19931993 TV Timeline Guide aJanu ry 06 Created in conjunction with World Affairs Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie dies of cancer at United States Affairs seventy-five.
Pop Culture & Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev dies at fifty-four, though Entertainment the true cause of his death—complications from an AIDS-related illness—is not reported for another Arts & Sciences ten days. This publication has been published on the occasion aJanu ry 07 of the New Museum exhibition“NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” curated by aJanu ry 01 The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of secondhand tobacco smoke as a “known human Exhibitions, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Curator, Czechoslovakia is officially divided into two nations, carcinogen” responsible for three thousand Jenny Moore, Associate Curator, and Margot Norton, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, at the stroke of the nonsmoker deaths annually. Assistant Curator. New Year. New York City Mayor David Dinkins expands the New Museum exhibition dates: A group show at Paula Cooper Gallery featuring rights of unmarried and homosexual New Yorkers, February 13–May 26, 2013 Robert Gober, Donald Judd, Cady Noland, and Rudolf announcing a city registry for domestic partners. Stingel closes. His executive order grants hospital visitation rights “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” and other legal benefits for registered couples. is made possible through the support of the On Kawara’s show “One Thousand Days One Million aJanu ry 08 Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Additional funding Years” opens at Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea, is provided by Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, New York. Chicago Bull Michael Jordan scores his twenty- the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso aJanu ry 02 thousandth career point in a game against the para el Arte, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Milwaukee Bucks. Photography Fund. In Geneva, leaders from war-torn Bosnia and aJanu ry 09 Herzegovina propose creating ten new provinces in Copyright © New Museum, New York the Balkans, intended to mediate between the various American forces in Somalia begin an offensive to All rights reserved. No part of this publication may territorial claims by Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian wrest greater control over Mogadishu in a bid to be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, Muslims. improve security conditions for United Nations or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, peacekeeping forces. mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, Wired magazine launches at the Macworld without consent of the publisher. conference in San Francisco. In Angola, the fifty-five-day-long battle for Huambo between UNITA rebels and the ruling government Timeline: Claire Lehmann aJanu ry 03 begins, ultimately causing the death of an estimated Editor and Publications Coordinator: Sarah Stephenson US President George Bush and Russian President ten thousand people. Graphic Design: This is our work Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Printed in the USA Reduction Treaty, agreeing to a two-thirds reduction in 01/01 01/06 their respective nuclear arsenals by the year 2003. Special thanks to Guilherme Campello aJanu ry 04
The US Commerce Department releases a report finding that health care costs accounted for more than 14 percent of the nation’s total economic output aJanu ry 10 in the previous year, posing a “threat to the country’s economic health.” The University of Pittsburgh surgically transplants a baboon liver into a patient dying of hepatitis, the aJanu ry 05 second baboon-liver xenotransplant in history. The President Bush, in a final address at West Point, patient dies of an infection twenty-six days later. cautions the US against becoming “the world’s aJanu ry 11 policeman,” despite the far-reaching international military engagements of his own presidency. Defeated Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot reappears in the public view to announce the Serial killer Westley Allan Dodd is executed in aims of his campaign-organization-turned-nonprofit, Washington State by hanging, at his own request— “United We Stand, America,” including “electronic the first execution by hanging in the US since 1965. town meetings” to broadcast citizens’ views. 01/20 aJanu ry 16 aJanu ry 24 AFEBRU RY 01 Zoë Baird, President-elect Clinton’s nominee for Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Hillary Clinton announces a complete ban on smoking attorney general, pays $2,900 in fines for employing Justice, dies of heart failure at the age of eighty-four. in the White House, citing her focus on health. undocumented workers as a nanny and a chauffeur. aJanu ry 25 The scandal, known as “Nannygate,” ultimately results Wayne Koestenbaum’s nonfiction book on opera and in the withdrawal of her nomination. Sears, Roebuck and Company announces that queer culture, The Queen’s Throat, is released. they will no longer produce their annual “Big Book” AFEBRU RY 02 Paul McCarthy’s solo show opens at catalogue, their revolutionary mail-order initiative that Luhring Augustine Gallery. began in 1896. President Clinton meets with governors and members aJanu ry 17 of Congress, announcing that he will seek $31 billion Aimal Qazi, a Pakistani immigrant armed with an AK- in stimulus spending to revive the economy. The US Navy launches forty cruise missiles targeting 47, fires at CIA employees in Langley, Virginia, killing AFEBRU RY 03 a military installation on the outskirts of Baghdad in two; he later states that he was motivated by anger aJanu ry 12 retaliation for Iraq’s noncompliance with UN weapons with US policy in the Middle East. Jury selection begins in the federal civil rights trial of inspectors. Cream reunites for a performance at their Rock and aJanu ry 26 four of the police officers charged in the beating of Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. aJanu ry 18 Rodney King. Václav Havel, formerly the president of Other inductees include Creedence Clearwater AFEBRU RY 04 Revival, The Doors, Van Morrison, and Sly and the The states of Arizona and New Hampshire observe Czechoslovakia, is elected the first president of the Family Stone. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, making 1993 the first year newly formed Czech Republic. The Dow Jones industrial average closes at a record of full participation by all fifty states. high of 3,416.74, thanks to falling interest rates and aJanu ry 13 aJanu ry 27 aJanu ry 19 positive corporate earning reports. Wrestler and actor André Roussimoff, better known as The United States, Britain, and France destroy missile AFEBRU RY 05 sites in southern Iraq after Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq agrees to stop its attacks on US aircraft in a “sign André the Giant, dies in his sleep of congestive heart forays into Kuwait in violation of UN resolutions. of good will” toward President-elect Clinton. failure at forty-nine. President Clinton signs his first piece of legislation aJanu ry 28 into law: the Family and Medical Leave Act, which US Air Force Major Susan Helms becomes the first Israel’s parliament votes to annul a 1986 law that provides twelve weeks of unpaid leave for workers to US military woman in space as a mission specialist on deemed it illegal for Israeli citizens to meet with Artist Hannah Wilke dies from lymphoma at fifty- care for a child or sick family member. the shuttle Endeavour. members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, three; her illness is the subject of her posthumously buoying hopes for future peace talks. AFEBRU RY 06 aJanu ry 14 published last work, Intra-Venus. aJanu ry 20 Arthur Ashe, the only black man to win Wimbledon, The Federal Communications Commission assigns Lothar Baumgarten’s solo exhibition “American the US Open, and the Australian Open, dies from an a new block of radio frequencies for a new satellite- William Jefferson Clinton is inaugurated as the forty- Invention” opens at the Guggenheim Museum AIDS-related illness at the age of forty-nine. based GPS paging device, allowing 100-character second president of the United States. in New York. 02/01 02/05 text messages to be sent and received around the aJanu ry 29 world. Actor Audrey Hepburn dies of cancer at sixty-three. aJanu ry 21 President Clinton announces a temporary suspension Six scientists and three tourists are killed inside the in military discharges of homosexuals after a furor Galeras volcano in Colombia during an eruption; The White House announces that Hillary Rodham over his plan to lift the ban on gay service members they entered the crater despite pre-eruption “tornillo” Clinton will have her own office in the West Wing, in the military outright; he also announces that new earthquakes occurring in the previous where she will work on a number of domestic policy military recruits would not be asked about their sexual AFEBRU RY 07 weeks. issues; Hillary and Bill arrive at the Oval Office orientation, the compromise that would come to be together on his first full day as president. known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” A proposed Bosnian peace plan fails on the eve of a A US federal judge forbids the National Security aJanu ry 22 United Nations Security Council session. Council from erasing emails and other digital files aJanu ry 30 AFEBRU RY 08 that may contain information on the Iran-contra affair President Clinton overturns restrictions on abortion The Metro Red Line, a 4.4-mile-long subway before President Bush leaves office. on the twentieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, lifting route, opens in Los Angeles after seven years of The Clinton Administration announces that, in the aJanu ry 15 bans on abortion counseling at federal clinics and construction. wake of the “Nannygate” scandal, candidates for on financial aid to international family-planning aJanu ry 31 government jobs subject to Senate confirmation will The US Coast Guard, with the support of President- programs. be questioned on whether they have ever employed elect Clinton, sends ships and aircraft to block the aJanu ry 23 The Dallas Cowboys defeat the Buffalo Bills in the undocumented workers, which was made explicitly route of an expected wave of refugees from Haiti, in a Super Bowl; Michael Jackson performs during illegal in a 1986 law. reversal of a campaign promise. The fiftieth Golden Globe Awards are held; Martin halftime. AFEBRU RY 09 Brest’s Scent of a Woman wins best picture. Oliver Herring’s show “A Flower for Ethyl A celebration parade for the Dallas Cowboys’ Eichelberger,” Lyle Ashton Harris’s show “Face,” and Andres Serrano’s solo exhibition at Paula Cooper Super Bowl win is attended by four hundred thousand the group shows “In Transit” and “Skin Deep” open at Gallery opens. revelers; the crowd turns violent, and more than two the New Museum. dozen people are injured by stabbings, gun shots, and fistfights. AFEBRU RY 10 AFEBRU RY 24 02/10 Zone Books releases the Bruce Mau–designed book Apple Computer, Inc. introduces the PowerBook Widespread riots and looting erupt on the streets of version of Chris Marker’s seminal film La Jetée. 165c, the very first Apple laptop with a color display, Mogadishu when General Mohamed Aidid blames the at a retail price of $3,400. US-led military coalition for an attack on his troops in Sonic Youth releases the single “Sugar Kane”; the the south of Somalia. music video features clothing from Marc Jacobs’s Michael Jackson speaks candidly about his childhood notorious grunge collection for Perry Ellis, which AFEBRU RY 25 with Oprah Winfrey in the most-watched television debuted in the fall of 1992 and resulted in Jacobs’s interview in history, drawing ninety million viewers. Kim Young Sam is inaugurated as South Korea’s first termination. nonmilitary president in over thirty years, vowing to MARCH 03 The US agrees to be involved in the peace process in restore trust in the government and cure economic the Balkans, indicating a willingness to send ground and social ills. Dr. Albert Sabin, the researcher who developed troops to the region. the live-virus polio vaccine, dies of heart failure at AFEBRU RY 26 AFEBRU RY 11 eighty-six. AFEBRU RY 18 Six people are killed and over one thousand are President Clinton selects Janet Reno as his attorney injured at the World Trade Center in New York when A show on the work of Japanese architect Tadao Ando general, his third choice for the post. South Africa’s African National Congress approves a truck bomb planted by terrorists explodes in the opens at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. a plan to allow the white-led National Party to govern AFEBRU RY 12 parking garage below the North Tower. march 04 as junior partner for the five years following the April AFEBRU RY 27 The film Groundhog Day is released in theaters. One 1994 election, the first in which South Africa’s black Mohammed Salameh, one of the perpetrators of the population would be able to vote. of the most critically acclaimed comedies of all time, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” ends World Trade Center bombing, is arrested when he the United States National Film Registry ultimately its record-breaking run as the number one Billboard returns for the third time to the Ryder rental agency to The US Senate passes an amendment to the Health taps it for inclusion in the Library of Congress in 2006. hit song, slipping into second position the following demand the refund of his $400 deposit for the truck Reauthorization Bill to bar immigrants with HIV or week. used in the explosion, claiming that the vehicle was Jeanette Winterson’s erotic novel Written on the Body AIDS from entering the country. stolen. is released. AFEBRU RY 19 Lillian Gish, early silent-film star, dies in her sleep at Opening of the Whitney Biennial. AFEBRU RY 13 the age of ninety-nine. Alan Greenspan, the conservative Republican march 05 AFEBRU RY 28 Scientists discover the greatest concentration of chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, endorses Clinton’s economic plan. active volcanoes on earth on the floor of the Pacific The Waco siege at the Branch Davidian compound In Italy, there is public outrage at a Ministry of Justice proposal for widespread amnesty to be granted to Ocean near Easter Island. AFEBRU RY 20 in Elk, Texas, begins when agents of the Bureau of elite politicians involved in Tangentopoli, the vast AFEBRU RY 14 Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempt to serve a bribery network exposed in the mani pulite scandal Ferruccio Lamborghini, founder of the eponymous search warrant. A protracted gun battle ensues, killing in 1992. The body of an abducted two-year-old boy, James Italian automobile company, dies of heart failure at ten and beginning a fifty-one day standoff. seventy-six. Bulger, is discovered outside Liverpool, England. march 06 Bulger’s killers, two ten-year-old boys, later become AFEBRU RY 21 the youngest convicted murderers in modern British march 01 Hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics assemble history. Syria announces that it will participate in peace talks in the Philippines hoping to see an apparition of the without demanding the repatriation of four hundred The US completes the first airdrop of supplies in the Virgin Mary after a twelve-year-old boy claimed to have AFEBRU RY 15 Palestinians deported from Israel under suspicion of Balkans, delivering twenty tons of food and medicine seen the Virgin on the first Saturday of every month for to besieged areas; however, two-thirds of the supplies Art Spiegelman’s cover illustration for the New being security threats. the past four years. do not reach their intended targets, and the Muslim Yorker, featuring a Hasidic man and a black woman town of Cerska falls to Serbians hours later. 03/02 03/08 embracing amorously in honor of Valentine’s Day, A major exhibition of Joseph Beuys’s drawings, causes a controversy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, “Thinking is Form,” opens at the Museum of Modern The Irish band the Cranberries releases their whose racial disturbances in 1991 inspired the Art in New York. debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why cartoon. AFEBRU RY 22 Can’t We? AFEBRU RY 16 President Clinton travels to Silicon Valley to announce John Grisham’s fourth novel, The Client, is released. President Lech Wałęsa of Poland signs a law a $17 billion initiative promoting government-industry march 07 virtually banning abortion despite widespread public partnerships to advance computing technologies. march 02 Experts report that President Clinton will likely fill the opposition. The State of Alabama exonerates Walter McMillian, The United Nations Security Council establishes record number of judge vacancies not by ideological a black man held for six years on death row for the 2Pac releases his second album, Strictly 4 My the International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute preference, but with an eye toward diversity. murder of a white woman, after multiple trial witnesses N.I.G.G.A.Z. humanitarian abuses in the former Yugoslavia. admit to committing perjury. march 08 AFEBRU RY 17 AFEBRU RY 23 The Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, an outspoken The Federal Communications Commission formally United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali dissident, is arrested and charged with murder President Clinton presents his program for cutting announces that cartoons can no longer count toward endorses the US proposal to airdrop humanitarian despite lack of evidence in an apparent act of the deficit by $500 billion to Congress, outlining a tax the educational programming quota that television supplies into Bosnia, the largest proposed American government harassment. hike on the wealthiest Americans and cuts in military broadcasters must meet for license renewal. spending. involvement in the Balkan conflict to date. 03/13 03/22 march 15 march 24 april 02 The United Nations Commission on the Truth releases South African President F.W. de Klerk announces that Philip Morris cuts the price of Marlboro cigarettes by a report on El Salvador’s twelve-year-long civil war, the country had successfully built six atomic bombs 40 cents to $1.80 in response to the competition of calling for the dismissal of implicated military officers in a clandestine program and then destroyed them in generic brands during the recession; stock plummets and an overhaul of the judicial system. 