This Year in History:
1990
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 3, 1990, Panama’s General Manuel Antonio Noriega, after holing up for 10 days at the Vatican embassy in Panama City, surrenders to U.S. military troops to face charges…
Matthew Stuart meets with Boston prosecutors and tells them that his brother, Charles, was actually the person responsible for murdering Charles’s wife, Carol. The killing of Carol Stuart, who was…
Two trains collide in Sangi, Pakistan, on January 4, 1990, killing between 200 and 300 people and injuring an estimated 700 others. This was the worst rail accident to date…
Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected governor of an American state, takes office as Governor of Virginia on January 13, 1990. Wilder broke a number of color…
In the wake of vicious fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Azerbaijan, the Soviet government sends in 11,000 troops to quell the conflict. The fighting—and the official Soviet reaction…
On January 18, 1990, a Los Angeles jury votes to acquit Peggy McMartin Buckey, who was accused of molesting children at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, of all…
At the end of a joint sting operation by FBI agents and District of Columbia police, Mayor Marion Barry is arrested and charged with drug possession and the use of…
On January 21, 1990, at the Australian Open in Melbourne, American tennis player John McEnroe becomes the first player since 1963 to be disqualified from a Grand Slam tournament for…
The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in Moscow. Throngs of people line up to pay the equivalent of several days’ wages for Big Macs, shakes and french…
The Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agrees to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70‑year long monopoly of political power. The Committee’s…
Born Charles Westover in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1934, the singer‑songwriter known as Del Shannon dies by suicide on February 8, 1990. In a period when the American pop charts…
The Yalta Conference ends, the first Gold Record is earned by Glenn Miller, Dick Cheney accidentally shoots his friend, and Nelson Mandela is released from prison for anti‑apartheid activities in…
In a major upset, Buster Douglas defeats Mike Tyson, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, in 10 rounds at a boxing match in Tokyo, Japan. James “Buster” Douglas began…
Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, is released from prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990. In 1944, Mandela, a lawyer, joined the African…
On Valentine’s Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet…
With the benefit of hindsight, there might be Grammy awards that members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences wish they could take back, but there is only…
A year after agreeing to free elections, Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government loses at the polls. The elections brought an end to more than a decade of U.S. efforts to unseat…
On March 4, 1990, Loyola Marymount University star senior forward Hank Gathers sprints down the court during a West Coast Conference tournament game, leaps and catches an alley‑oop pass, slams…
Lithuania proclaims its independence from the USSR, the first Soviet republic to do so. The Soviet government responded by imposing an oil embargo and economic blockade against the Baltic republic,…
The Congress of People’s Deputies elects General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union. While the election was a victory for Gorbachev, it also revealed serious…
