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1989_Earthquake
1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The world population growth in absolute numbers is believed to have been the highest ever around this time. It has been called the "Year of Miracles", due to the fact that it was during this time the dissolution of the Soviet Union began. *
Events
January
February
March
- March 1 - The Berne Convention is ratified and enters into force with regard to the United States.
- March 1 - A curfew is imposed in Kosovo where protests continue at the alleged intimidation of the Serb minority.
- March 1 - Louis Wade Sullivan starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President George H. W. Bush.
- March 1 - James D. Watkins starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Energy, serving under President George H. W. Bush.
- 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 - 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 4 - The Purley Station rail crash - 5 dead, 94 injured.
- March 4 - First ACT (Australian Capital Territory) elections held.
- March 7 - Iran breaks off diplomatic relations with United Kingdom over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
- March 9 - A strike forces financially-troubled Eastern Air Lines into bankruptcy.
- March 14 - Gun control: 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 15 - Surgeon Bimal Ghosh removes a huge gallbladder weighing 10.4 kg (23 lb) at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA
- 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 23 - Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce 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).
April
- April 4 - Richard M. Daley elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois
- April 6 - National Safety Council of Australia chief executive John Friedrich is arrested after defrauding investors to the tune of $235 million
- April 7 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea - 41 dead.
- April 9 - Massacre of Georgian demonstrators by Red Army soldiers in Tbilisi's central square during a peaceful rally; 20 citizens are killed (most of them young women), many injured. The use of toxic gas by the Soviets was alleged. *
- April 15 - Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in European football, takes place.
- April 16 - The Dilbert comic strip is syndicated for the first time.
- April 19 - Gun turret explodes on the US battleship Iowa - 47 dead.
- 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 defering a decision.
- April 21 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Students in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Nanjing started to strike.
- April 21 - Nintendo begins selling the Game Boy in Japan
- April 25 - End of term for Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail as the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
- 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
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 two 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, this event was first of anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 (almost all of them peaceful).
- June 8 - Kurt Waldheim elected president of Austria
- 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 15 - Nirvana releases their first album, entitled Bleach on Sub Pop records.
- June 16 - A crowd of 250,000 gathered 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 are set up: Dublin City University and University of Limerick.
July
August