Life in 1990.
President George H.W. Bush, in his second year in office, is named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
Having launched the invasion of Panama in late 1989, Bush declares the operation a success with the detention of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, an operation which the UN and Organization for American States condemn as a violation of international law.
Iraq invades Kuwait, annexes it as an Iraqi province, and establishes a puppet government there, setting the stage for the first Gulf War in 1991.
John Poindexter, a senior official in the Reagan administration, is convicted in the Iran-Contra Scandal. His conviction will be reversed on appeal later on the same grounds which cleared Reagan aide Oliver North: that the testimony he gave to the Iran-Contra Congressional investigating committees had been unfairly used against him at trial.
Bush signs the Americans With Disabilities Act, prohibiting employment and program access discrimination against qualified people on account of a disability and requiring accommodative access to public transportation and buildings.
The Soviet Union changes its constitution, creating a US-style presidency, and Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the Soviet Union’s first president.
Vladmir Putin becomes an advisor to the mayor of Saint Petersburg.
The Soviet Union acknowledges the killing of 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia in 1940, an event called the “Katyn Massacre.”
Germany reunifies 45 years after its postwar division into East and West.
The Berlin Wall, which was opened in 1989, is torn down.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher steps down after eleven years in office.
Channel Tunnel workers from England and France meet 40 meters below the English Channel seabed.
The Eurotunnel will open to rail traffic in 1994.
Nelson Mandela is released from a South African prison after serving 27 years.
He will be elected South Africa’s president in 1994.
Lech Wałęsa, a shipyard electrician from Gdańsk, becomes the first democratically elected President of Poland since 1926.
His Solidarity movement is credited with ending Communist rule in Poland.
Drexel Burnham Lambert, a multinational investment bank, declares bankruptcy due to its involvement in illegal activities in the junk bond market.
Michael Milken, the company’s executive in charge of the activities, pleads guilty to securities and tax law violations and serves 22 months in prison.
Trump pardons him in 2018.
Exxon is indicted for the March 1989 Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska.
Donald Trump, age 44, gives television interviews to promote his book Surviving at the Top.
His Atlantic casinos are struggling and threaten his fortune.
Trump walks out of a CNN interview and later struggles when Barbara Walters challenges his untruthful statements in an interview for the TV show 20/20.
Top television programs: Cheers, 60 Minutes, Roseanne, and Murphy Brown.
Top movies: Home Alone, Die Hard 2, Dances With Wolves, and Goodfellas.
The Hubble Space Telescope, still hard at work, is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
The first MacDonald’s restaurants open in Russia and China.
Smoking is banned on US cross-country flights.
Died in 1990: Greta Garbo (85); Pearl Bailey (72); Leonard Bernstein (72); and Mary Martin, the star of Peter Pan (77).
A quote from Peter Pan:
The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.
— J. M. Barrie, author, 1911.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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