1989

1989 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar).

Years: 1986 1987 1988 - 1989 - 1990 1991 1992
Decades: 1950s 1960s 1970s - 1980s - 1990s 2000s 2010s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1989 in aviation 1989 in film 1989 in literature 1989 in music 1989 in sports 1989 in television 1989 in Canada

Events

January

January 7 - Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito. The Heisei period begins
January 8 - the Kegworth Air Disaster - A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport - 44 dead
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 17 - A gunman kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in Stockton, California
January 20 - George Herbert Walker Bush succeeds Ronald Wilson Reagan as President of the United States of America
January 24 - Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair
January 30 - Bruce Kimball is sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing two teenagers in a drunk driving accident

February

February 2 - Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column leaves Kabul ending nine years of military occupation
February 3 - Military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay
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 first female bishop in the Episcopal Church (United States of America)
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

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 Herbert Walker Bush
March 1 - James D. Watkins starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Energy, serving under President George Herbert Walker 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 rail crash - 5 dead, 94 injured
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 Airlines into bankruptcy
March 14 - Gun control: President George Herbert Walker 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 Great Pyramid of Giza
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 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground
March 27 - The first free elections for the Soviet parliament go against the communist party

April-May

April 4 - Richard M. Daley elected mayor of Chicago
April 7 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea - more than 40 dead
April 15 - Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies of European football, takes place
April 19 - Gun turret explodes on the US battleship Iowa - 47 dead
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 15 - Jackie Mann a 74-year-old former Battle of Britain pilot is abducted in Beirut
May 30 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators

June-July

June 1 - The SkyDome stadium is opened in Toronto
June 3 - The Ayatollah Khomeini dies
June 4 - Suppression of the Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing and is covered live on television
June 4 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland spark off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
June 4 - Train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia kills 645 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline
June 7 - At 01:23:45 AM the time and date by US reckoning was 01:23:45 6/7/89. This was also true 12 hours later excepting 24-hour time.
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. [1]
June 21 - British police arrest 250 citizens for celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge
June 22 - Irelands first universities are established since independence in 1922, they are Dublin City University and University of Limerick
July 2 - Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece resigns. New government formed under Tzannis Tzannetakis
July 6 - At 01:23:45 AM the time and date by British reckoning was 01:23:45 6/7/89. This was also true 12 hours later excepting 24-hour time.
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 19 - The BBC programme "Panorama" accuses Lady Porter Tory Leader of Westminster City Council of "gerrymandering"
July 20 - Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi placed under house arrest
August 20 - The Marchioness collides with the dredger Bowbelle on the River Thames adjacent to Southwark Bridge - 51 dead
August 25 - Voyager II passes the planet Neptune and its moon Triton
July 26 - A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus, making him 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 6 - The comic strip Bloom County ends.
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 Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia.
August 19 - Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be Prime Minister, thus becoming the first non-communist in 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 20 - 51 people die when the Marchioness pleasure boat collides with a barge on the River Thames.
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
August 23 - Hungary removes border restrictions with Austria

September-October

September 10 - The Hungarian government opens the country's western borders to refugees from the German Democratic Republic.
September 15 - The Sega Genesis is released in the rest of North America.
September 19 - Hurricane Hugo lanfalls in South Carolina, causing 7 billion dollars in damage.
September 22 - Deal barracks bombing: IRA bomb explodes at the Royal Marine School of Music in Deal, United Kingdom - 11 dead, 22 injured
October 5 - US TV Evangelist Jim Bakker is found guilty of embezzlement of $158 million
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.
October 19 - The Guildford Four are freed after 14 years
October 19 - Samora Machel, president of Mozambique, and 33 others die in an air crash

November

November 4 - Typhoon Gay devastes the Thai province Chumphon
November 7 - Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia and becomes 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 45 years of communist rule in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov is replaced by Prime Minister Petar Mladenov, who changes the party's name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
November 12 - Brazil holds its first free presidential election since 1960
November 16 - Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter are shot in San Salvador, El Salvador
November 16 - South African President FW de Klerk announces scrapping of Separate Amenities Act
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 protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
Tuesday, November 21, 1989 - North Carolina celebrates its bicentennial statehood.
November 22 - In west Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad and kills 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 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 the female serial killer over the next year)

December

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 Herbert Walker 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): Marc Lépine, an anti-feminist gunman, murders fourteen young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.
December 14 - Chile holds its first free election in 16 years.
December 17 - Brazil holds its first free election in 29 years. Fernando Collor de Mello wins the election.
December 20 - United States invades Panama (Operation Just Cause) to overthrow Manuel Noriega - he takes refuge in the Vatican mission until January 3 1990
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 25 - Bank of Japan governors announce a major interest rate hike, eventually leading to the peak and fall of the "bubble economy."
December 29 - Václav Havel elected the president of Czechoslovakia - a big victory of the Velvet Revolution.
December 29 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

Unknown Dates

Rice University celebrates the demisesquicentennial anniversary of its founding
Kamchatka opened to Russian civilian visitors
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
Richard C. Duncan introduces the Olduvai theory, a theory about the collapse of the Industrial Civilization