1989, making South Africa the first and only country to by over 20 percent. have destroyed its nuclear arsenal. march 16 april 03 MTV’s irreverent animated television series Beavis march 25 Haiti’s ousted president, Reverend Jean-Bertrand At a summit meeting in Vancouver, President Clinton and Butt-Head premieres. Aristide, visits the Oval Office; President Clinton Rupert Murdoch offers to repurchase the bankrupt offers $1 billion to President Yeltsin to help speed march 09 pledges support for restoring Haitian democracy. New York Post, America’s oldest continuously Russia’s free-market transition. published daily newspaper; Murdoch had previously march 17 april 04 Japanese investigators discover $50 million in cash bought the paper in 1976 and sold it in 1988. and hundreds of pounds of gold bars taken in bribes Stage actor Helen Hayes dies of heart failure at Sheryl Swoopes sets the National Collegiate Athletic at the home of Shin Kanemaru, formerly Japan’s most MARCH 26 ninety-two. Association single-game scoring record in women’s powerful politician. The famous photograph of a starving Sudanese basketball with the Texas Tech Lady Raiders. march 18 child crawling toward a feeding center with a vulture Rodney King takes the witness stand during a civil april 05 watching nearby is published in the New York Times, trial, reporting that he was taunted with racial epithets Serbs block a United Nations relief convoy from inciting anger against the photographer, Kevin Carter, during the beating by Los Angeles police officers. reaching the besieged town of Srebrenica and launch A New York Times/CBS poll reports that the majority a heavy artillery attack on Sarajevo. who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and later committed of Americans would accept new taxes for a universal suicide. health care plan. Roberto Calasso’s novel The Marriage of Cadmus march 19 and Harmony is published in English. march 27 april 06 Supreme Court Justice Byron White announces that march 10 he will retire at the end of his term, paving the way for After weeks of negotiations, all fifteen warring factions The White House orders NASA to work with Russia in Somalia signed a disarmament and reconciliation Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider, is shot and killed President Clinton’s first Supreme Court appointment, to design a joint space station to cut costs, ending agreement, which was later broken by General Aidid’s outside his clinic in Pensacola, Florida, in the first Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish female justice. decades of space rivalry. factions in early June. documented antiabortion assassination in the US. april 07 An advisory committee recommends that Interferon- march 28 march 11 beta-1b, a major new drug treating multiple sclerosis, The US proposes a new head to a Palestinian be submitted for FDA approval; it is the first drug to Russian President Yeltsin survives a surprise vote by The Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian delegation for the Middle East peace negotiations in effectively treat the symptoms of the disease. the Congress of People’s Deputies to remove him Federation votes on a referendum to curtail President an incentive to resume talks. from office. march 20 Yeltsin’s power, setting off a protracted battle for 04/03 04/12 governmental control. MARCH 29 President Yeltsin spurns the Russian parliament and march 12 claims virtually unlimited power, appealing directly Oscars are awarded in various categories for to Russian citizens to support him in a popular vote Unforgiven, Scent of a Woman, Howard’s End, and A series of bombs are detonated across Bombay, referendum. My Cousin Vinny. killing at least 250 people and injuring hundreds more; more than a hundred suspected perpetrators are later march 30 The IRA detonates two bombs in a busy shopping tried in India’s longest-running court case, ending in april 08 center in Warrington, England, killing two young 2006. Painter Richard Diebenkorn dies of respiratory failure children and injuring fifty-six. at the age of seventy-one. Marian Anderson, the first black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, dies of heart failure at North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear march 21 march 31 Nonproliferation Treaty to avoid an inspection by the ninety-six. Lucy Hannah, a supercentenarian born in 1875 to International Atomic Energy Agency. Technologist Carl Malamud broadcasts the inaugural april 09 American slaves, dies at 117 years of age. episode of the first internet radio show, “Geek of the MARCH 13 MARCH 22 Week,” with the slogan, “Asynchronous times demand Iraqi forces fire on American fighter jets in the no-fly The “Storm of the Century” hits the Eastern Seaboard asynchronous radio.” zone; American planes bomb in retaliation. The engine of the space shuttle Columbia fails just of the United States, killing 310 people, leaving ten april 10 million Americans without power, and blanketing the before takeoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, delaying april 01 country with snow from the Florida Panhandle all the a nine-day space mission. A white right-wing fringe group member assassinates way up to Canada. MARCH 23 In the largest consumer protection measure instituted the popular black leader of South Africa’s Communist in decades, the Federal Communications Commission Party, Chris Hani, at his home. march 14 Researchers announce that they have discovered the orders television cable companies to reduce their april 11 gene that causes Huntington’s disease, completing Nine hundred Somali security guards hired to protect prices by 15 percent. relief supplies at the Mogadishu port clash with the a ten-year collaboration between six laboratory groups Five days of talks between Taiwan and China UN, demanding salary for a three-month period when around the world. Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides is conclude, opening a path for the rival governments to they weren’t working. published. meet formally for the first time since 1949. april 12 04/25 april 28 Two separate instances of USPS workers “going A two-week cease-fire in Bosnia is broken by Serbian The Pentagon lifts the ban on female participation in postal” occur: In Dearborn, Michigan, Lawrence nationalist attacks in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, just aerial and naval combat. Jasion wounds three and kills two, and in Dana Point, minutes after NATO planes begin enforcing a ban on California, Mark Hilbun kills three. Thousands of girls take the day off from school to Serbian aircraft. ma y 07 accompany their parents during the first “Take Our april 13 Daughters to Work Day,” spearheaded by the Ms. Hillary Clinton’s Task Force on National Health Care Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, widely considered one Foundation for Women. Reform announces that the proposed government of his finest works, premieres in London. april 29 health care plan would include worker’s compensation coverage and injuries suffered in automobile Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author, President Yeltsin, buoyed by widespread support accidents. dies of respiratory failure at eighty-four. in a popular vote referendum, presents a new draft of the constitution recommending the abolishment of the Nari Ward’s exhibition “Carpet Angel,” Kazumi april 14 India’s president assents to a constitutional amendment that reserves one third of all local Congress of People’s Deputies, his political rival. Tanaka’s solo show, and the group show “The Final Frontier,” which includes Andrea Zittel’s “Breeding Riots across South Africa during the national day of government seats for women and proportional april 30 mourning for Chris Hani result in seven deaths and numbers of seats for members of lower castes. Unit for Reassigning Flight,” open at the hundreds of injuries. Monica Seles, the number-one-ranked female tennis New Museum. april 21 player, is stabbed in the back by a spectator during a april 15 ma y 08 President Clinton’s stimulus bill is filibustered by match in Bonn, Germany. In Geneva, the US proposes the creation of a High An agreement is reached to save the red-cockaded Senate Republicans in his first serious legislative Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, in a woodpecker, an endangered species threatened by defeat. logging in the Southeast US. ma y 01 reversal of twelve years of Republican policy. april 22 Ranasinghe Premadasa, President of Sri Lanka, is ma y 09 Katharina Fritsch’s exhibition “Rat King” opens at Dia The Mosaic web browser, the very first graphical assassinated by a suicide bomber from the Liberation Citizens of Paraguay flock to the polls in the country’s Art Foundation in Chelsea, New York. web interface, is released by the National Center for Tigers of Tamil Eelam during a May Day rally. most democratic election to date, choosing the first april 16 Supercomputing Applications at the University of civilian president in thirty-nine years. Illinois; it soon becomes the world’s most popular The group exhibition “Coming to Power: 25 Years Military commanders in Haiti reject an offer of browser. of Sexually X-Plicit Art By Women” opens at David 05/07 05/09 amnesty, setting back negotiations to reinstate Zwirner Gallery, New York. overthrown President Aristide. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is ma y 02 april 17 dedicated in Washington, DC. april 23 Radovan Karadžić, the leader of the Bosnian Serbian A verdict is reached in the Rodney King civil rights nationalist faction, signs a peace plan under threat of trial, finding two of the four police officers guilty as César Chávez, founder of the first union of US airstrikes. charged. farmworkers in America, dies in his sleep at sixty-six. ma y 10 ma y 03 april 18 Art historian Rosalind Krauss’s seminal rethinking of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s solo show opens at Andrea An American sailor admits that he beat his gay modernism, The Optical Unconscious, is released by The fiftieth anniversary of the monthlong Passover Rosen Gallery. shipmate, Allen Schindler, to death in Japan, in a October Books. uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto is commemorated in april 24 high-profile case cited in the ongoing debate over gay New York. service members in the military. Keron Thomas, a sixteen-year-old boy posing as A truck bomb planted by the IRA explodes on april 19 ma y 04 a New York City subway motorman, successfully Bishopsgate in the City of London, killing one and drives the A train for forty-seven miles before being The standoff at the Branch Davidian compound near wounding forty-four. Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America premieres in discovered. Waco, Texas, ends when the building collapses in a april 25 New York; it would later win a Pulitzer Prize. fire—set by sect members themselves after multiple ma y 11 rounds of tear gas were inserted into the building by A major march for gay rights attracts an estimated one PJ Harvey releases her second album, Rid of Me. IBM and Blockbuster announce a joint venture to government agents—killing seventy-six sect members. million protesters, demanding the passage of a civil ma y 05 create “on-demand” stores where digital music, video, rights bill ending LGBT discrimination and seeking and game files can be downloaded and transferred In Italy, voters go to the polls in a historic national increased funding for AIDS research. Irving Howe, literary critic and cofounder of Dissent referendum spurred by the mani pulite scandal, to disc by customer request through new computer april 26 magazine, dies at the age of seventy-two. abolishing three ministries and cutting off political technology. party funding. ma y 06 NBC announces that Conan O’Brien will replace Still Life with Apples by Paul Cézanne sells for $28.6 april 20 David Letterman as the host of Late Night. Bosnian Serbs reverse course and reject the peace million at a Sotheby’s auction, the first painting to sell april 27 plan; President Clinton pushes European allies to join for over $20 million in three years. A licensing agreement for the abortion drug in a plan to arm Bosnian Muslims so that they can fight ma y 12 mifepristone, known as RU-486, is signed, paving Middle East talks resume in Washington after an to attain a stronger negotiating position with Serbs. the way for American distribution of the controversial announcement that some of the Palestinians deported American Airlines announces that it will ban medication. to Lebanon in 1992 as suspected terrorists will be computers, CDs, and electronic devices during granted repatriation. takeoff and landing, citing instrument interference. 06/08 06/11 June 07 In the first sale of its kind, two relics purported to be NBC airs the final episode of Cheers, watched by an slivers of the “true” cross sell for $18,000 at a Paris estimated 42.4 million households. Brennan Hayden, a wireless engineer, sends the first auction, despite Vatican protests. ma y 21 commercial text message. His one-word SMS: “burp.” ma y 13 June 08 The United States Archivist and the White House A guilty verdict is reached in the infamous “condom are found in contempt of court for failing to preserve Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito weds Masako Owada rape case,” in which the defendant argued that the computer files in the ongoing legal battle that ma y 29 in a traditional Shinto ceremony in Tokyo. victim implied consent by asking her knife-wielding would eventually become Armstrong v. Executive June 09 attacker to wear a condom. Office of the President, which mandated the Five Turks die in an arson attack perpetrated by neo- permanent preservation of all governmental email Nazis in Germany. ma y 14 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission messages. ma y 30 mandates that disabled and sick workers cannot be Nine of the former fifteen Soviet republics sign a ma y 22 excluded from jobs due to health insurance costs. preliminary agreement to create a unified economic Senator Boren, the swing voter from Oklahoma, June 10 community. European allies and Russia agree to the US plan for suggests that he is open to compromise on the aiding Bosnia, offering planes but no ground troops. Clinton budget bill. ma y 15 The US National Institute of Health mandates that ma y 23 ma y 31 clinical research trials must include women and William Randolph Hearst, Jr., the Pulitzer Prize– minorities. winning journalist and publishing heir, dies at United Nations–led democratic elections begin in President Dobrica Ćosić of Yugoslavia is ousted by eighty-five. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after decades of genocidal parliament in a no-confidence vote. Architect Fumihiko Maki is named the sixteenth rule by the Khmer Rouge. Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate. Janet Jackson’s single “That’s the Way Love Goes” ma y 24 June 01 June 11 hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
ma y 16 A research and industry consortium including AT&T, In the worst attack in the Balkans in a year, mortar Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is released, setting Philips, Zenith, and MIT announces that they will work shells kill twelve and wound eighty at a soccer game a box office record of $47 million in ticket sales during Dr. Jack Kevorkian is arrested for assisting a suicide together to develop a new television technology: in Sarajevo. the first weekend. in Michigan; two weeks later, he is featured as “Dr. HDTV. June 12 Death” on the cover of Time magazine. Psychiatrist Peter Kramer’s ground-breaking book The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) breaks its cease- on psychopharmaceuticals, Listening to Prozac, is ma y 17 The Norman Rockwell Museum opens in Stockbridge, fire with the Turkish government, ambushing and released. Massachusetts, featuring more than five hundred The Supreme Court accepts a case to decide whether killing thirty-three Turkish soldiers. paintings by the artist. sex can be a validcriterion in jury selection. They find Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted is ma y 25 June 13 it unconstitutional in J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B. the released. following year. New York Archbishop John O’Connor convenes a June 02 Diabetes researchers announce that severe meeting to discuss sexual abuse of minors. complications from the disease can be avoided by 05/15 05/20 The jury in the notorious libel case against New Yorker ma y 26 intensive daily regulation of blood-sugar levels through writer Janet Malcolm finds her guilty of fabricating monitoring and insulin administration. Hillary Clinton gives a highly publicized speech to misleading quotes about psychoanalyst Jeffrey members of the Service Employees International Masson; the following year, another court rules that The forty-eighth Venice Biennale, “The Cardinal Union, laying out a bold case for her health more evidence is needed. Points of Art,” curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, opens. care reform plan. June 03 June 14 ma y 18 ma y 27 Norton Simon, the industrialist and art collector who Twenty Somali demonstrators are killed when The US formally recognizes the government of Angola A bomb planted in a car outside the Uffizi Gallery in endowed the Pasadena museum bearing his name, Pakistani peacekeeping troops fire into a marching for the first time since 1975 when the civil war began. Florence, Italy, detonates, killing six and destroying dies at eighty-six. crowd. ma y 19 several works of art. June 04 President Clinton formally announces Ruth Bader Officials announce that an Iraqi prisoner has admitted President Clinton’s budget passes the House of The United Nations authorizes strikes against Serbian Ginsburg as his choice for Supreme Court Justice. to a plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Representatives after months of negotiations in a factions in Bosnia. June 15 Bush during a visit to Kuwait in April. major political victory. June 05 ma y 20 The Pepsi syringe hoax reaches fever pitch in the Clinton formally backs the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” plan Conway Twitty, the chart-topping country-and- media, with sixteen different accounts of foreign President Clinton signs the “Motor Voter” act, allowing for gay service members in the military. western singer, dies at fifty-nine. objects found in Pepsi cans now reported across the voter registration at state motor vehicle departments, country—all spontaneous fabrications. ma y 28 June 06 leading to the registration of more than twenty-eight June 16 million new voters—more than the Twenty-Sixth Poland’s only female prime minister, Hanna Suchocka, A ship carrying hundreds of illegal Chinese Amendment, which lowered the voting age to eighteen loses a vote of confidence in parliament and resigns. immigrants runs aground off of Rockaway Peninsula, Nigeria’s presidential election results—intended to in 1971. Queens; ten passengers drown. restore civilian rule after a decade of army rule—are suspended by military leaders. June 17 06/26 l Ju y 09 Sydney Pollack’s John Grisham adaptation, The Firm, The National Conference of Catholic Bishops is released in theaters. