• Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta assassinated.
• Rwandan genocide of Tutsis by Hutus begins; estimated quarter-million people will be killed in the civil war.
• O. J. Simpson arrested, charged with killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
• Israel signs peace treaty with Jordan, Rabin and Hussein initial treaty in Amman.
• Republican Party wins control of House and Senate and Newt Gingrich is named House Speaker.
• Russians attack secessionist Republic of Chechnya.
• John Salvi kills two and wounds five others in Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts.
• Congress passes a joint resolution acknowledging the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and formally apologizing to Native Hawaiians for depriving them of their rights.
• Pedro Zamora, AIDS activist and MTV "Real World" cast member dies of complications from AIDS.
• First of three planned facilities, the National Museum of the American Indian opens in New York City at the George Gustav Heye Center.

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1995

• Major earthquake strikes Japan, death toll over 5,000.
• Criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, after lengthy trial Los Angeles jury finds him not guilty of murder.
• Failing Mexico economy bolstered by $20 billion aid program from U.S.
• Senate rejects balanced-budget amendment.
• Aum Shinrikyo cult sets off nerve gas in Tokyo subway, injuring thousands and killing eight.
• Powerful car bomb set off in front of federal building in Oklahoma City, investigation leads to right-wing paramilitary groups as Timothy McVeigh, Army veteran, is arrested.
• Killing continues in Rwanda, death toll rises to 2,000 in massacre.
• Despite world wide protests, France explodes nuclear device in Pacific.
• After brutal fighting between Bosnia and Croatia, cease-fire agreement leads to December peace treaty.
• Louis Farrakhan calls for Million Man March on Washington, D.C.
• In a defeat for Premier Jacques Parizeau, Quebec narrowly rejects independence from Canada.
• While attending a peace rally in Tel Aviv, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by Jewish extremist.
• Nigerian writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his fellow activists were sentenced to death by a military court despite world-wide protests. They were accused of inciting a riot in which four people were killed.
• In a referendum carried by just over 9,000 votes, Irish voters approve end to constitutional ban on divorce.
• U.S. space shuttle docks with Russian space station Mir.

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1996

• Barbara Jordan dies, noted U.S. Congresswoman was best remembered for the impeachment speech that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon.
• Dr. Haing S. Ngor murdered during robbery attempt, survived killing fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia to achieve fame as Oscar winning actor.
• Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown killed in plane crash.
• After heated debate in Congress, Clinton signs bill to raise minimum wage.
• Clinton approves welfare reform bill after Congress submits bipartisan bill.
• Bob Dole and Jack Kemp are nominated at the San Diego Republican convention.
• Taliban Muslim fundamentalists capture Kabul, capital city of Afghanistan.
• Clinton-Gore re-elected.
• Texaco settles racial bias suit that stemmed from insensitive racial remarks by top company executives against its African-American workers.
• Clinton appoints Madeleine Albright as first female U.S. secretary of state.
• After complicated negotiations, Kofi Annan named UN secretary-general.
• Britain deals with outbreak of mad cow disease, beef industry severely affected.
• Yahoo completes initial public offering, Jerry Yang becomes overnight multimillionaire.

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1997

• Hebron agreement overwhelmingly passed by the Israeli parliament, considered a major step on the road to a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement.
• U.S. House of Representatives voted to reprimand and fine the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for ethics violations.
• President Clinton begins his second term in office.
• Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China, dead at 92.
• Members of Heaven's Gate cult commit mass suicide in California, to follow the Hale-Bopp comet.
• U.S. Appeals Court upholds California ban on affirmative action.
• Governed by Britain for more than 150 years, Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule as a Special Administration Region (SAR) to the People's Republic of China.
• Fashion designer Gianni Versace murdered by Andrew Cunanan, a suspect in four other murders.
• After placing him under house arrest, Khmer Rouge holds trial of longtime leader Pol Pot.
• Timothy McVeigh given death penalty for Oklahoma City bombing.
• Princess Diana in fatal car crash in Paris, two others killed.
• World Jewish Restitution Organization succeeds in getting Holocaust victims' assets returned, Swiss fund set up to make payments to heirs.
• Iraq expels all U.S. members of UN arms-inspection team.
• Egyptian Islamic militants kill 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at Luxor tourist site.