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna convenes in New Orleans and announces a new Shalala orders an inquiry into blood-distribution committee to find and punish sexually abusive priests. practices from 1982–84, when companies l Ju y 01 knowingly distributed HIV-infected clotting agents to June 18 The first novel written by artificial intelligence, Just hemophiliac patients; the inquiry ultimately leads to a The Spanish government announces a plan to buy This Once—based on the literary styling of Valley of $600 million settlement in 1997. the art collection of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen- the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann—is released after l Ju y 10 Bornemisza for $350 million. eight years of programming. British scientists announce that they have identified June 19 l Ju y 02 the bones of Czar Nicholas II and his family Legislators in Japan’s Parliament pass a vote of no Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind members using DNA tests after seventy-five years confidence in Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in the Sheikh” linked to the World Trade Center militants of speculationas to the whereabouts of the Russian wake of numerous government scandals. Jürgen Habermas’s recent contributions to ethical and other New York–area bomb plots, surrenders to Romanov family. theory are published in English as Justification and J0une 2 authorities. l Ju y 11 Application by MIT Press. President Clinton sharply urges North Korea to Lee Janzen wins golf’s US Open, beating Payne June 25 Three boats in a religious procession in the Stewart by two strokes. Philippines sink, killing 279 passengers. drop their nuclear arms program, warning of future Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female prime minister, economic sanctions. l Ju y 03 Robert Gober’s installation at Dia Art Foundation in assumes leadership. Chelsea closes. Exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide signs a After days of heavy rain in a swath of Midwestern Nora Ephron’s film Sleepless in Seattle is released in states along the Mississippi, Des Moines, Iowa, J1une 2 military accord (later broken), agreeing to return to theaters. Haiti to lead a democratic government by October 30. floods catastrophically, tainting the water supply British mathematician Andrew Wiles presents his for a quarter-million residents. “The Inferno-Paradiso Switch,” a solo exhibition of l Ju y 04 preliminary proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, first l Ju y 12 Rebecca Horn’s work, opens at the Guggenheim in proposed in 1637. A blimp advertising the restaurant chain Pizza Hut New York. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes to the west of the crashes on the roof of a Manhattan building after June 22 Japanese island of Hokkaido, triggering a tsunami and June 26 deflating from a puncture. A federal appeals court rules that First Lady Hillary causing 230 fatalities. The US fires twenty-three missiles at Iraq’s l Ju y 05 Clinton is a de facto federal official, and thus can 07/11 07/12 intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation conduct health care task force business in private. Iraq refuses to allow United Nations weapons for an attempt to assassinate former President Bush inspectors to install a camera at a missile test site, in April. UC Berkeley geneticist Charles Epstein receives an violating the truce agreement. explosive package from the Unabomber, Theodore June 27 Kaczynski, which partially destroys his hearing and l Ju y 06 severs three of his fingers. Anthony Young, a pitcher for the Mets, sets a major The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles purchases league record with his twenty-fourth consecutive loss, a Michelangelo drawing of the Holy Family for $6.27 Liz Phair’s first album, Exile in Guyville, is released. in a losing streak that eventually hit twenty-seven. Debut, Björk’s second studio album, is released. million, the highest price paid at auction for an Old June 23 June 28 Master drawing. l Ju y 13 A US Census report is released, revealing a 60 Lorena Bobbitt severs the penis of her husband, Zone Books releases the groundbreaking essay New York’s highest court rules that it is percent increase in births out of wedlock in the John Bobbitt, stating that he had repeatedly sexually collection The Invention of Pornography, 1500–1800, unconstitutional for the state to fund a Hasidic school preceding decade; a quarter of American women assaulted her. edited by historian Lynn Hunt. for special needs students in the town of Kiryas Joel. now become mothers without marrying. The exhibitions “Abject Art” and “The Subject of The Clinton Administration announces that in a l Ju y 07 Rape,” organized by the Whitney Independent Study reversal of Bush-era policy, those infected with HIV LaFace Records releases Toni Braxton’s self-titled Six Somali employees of the UN are ambushed and Program, open at the Whitney Museum of American will no longer be denied federal disability benefits. debut album. killed in Mogadishu by members of General Aidid’s Art. June 29 faction. l Ju y 14 June 24 Two bodies slain by Joel Rifkin, the prolific New York l Ju y 08 Abkhaz separatists in Georgia ignore a government Yale computer science professor David Gelernter serial killer, are found. ultimatum and continue to bomb the Abkhaz capital, G7 world leaders meet in Tokyo for their nineteenth is seriously injured by a mail bomb sent by the Sukhumi. annual economic summit. Unabomber, in the second attack on a university The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut single, “Party and J uly 15 professor in three days. Bullshit,” is released. Egypt executes seven militant followers of Sheikh A study of Greenland’s ice samples published in June 30 Abdel-Rahman for attacking foreign tourists and Eight militants suspected of planning bomb attacks Nature reports that extreme weather shifts were planning to overthrow the government, in the largest and assassinations are arrested in New York. common prior to the last ten thousand years on earth, Representative Henry Hyde successfully defends his execution in forty years. restrictions on federal Medicaid financing for abortion, shocking many climate scientists. in place since 1977. l Ju y 16 l Ju y 24 AUGUST 01 AUGUST 09
For the first time in its history, the British security UB40’s single “Can’t Help Falling in Love” hits number The baseball player Reggie Jackson is inducted into In a major shift in land policy, the Clinton service MI5 allows its director to be photographed one on the Billboard Top 100 chart. the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. administration announces that fees for ranchers and speak openly to the press about the activities of using federal land will double, in a bid to preserve the AUGUST 02 the organization. In a bid to stem inflation, the central bank of Russia environmental heritage of the West. withdraws all currency notes issued before 1993, The biological parents of “Baby Jessica” DeBoer, who Geneticists report that male homosexuality is linked to inducing panic. changed their minds five days after putting her up for Art Club 2000’s exhibition “Commingle” closes at a gene residing in the lower half of the X chromosome. American Fine Arts Gallery. l Ju y 25 adoption, win the two-and-a-half-year custody fight l Ju y 17 with her adoptive parents. AUGUST 10 Israeli aircraft heavily shell Hezbollah bases in FBI director William Sessions is asked to resign due Lebanon in retaliation for attacks on Israeli forces A rocket ferrying an $800 million spy satellite The US publicly discusses sending commandos to to evidence that he abused the privileges of his office. during the previous months. explodes over the Pacific, destroying the entirety of Mogadishu, Somalia, to hunt down General Aidid, the the US intelligence budget savings. warlord responsible for the deaths of four Americans. l Ju y 18 In the flooded Midwest, the second largest levee in AUGUST 03 The seven-year-old boy, Jesse Sepulveda, Jr., whose the nation breaks in Illinois; as the water rises, two President Clinton signs the Omnibus Budget two heart transplants catalyzed a national debate workers are trapped aloft in trees along with dozens Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes the second female Reconciliation Act; under the new law, Americans will and led to the formation of a federal organ donation of fleeing snakes, and are eventually rescued by Supreme Court Justice in the US, confirmed by a pay an additional 4.3 cents per gallon for gasoline. helicopter. program, dies. ninety-six to three vote in the Senate. AUGUST 11 l Ju y 19 l Ju y 26 08/01 08/04 The US Marines announce publicly that they will phase President Clinton formally announces the new policy In China, a preliminary design for the Three Gorges out married servicemen and women, and are quickly toward gay service members in the military, allowing Dam is approved and construction preparation overruled by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in them to serve as long as they do not disclose their formally begins. an embarrassing public relations gaffe. sexual identity or engage in sexual activity. AUGUST 12 The Smashing Pumpkins release their second album, 07/19 07/20 Siamese Dream. Pope John Paul II meets with President Clinton in Sheryl Crow releases her debut album, Tuesday Night l Ju y 27 Denver, directly registering his disapproval with the Music Club. administration’s policy on abortion. Reggie Lewis, a player for the Boston Celtics, AUGUST 04 AUGUST 13 collapses during a practice session and dies of cardiac arrest at the age of twenty-seven. The two police officers found guilty of civil rights A body discovered in a South Carolina swamp is violations in the beating of Rodney King are each l Ju y 20 identified as James Jordan, Sr., the father of basketball An alternative-medicine treatment plan for heart sentenced to two and a half years in prison. legend Michael Jordan. Jordan Sr. was murdered in a disease, which includes meditation, is accepted The lurid parental-murder trial of Erik and Lyle AUGUST 05 car theft incident. Menendez begins, broadcast by Court TV. for reimbursement by insurers in the first decision of its kind. Explosions caused by a nitric acid leak rip through An appeals court rules that the White House must A settlement values the Andy Warhol estate at $220 l Ju y 28 warehouses in Shenzhen, China, killing seventy and treat all email messages as official government million, far less than its original estimate, after a long injuring hundreds. records to be saved for posterity in the ongoing case battle between lawyers and foundation members. President Clinton agrees to a military strike against Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President. AUGUST 06 Serbian forces attacking UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. l Ju y 21 AUGUST 14 l Ju y 29 President Clinton’s budget plan to reduce the deficit During the second day of her Supreme Court by $496 billion is passed without a single Republican In Oklahoma, the nation’s governors announce that confirmation hearings, Ruth Bader Ginsburg In Japan, the political opposition coalition chooses vote when Vice President Gore breaks a tie in the they will take up the issue of the proposed federal unequivocally supports legal abortion in the most Morihiro Hosokawa as their leader, clearing a path for Senate. health care plan during their annual meeting, noting direct language ever used by a nominee. him to become the first non-Liberal Democrat prime their concerns that it will disturb health initiatives in AUGUST 07 minister of Japan in thirty-eight years. individual states. l Ju y 22 l Ju y 30 As fighting between Afghanistan and Tajikistan AUGUST 15 A government report finds that the majority of intensifies, Russian President Yeltsin encourages HIV-positive women contracted the virus through Belgium’s King Baudouin I dies of a heart attack at the other Central Asian countries to help defend the As discomfort with attitudes expressed in rap heterosexual sex, rather than intravenous drug use. age of sixty-two. porous border. music mounts, the feminist scholar bell hooks is quoted in the New York Times saying, “I think a l Ju y 23 AUGUST 08 Speculative currency traders attack the franc, driving lot of misogynous rap is similar to crack. It gives Britain’s Prime Minister John Major wins a vote of the French currency to a perilously low value. Tropical Storm Bret strikes Caracas, Venezuela, people a sense that they have power over their confidence from parliament, clearing the way for final l Ju y 31 triggering mudslides and killing ninety-nine people. lives when they don’t.” approval of the Treaty on European Union to create a unified economic community. After a week of shelling in Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel agree to a cease-fire brokered by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. AUGUST 16 AUGUST 24 september 03 Regina Frank’s show “L’Adieu: Pearls Before Gods” AT&T announces that it will pay $12.6 billion for the Two Iraqi ambassadors defect, seeking haven in A bipartisan letter from 283 economists is released, and the group shows “Testimonio” and “Trade Routes” nation’s largest wireless phone company, McCaw Britain and condemning Saddam Hussein’s “reign of backing the proposed North American Free Trade open at the New Museum. Cellular Communications, in the fifth-largest takeover terror.” Agreement as a “net positive for the United States.” september 11 in the nation’s history to date. AUGUST 25 Gabriel Orozco’s solo exhibition at the Museum of The German tennis player Steffi Graf wins the US Tuxedo manufacturer Harvey Weinstein is found The US indicts Egyptian cleric Sheikh Abdel-Rahman Modern Art opens in New York. Open singles title. buried alive in a bunker in Manhattan after being for orchestrating the World Trade Center bombing, september 04 kidnapped and held for thirteen days in a bid for a $3 a planned attack on New York City’s tunnels and Jason Rhoades’s exhibition “CHERRY Makita—Honest million ransom. buildings, and the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, announces that he Engine Work” opens at David Zwirner Gallery in has won support from Fatah for the peace agreement New York. AUGUST 17 AUGUST 26 with Israel. september 12 New York City bulldozes the “Hill” alongside the Delta Force Rangers reportedly arrive in Mogadishu, september 05 Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown, one of the last Somalia, to hunt down warlord General Aidid. Raymond Burr, the actor who played the part of remaining shantytowns in the city, claiming Track and field athlete Noureddine Morceli of Algeria television attorney Perry Mason, dies of cancer at AUGUST 27 it is a fire hazard. breaks the record for running a mile, with a time of seventy-six. President General Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria 3:46.32. september 13 Susan Sontag’s staging of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting resigns after eight years of rule, naming a civilian for Godot opens with a matinee performance in september 06 successor. Nirvana releases In Utero, their third and final studio Sarajevo. Yasser Arafat travels to Cairo to conclude the final album before Kurt Cobain’s suicide the following year. AUGUST 28 AUGUST 18 negotiations in the peace agreement with Israel. The children’s animated program Mighty Morphin Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign the first Oslo The White House proposes combining the FBI september 07 Power Rangers debuts. Accord in Washington, DC, shaking hands on the with the Drug Enforcement Agency in an effort to The corpse of exiled President Ferdinand Marcos, White House lawn. coordinate the government’s war on drugs, eliciting Israel agrees to a plan for Palestinian rule in Jericho refrigerated in an air-conditioned coffin in Hawaii for september 14 a fierce debate. and the West Bank, in a major turning point during four years, is returned to the Philippines to thousands secret negotiations. of rejoicing supporters. Jury selection begins in the World Trade Center 08/26 08/28 bombing trial. AUGUST 29 The ruling white party of South Africa agrees to share september 15 A memorial service is held in South Africa to honor governing power with disenfranchised blacks in the Amy Biehl, a young American woman slain in a racially run-up to the first universal election. A plane lands at Washington National Airport after motivated attack in the township of Guguletu. being automatically piloted for twelve miles by satellite 09/02 09/03 signals in a huge civilian aviation breakthrough. AUGUST 19 Hooded gunmen enter a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro september 16 and kill twenty-one people in a massacre retaliating for In a reversal of a long-held policy, the Metropolitan the deaths of police officers earlier that day. The first episode of the Cheers spin-off Frasier is Opera announces that it will use “supertitles” to broadcast, featuring Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Crane, a AUGUST 30 display translations of foreign-language opera texts. radio psychiatrist. AUGUST 20 The Israeli cabinet backs the draft agreement to grant september 08 autonomy to Palestinians, while four thousand In Paris, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs reach an Dr. George Tiller, a prominent abortion provider in right-wing Israelis protest outside. The cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 heads off to college agreement to modify the proposed accord. Kansas, is shot five times by an antiabortion protester in the first episode of the fourth season. inspired by the murder of Dr. David Gunn earlier AUGUST 31 september 17 in the year. Tiller survives and goes back to work in a The Queen of England announces that the staff at The Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegović, visits the UNESCO awards its annual peace prize to Yitzhak matter of days. Buckingham Palace will no longer receive automatic White House to ask for US aid against Bosnian Serbs, Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat. and is rebuffed by President Clinton. AUGUST 21 pay raises, but instead will see their salaries rise with performance. september 09 Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The The robotic space probe Mars Observer is lost three Age of Innocence is released in theaters. days before it is scheduled to enter Mars’s orbit, The PLO and Israel formally publicize their agreement september 18 totaling a $1 billion loss for NASA. september 01 to the historic Oslo I Accord; the PLO renounces terrorism and Israel agrees to recognize the PLO Swedish officials announce that they have found the AUGUST 22 A cabinet minister of Jordan announces that they are as the representative for Palestinians. body of a woman who lay undiscovered for three years willing to make peace with Israel if the PLO agreement Kasdi Merbah, the former prime minister of Algeria, is because her pension and her bills were being paid by is ratified. september 10 assassinated by Muslim militants. computer. september 02 The award-winning science fiction television series AUGUST 23 september 19 The X-Files premieres. The US and Russia formally agree to end their The National Archives’ dossier on the John F. Kennedy Emmy awards are given to Seinfeld and space rivalry and begin work on the International assassination is unsealed after thirty years, making Tony Scott’s film True Romance is released Picket Fences. ninety thousand pages of CIA documents available. Space Station. in theaters. 