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1998

• Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, sentenced to life plus 240 years.
• Pope John Paul II visits Cuba.
• President Clinton accused in White House scandal, denies allegations of affair with White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
• President Clinton outlines first balanced budget in 30 years.
• U.S. court rules line-item veto unconstitutional.
• Serbs battle ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
• U.S. drops condemnation of China's human rights record.
• Hindu nationalist Atal Behari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party becomes India's prime minister with coalition government.
• FDA approves Viagra, male impotence drug.
• The European Union agrees on a single currency, the euro.
• After plea bargain, convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was sentenced to four life terms in prison for killing three men and maiming two others.
• Indonesian dictator Suharto steps down after 32 years in power.
• U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed.
• Independent counsel's Starr Report outlines case for impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
• Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested in London.
• Newt Gingrich resigns from his position as Speaker of the House.
• House of Representatives panel drafts impeachment charges, approving four articles in party line voting. The full House impeaches President Clinton along party lines on two charges, perjury and obstruction of justice.

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1999

• U.S. agrees to ease restrictions on Cuba.
• Dennis Hastert elected to replace discredited Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House.
• After a losing battle with cancer, King Hussein of Jordan dies.
• Senate acquits President Clinton of impeachment charges.
• Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo is elected president of Nigeria.
• Taiwan-born scientist Wen Ho Lee is fired from Los Alamos National Laboratory after reportedly flunking a polygraph test about whether he gave U.S. nuclear secrets to China.
• NATO launches air strikes on Serbia to end attacks against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
• Libya hands over two suspects in 1988 Pan Am jet bombing over Lockerbie.
• Columbine High School in Colorado site of student shooting spree, 15 killed including shooters.
• Chinese government bans Falun Gong meditation sect.
• The people of East Timor vote for independence from Indonesia.
• Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and PLO leader Yasir Arafat announce peace accord.
• Dozens of people exposed to radiation in Japan's worst nuclear accident.
• Milestone reached as world population increases to six billion.
• Pakistani government overthrown in military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
• Tobacco companies admit to harm caused by cigarette smoking.
• Senate rejects Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, ignoring the Clinton Administration's warnings about international consequences.
• Parliament elects Muslim cleric Abdurrahman Wahid as Indonesia's new president.
• EgyptAir flight 990 crashes over Atlantic.
• After extensive legal wrangling, judge finds Microsoft to be a monopoly.
• Sole survivor of failed crossing attempt, five-year-old Cuban refugee Elián González becomes the focus of international custody battle.
• Nelson Mandela steps down as first black president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki elected in his place.
• Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic clamps down on province of Kosovo, war erupts over ethnic Albanians.
• Preparations reach a feverish pace as the countdown continues for the advent of the dreaded Y2K bug.
• White supremacist, John William King, is sentenced to death in hate killing of James Byrd, Jr.

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2000

• Austria's conservative People's Party forms coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, headed by xenophobe Jörg Haider.
• First Lady Hillary Clinton officially enters N.Y. Senate race.
• Stocks plunge as investors lose faith in dot-com internet stock boom.
• Twenty-one years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran Reformists win control of Iranian parliament for first time since 1979 Islamic revolution.
• Smith & Wesson, the nation's largest firearms manufacturer, reaches agreement with the federal government to institute a "code of conduct" that will make products safer.
• Acting Russian president Vladimir V. Putin formally elected to post.
• Elián González is reunited with his father after federal agents raid the Miami home of his mother's relatives, father and son return to Cuba.
• "I love you" virus disrupts computers worldwide.
• After NAACP boycott, South Carolina removes Confederate battle flag from capitol dome.
• Presidents of North and South Korea sign peace accord, ending half-century of antagonism.
• Bashar al-Assad succeeds late father, Hafez al-Assad, as Syrian president.
• Republican national convention chooses Texas governor George W. Bush as presidential candidate and Dick Cheney for vice presidential spot.
• Democratic national convention selects Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman to head ticket.
• Arrested for allegedly stealing sensitive nuclear weapons data, Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee is cleared of all charges and freed after serving nine months in prison.
• 2000 Olympic Games open in Sydney, Australia.
• Six-year Whitewater investigation of Bill and Hillary Clintons ends with no indictments.
• In what would become the Al Aksa intifada, Palestinians and Israelis clash violently after visit of right-wing Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to a joint Jewish/Muslim holy site.
• In one of the most divisive presidential elections in U.S. history, the Supreme Court seals Bush victory by 5-4; rules against any further recounting.
• President Bill Clinton approves Congressional Medals for WWII Navajo Code Talkers.
• 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico ends with the election of Vicente Fox Quesada as president of Mexico.