09/24 october 02 10/03 10/07 60 Minutes broadcasts Morley Safer’s “Yes . . . But Is It Art?,” a scathing critique of the contemporary Supporters of the Congress of People’s Deputies, art world. blockaded by President Yeltsin in an ongoing feud, september 20 take to the streets of Moscow, rioting and burning barricades. After weeks of delays due to asbestos abatement in october 03 aging buildings, the majority of New York City’s public october 10 schools reopen for the 1993–94 school year. The Battle of Mogadishu or “Black Hawk Down” Greek leader Andreas Papandreou, the former prime begins when US forces attempt to capture two of september 21 minister ousted on corruption charges, is voted back General Aidid’s lieutenants and two Black Hawk into power in a decisive majority. Douglas Crimp’s essay collection exploring the status helicopters are shot down, leading to an overnight of contemporary art institutions, On the Museum’s standoff in the Somali city and eighteen US deaths. october 11 Ruins, which features photographs by Louise Lawler, september 27 is published by MIT Press. Derek Jarman’s last film, Blue, is presented at the New Armed Haitians challenge US and UN forces landing at Port-au-Prince, attacking diplomats in their In Georgia, Abkhaz separatists break a cease-fire York Film Festival four months before his death from vehicles in anger at the proposed restoration of exiled President Clinton’s service initiative, AmeriCorps, in Sukhumi, storming the city and massacring citizens an AIDS-related illness. is signed into law, providing community service President Aristide. in the streets in an ethnic cleansing campaign. october 04 opportunities in return for educational funding. october 12 september 22 The Digable Planets release their debut album, Forces loyal to President Yeltsin attack the armed Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). parliament building with tanks, driving out legislators The Nobel Committee awards the Memorial Prize in Forty-seven passengers are killed when a train with massive explosions. Economics to two economic historians, Robert Fogel september 28 derails in Alabama in the deadliest accident in and Douglass North. october 05 Amtrak’s history. Art historian Hal Foster’s psychoanalytic take on october 13 Surrealism, Compulsive Beauty, is released by China breaks the world’s informal atomic testing President Clinton addresses the nation, asking for October Books. moratorium, exploding a nuclear device beneath The Church of Scientology is granted tax-exempt backing for his universal health care plan. a desert in Xinjiang. status by the US government, ending a four-decade- Souls of Mischief release their debut album, long legal battle. Katie Roiphe’s first book, The Morning After: Sex, october 06 ’93 ’til Infinity. october 14 Fear, and Feminism, is published. Michael Jordan announces his retirement from the september 23 KRS-One releases his first solo album, Return of the National Basketball Association. The US helicopter pilot held captive by General Aidid Boom Rap. is released. The Federal Communications Commission october 07 september 29 Haiti’s Justice Minister and two aides, appointed auctions airwaves for new wireless networks across Radio personality Howard Stern releases his by exiled President Aristide, are slain by opposition the country, expanding wireless services to millions; The Pentagon reveals that it will offer vegetarian Meals autobiography, Private Parts. the New York Times predicts the move may “free Ready to Eat rations in response to its involvement in forces. people from their desks yet chain them to their jobs.” humanitarian missions in regions with specific dietary Toni Morrison becomes the first black woman to win october 15 september 24 customs. the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nelson Mandela and President F.W. de Klerk of South september 30 Broderbund releases Myst, the hit CD-ROM computer Agnes de Mille, pioneering choreographer, dies of a Africa share the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end game that remains the best-selling PC game for nearly The worst earthquake in India in fifty years hits the stroke at the age of eighty-eight. to apartheid. nine years. Latur district in the state of Maharashtra, killing twenty october 16 thousand people. A retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein’s work opens at With democracy in sight, Nelson Mandela calls for the Guggenheim in New York. Jane Campion’s film The Piano debuts at the New economic sanctions against South Africa to end. York Film Festival. october 01 Ann Hamilton’s show “tropos” opens at Dia Art october 17 Richard Linklater’s classic slacker movie Dazed and Foundation in Chelsea, New York. Confused is released. Navy Secretary John Dalton calls for the removal of top naval officer Admiral Frank Kelso, who oversaw october 08 As violence in Haiti escalates, Senator Bob Dole, the september 25 the Tailhook Convention in 1991 during which service minority leader, moves to curb President Clinton’s The Justice Department releases new details on the members sexually assaulted eighty-three women and power to commit American troops in the region. In his first act as Cambodia’s new prime minister, Waco siege, contradicting Attorney General Janet seven men. october 18 Norodom Ranariddh asks the Khmer Rouge to release Reno’s account. the territory under their control. Short Cuts, Robert Altman’s film based on Raymond october 09 A Russian naval ship dumps hundreds of tons of september 26 Carver’s short stories, premieres at the New York Film nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan, undermining Festival. Somali General Aidid offers a cease-fire President Yeltsin’s diplomatic visit to that country the After two years spent cloistered inside an airtight in Mogadishu and proposes resuming peace talks week before. dome in the Sonora Desert of Arizona, eight with warring clans. Reinaldo Arenas’s memoir Before Night Falls is october 19 participants exit Biosphere 2, a $150 million quasi- released posthumously in English. scientific experiment in closed-ecosystem living. Pearl Jam releases their second album, Vs. 10/31 october 27 NOMBEVE R 05 NOMBEVE R 12 President Clinton gives Congress a 240,000-word Dr. Jack Kevorkian is taken to jail in Detroit after An FBI inquiry begins into the election of New Jersey proposal for universal health care, developed over refusing to post bond; it is the first time he is jailed Governor-elect Christine Todd Whitman, in response the previous eight months under Hillary Clinton’s in three years of assisting suicides. to reports that her staff may have attempted to leadership, signaling that he is open to compromise suppress the vote in black urban areas. as long as coverage extends to all. The FDA approves recombinant bovine growth NOMBEVE R 13 hormone (rGBH) for use in dairy cows, the first october 28 genetically engineered product approved for A partial solar eclipse is visible in Australia at sunrise Doris Duke, the American philanthropist and heiress, use in producing food. and visible at the tip of South America by sunset. dies of a heart attack at eighty, leaving the bulk of her NOMBEVE R 14 $1.2 billion fortune to charity. Mike Kelley’s solo exhibition, “Catholic Tastes,” opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art. october 29 Puerto Rico votes to retain commonwealth status, NO VEMBER 06 october 20 declining to become the fifty-first state. Bikini Kill releases their debut album, Pussy Whipped. The White House issues an executive order requiring Evander Holyfield beats Riddick Bowe, regaining his Elizabeth Peyton’s solo show in room 828 at the the military and all federal agencies to buy paper The first “Got Milk?” television commercial runs, place as boxing’s heavyweight champion. Chelsea Hotel opens for a two-week run. containing a minimum of 20 percent recycled material featuring a history buff who can’t answer a winning 11/02 11/08 NOMBEVE R 15 beginning the following year. trivia question over the phone due to a mouth full of peanut butter and no milk to wash it down. Joey Buttafuoco is sentenced to six months in jail october 21 october 30 for the statutory rape of Amy Fisher, the woman with The Ukrainian government votes to keep the whom he was having an affair and who shot his wife, Chernobyl nuclear power plant running despite the Martin Fettman, an American veterinarian, travels Mary Jo, in the face. to space on the shuttle Columbia and performs the disaster in 1986, citing an energy shortage in the NOMBEVE R 16 country. world’s first space dissection on a white rat in order NO VEMBER 07 to better understand the effect of weightlessness on Thousands of tons of US-grown rice leave the port The vice president of Colombia’s Senate dies in President Melchior Ndadaye, the first democratically tissues. of Sacramento, California, heading for Japan, the Medellín from gunshots inflicted by drug cartel elected president of Burundi, is assassinated after first foreign rice to be imported there in nearly twenty october 31 assassins in retaliation for a new law encouraging only three months in office. years, due to a shortage caused by adverse growing traffickers to become informers. october 22 Italian film director Federico Fellini dies of a heart conditions. attack at the age of seventy-three. NO VEMBER 08 NO VEMBER 17 Thirty thousand Hutus flee Burundi after a military coup by Tutsis, crossing the border into Rwanda. Actor River Phoenix dies of a drug overdose at Lorena Bobbitt takes the witness stand in Virginia, E. Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News wins twenty-three. testifying that she cut off her husband’s penis after october 23 the National Book Award for Fiction and Gore Vidal he raped her. takes the nonfiction prize for United States: Essays The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Philadelphia Phillies, NO VEMBER 09 1952–1992. NOMBEVE R 01 winning the 1993 World Series. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the debut album Hillary Clinton angrily denounces insurance Joan Bankemper’s exhibition “Intoxication: or, the of the Wu-Tang Clan, is released, a milestone record The IRA mistakenly kills eight civilians with a time industry groups, claiming that they have misled Echo of One Hand Clapping,” Thornton Dial’s in the history of hip-hop. bomb intended for paramilitary loyalists in Belfast. the American public by lying about the proposal exhibition “Image of the Tiger,” and the group show “La Cultura Tambien Cura—The Culture Also Heals” october 24 for universal health care. The Supreme Court unanimously rules that plaintiffs in open at the New Museum. sexual harassment cases do not need to prove severe A five-year-old boy who believes he can fly The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, officially psychological injury to be awarded damages. NOMBEVE R 18 jumps from the seventh story of a New York City establishing the European Union and its common building, surviving without a single broken bone currency. South Africa’s politicians endorse a new constitution, A Tribe Called Quest releases their third album, or external injury. guaranteeing equal rights for all. NOMBEVE R 02 Midnight Marauders. october 25 NOMBEVE R 19 Rudy Giuliani beats David Dinkins, becoming R. Kelly releases his first solo album, 12 Play. Canada’s Liberal Party ends the Progressive New York City’s 107th mayor. A fire at the Zhili plastic-toy factory in Shenzhen, Conservatives’ nine-year rule in a decisive victory. NOMBEVE R 10 China, kills eighty-seven workers who were unable NOMBEVE R 03 to escape due to sealed windows and locked doors. october 26 Brian de Palma’s film Carlito’s Way is released Léon Theremin, the inventor of the world’s first in theaters. NOMBEVE R 20 US officials publicly state that exiled President electronic instrument, dies in Moscow at ninety-seven. Aristide should not attempt to return to Haiti by the NOMBEVE R 11 US scientists announce that they have successfully NO VEMBER 04 October 30 deadline set earlier in the year, fearing isolated the strain of hantavirus that appeared in the Tamil rebels take over a military base in Sri Lanka, for his safety. Southwest earlier in the year, killing twenty-seven, Sotheby’s auctions eighty-eight works by Picasso killing 241, in the Battle of Pooneryn. from the Stanley Seeger Collection, selling every one. many of them Navajo Indians. NOMBEVE R 21 NO VEMBER 30 december 09 12/01 A plane crashes in a blizzard in Macedonia killing 115 President Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence After twenty years of preparation, physicists at people, including a UN relief worker from Bosnia. Prevention Act, which requires background checks Princeton’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor produce the before gun purchases and establishes a National world’s largest fusion reaction. NOMBEVE R 22 Instant Check System. december 10 A strike involving American Airlines flight attendants ends when President Clinton steps in to broker an Ann Franklin, a Westchester nanny, admits that agreement between the union and the airline, allowing december 01 she threw the infant in her care to the floor in anger, flights to resume in time for Thanksgiving. India’s militant Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, causing his death. Later, investigators discover that she had a criminal history, and in 1998, Kieran’s Law— NOMBEVE R 23 attempting to capitalize on anti-Muslim sentiment to capture the government, is roundly defeated at named after the slain child—passes in New York Snoop Dogg’s hotly anticipated solo debut, the polls. State, allowing background checks on prospective caregivers. Doggystyle, is released, cementing West december 18 Coast gangsta rap in the mainstream American An enormous pink condom sheaths the obelisk at the december 11 consciousness. Place de Concorde in Paris to mark World AIDS Day. Reverend Louis Farrakhan speaks in New York at the The condom—the world’s largest—is funded by the For the first time since the Communist Party came to Jacob Javits Convention Center, urging black men to The Swedish group Ace of Base’s album The Sign is clothing company United Colors of Benetton. power in 1949, China sends American war dead home abandon violence. released in North America. when the remains of three airmen killed in World War december 02 december 19 II are discovered on a mountainside in Tibet. 11/23 11/23 Pablo Escobar, the fugitive leader of the Medellín drug december 12 Israel and PLO officials secretly meet in Norway, cartel, is shot to death by Colombian law enforcement where they try and fail to resolve the deadlock over agents. A public activist group announces that medical implementing Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and the industry groups have given a record amount of money West Bank. december 03 to congressional campaigns in a nonelection year december 20 The US unemployment rate falls to 6.4 percent, the as debates on the universal health care plan are set NOMBEVE R 24 largest monthly improvement in a decade. to begin. Donald Trump and Marla Maples are married in a lavish affair at the Plaza Hotel in New York; december 04 december 13 The notorious Florida-based bank chairman David approximately one thousand guests attend. Paul is convicted of federal fraud charges for In preparation for repairs, astronauts on the shuttle The jury hears the closing arguments in spending lavishly while his thrift bank was failing december 21 Endeavour successfully catch the Hubble space Erik Menendez’s murder trial; his brother Lyle’s case during the savings and loan crisis. telescope with a robotic arm. is in the third day of deliberation. As reports surface that President Clinton may have NOMBEVE R 25 had liaisons with other women when he was governor The musician Frank Zappa dies of cancer at the age Israelis do not leave the West Bank as they were of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton says that the personal Scientists hoping to reduce the need for agricultural of fifty-two. scheduled to do, in a delay to the transition to attacks being made on her husband are “outrageous.” pesticides report the first successful transfer of a Palestinian autonomy. cloned disease-resistant plant gene. december 05 december 22 december 14 NOMBEVE R 26 The Pentagon announces a possible plan to “de- Michael Jackson releases his first public statement target” its Cold War missiles from Russia, training In Geneva, the US and Europe agree to put aside their about the allegations that he molested a child, saying In Tokyo, a Japanese court ruled against the them on the ocean instead. differences and go forward in updating the General that they are “totally false.” government, awarding $1.8 million to thirty-eight Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, ultimately leading to of the surviving victims affected by the notorious december 06 the creation of the World Trade Organization. december 23 mercury dumping from 1932–68 at Minamata Bay. As the controversy over Calvin Klein’s “heroin chic” december 15 Jonathan Demme’s film Philadelphia, starring Tom NO VEMBER 27 ads continues, model Kate Moss gives “no comment Hanks as a lawyer suffering from AIDS, is released on the weight debate” in New York magazine. Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List is released in theaters. In a bid to reduce the welfare rolls, President Clinton in theaters. announces a plan to consider federal subsidies for december 07 december 16 A show featuring the work of Young British Artists companies that hire welfare recipients. A gunman with a 9mm handgun opens fire in a Long Sarah Lucas and Steven Pippin opens at the Museum NOMBEVE R 28 Island Rail Road train car, killing six and wounding In response to growing violence in schools, Walter of Modern Art in New York. Annenberg announces that he will donate $500 nineteen. december 24 Congress formally acknowledges the end of the Cold million to groups involved in school reform, the biggest december 08 War by repealing anti-Soviet laws. single gift to public education in American history. The last remaining specimens of the smallpox virus, NOMBEVE R 29 President Clinton signs the North American Free december 17 now eradicated in humans and held in laboratories Trade Agreement into law, ending most trade tariffs in Russia and the US, are not destroyed as planned, Haynes Mahoney III, an American diplomat who was between Canada, the US, and Mexico. President Yeltsin, in a change of course, announces a as scientists claim that they will be useful in future kidnapped and held hostage by tribal forces in Yemen, series of massively subsidized loans to agriculture and research. is released. other industries in Russia, after elections show strong support for nationalist candidates. december 25
The CIA reports that North Korea likely has one to two nuclear weapons; the State Department disagrees.
december 26
The Guggenheim Museum goes to court with a lawsuit seeking the return of the Chagall painting Le Marchand de Bestiaux, which was stolen from the museum but purchased unwittingly by its owners.
december 27
France closes its beaches on the Atlantic side, from Belgium all the way down to Spain, as dangerous detritus from irresponsible shipping vessels washes up on the shores, including explosives, acetone, fungicides, and pesticides.
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december 28
After revelations that the US government conducted radioactive medical experiments on Americans after World War II, the US Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary calls for government compensation for victims.
december 29
The National Association of Realtors announces that thanks to the fledgling economic recovery and low mortgage interest rates, Americans purchased single- family homes in the prior month at the fastest pace ever recorded.
december 30
The Federal Communications Commission delays approving deals for Infinity Broadcasting, the parent company of the Howard Stern Show, in retaliation for the lewd content of the program.
december 31
The transgender Nebraska youth Brandon Teena is raped and murdered; his story is later memorialized in the film Boys Don’t Cry.
The Barbie Liberation Organization, an artist group involved in culture jamming, get nationwide press for switching the voice boxes on talking G.I. Joe and Barbie dolls and restocking them onto store shelves to the surprise of more than three hundred unsuspecting parents.