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2001

• Congo president Laurent Kabila assassinated by bodyguard, son Joseph Kabila takes over amid continuing civil war.
• George W. Bush is sworn in as 43rd president.
• Bush abandons global-warming treaty (Kyoto Protocol), angering European leaders.
• Former Klansman Thomas E. Blanton convicted of 1963 murder of four black girls in Birmingham, Ala.
• Jim Jeffords of Vermont changes his party affiliation from Republican to Independent, shifting the balance of the Senate. Republicans lose control of the Senate, with Democrats gain the narrowest of majorities (50-49-1).
• Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh executed.
• Budget surplus dwindles; possible reasons include the slowing economy and the Bush tax cut.
• Terrorists attack World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11. Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network are held responsible.
• Anthrax-laced letters are sent to certain media and government officials, several people die after handling the letters.
• In response to Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. and British forces launch bombing daily campaign against Taliban government and al-Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
• Enron Corp, one of world's largest energy companies, files for bankruptcy.
• Taliban regime in Afghanistan collapses after two months of bombing by American warplanes and fighting by Northern Alliance ground troops.

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2002

• In his first State of Union address, President Bush labels Iran, Iraq, and North Korea "an axis of evil".
• The trial of Slobodan Milosevic on charges of crimes against humanity opens at The Hague.
• American Taliban soldier, John Walker Lindh, charged with supporting terrorism.
• Angolan UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi killed in battle, UNITA rebels and Angolan government sign a cease-fire ending 30 years of civil war.
• East Timor becomes a new nation, Timor Lorosae, gaining a bloody independence from Indonesia.
• U.S. abandons 31-year-old Antiballistic Missile treaty.
• WorldCom, after admitting to misstating profits, files for bankruptcy-largest claim in U.S. history.
• Snipers prey upon DC suburbs, killing ten and wounding others, police arrest two sniper suspects, John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo.
• Republicans retake the Senate in midterm elections; gain additional House seats.
• UN Security Council passes unanimous resolution calling on Iraq to disarm or face serious consequences.
• Bush signs legislation creating cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
• Trent Lott steps down as Republican leader after furor over pro-segregationist remark at Strom Thurmond's retirement bash.

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2003

• Republican governor George Ryan commutes sentences of 167 on death row, calling capital punishment fundamentally flawed.
• President Bush's lawyers file a brief with the Supreme Court contending that the University of Michigan's program to increase the number of minorities enrolled as undergraduates and as law students amounts to a quota system and is unconstitutional.
• In rally against war in Iraq, marchers demonstrate in New York and other U.S. cities, in London, Melbourne, Paris, Seoul, and many other locations world-wide.
• U.S. launches Operation Iraqi Freedom, targeting Saddam Hussein and Iraqi leadership.
• Officials blame Muslim separatist group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front for growing terrorist activity in the Philippines.
• U.S. presents Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas with a "road map" for peace in the Middle East. With concessions from both sides, the plan calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
• Senate nearly unanimous in vote to expand federal government's right to spy on suspected foreign terrorists living in the U.S.
• House passes Bush's tax cut plan, votes for 10-year, $350 billion package, half of what the president wanted.
• Saddam Hussein removed from power in Iraq, attention turns to aftermath of war and rebuilding process.

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