March 5
The New York Times reports that Clinton administration officials have shared intelligence evidence with U.N. Security Council members that Iraq “has been rebuilding factories that could produce chemical weapons.”
March 7
New York becomes the thirty-eighth state to adopt capital punishment as Governor George E. Pataki signs a death penalty bill into law. Pataki calls the measure “the most effective of its kind in the nation.”
March 8
Two U.S. diplomats are shot to death and another is wounded in the ambush of their van in Karachi, Pakistan.
March 9
Despite objections from Britain, President Clinton allows Gerry Adams, leader of Ireland’s Sinn Féin party, to make a fund-raising visit to the United States and invites him to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day.
March 14
Astronaut Norman E. Thagard becomes the first American launched into space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two crewmates blast off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft en route to the space station Mir.
March 16
Astronaut Norman Thagard is warmly welcomed by Russian cosmonauts as he arrives at the space station Mir.
March 19
After devoting months to becoming a major league baseball player, Michael Jordan returns to professional basketball and rejoins the Chicago Bulls. He scores nineteen points as the Bulls lose to Indiana in overtime.
March 20
A gas attack on Tokyo’s subways kills twelve people. More than 5,500 others were sickened when poisonous sarin gas escaped from packages placed on five subway cars.
March 21
Thousands of Japanese police raid the offices of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo in investigating the nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo subway system the day before. The cult’s leader, Shoko Asahara, is arrested in May and accused of masterminding the attacks. In 2004, he is sentenced to death. Masato Yokoyama, the cult’s leader, was sentenced to death in 1999.
March 22
The longest-ever stay in space—437 days—comes to an end as Valeri Polyakov, a Russian cosmonaut, returns to Earth.
March 23
In a front-page article, the San Jose Mercury News reports the development of Java, a computer language that brings animation to websites. The article says that Java’s maker, Sun Microsystems of Mountain View, Calif., hopes the software “will turn the Web into a rocking new medium.”
March 25
The first online use of the wiki by its inventor, Ward Cunningham.
March 27
Forrest Gump wins six Oscars, including the award for best picture, at the 67th Academy Awards. For the second successive year, Tom Hanks wins the best actor award, this time for his title role in Gump. Jessica Lange wins the best actress award for her performance in Blue Sky.
March 29
The U.S. House of Representatives rejects four measures that would have imposed term limits on lawmakers. One of the defeated proposals envisioned twelve-year limits for members of the House and Senate, to be applied retroactively.
March 30
Pope John Paul II issues an encyclical letter in which he condemns abortion and euthanasia as “crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.” He also vigorously states opposition to capital punishment.
March 31
A federal judge grants a preliminary injunction against owners of Major League baseball teams, breaking a deadlock in an eight-month strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series and delayed the start of the 1995 season. The players went on strike in August 1994.
April 1
More than 3,000 people pay tribute to Mexican-American singer Selena in Corpus Christi, Tex., where, the day before, she had been shot to death by the former president of her fan club.
April 2
A bomb blast destroys an apartment building in Gaza City, killing several people, among them a leading figure in the Islamic extremist group Hamas.
April 3
UCLA defeats Arkansas, 89–78, to win the NCAA men’s basketball championship. The night before, Connecticut won the NCAA women’s basketball title, downing Tennessee, 70–64.
April 4
A federal jury in Washington, D.C., convicts Francisco Martin Duran of attempting to assassinate President Clinton. Duran had fired an assault rifle at the White House in October 1994. He later is sentenced to forty years in prison.
April 5
The House of Representatives passes a major tax-reduction bill, an important component of the Republicans’ agenda known as the “Contract with America.”
April 6
Saying “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry,” Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato of New York apologizes for mocking Lance Ito, the judge presiding at the O. J. Simpson trial. D’Amato had appeared on a talk radio program and spoken in a fake Japanese accent.
April 10
Kansas Senator Bob Dole formally announces his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. It is his third bid for the White House. Dole eventually becomes the Republican standard-bearer in the 1996 election.
April 12
Robert S. McNamara, a former U.S. defense secretary and an architect of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam, says in a memoir published this day that the war was “wrong, terribly wrong.” He also writes that he had misgivings about the war as early as 1967. His mea culpa is widely criticized as coming many years too late.
April 14
Actor-singer Burl Ives dies at age 85 at his home in Washington State.
April 17
The final issue of the 111-year-old Houston Post is published. Houston becomes the largest U.S. city without rival daily newspapers.
April 18
President Clinton insists at a prime-time news conference that he remains relevant in Washington, despite Republican control of both houses of Congress. The comment marks a low point of his presidency.
April 19
A huge truck bomb explodes at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds of others. It is the deadliest act of domestic terror in U.S. history, and suspicions immediately fall on Middle East terrorists.
April 21
Timothy McVeigh, an embittered Army veteran, is arrested by the FBI in the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh had spent the two days since the attack in jail in Perry, Okla., following his arrest on traffic and weapons charges.
April 23
Outspoken sportscaster Howard Cosell, 77, dies in New York.
April 24
The elusive Unabomber claims his final victim, Gilbert P. Murray, president of the California Forestry Association. Murray is killed by a package bomb at his headquarters in Sacramento. The package carried an Oakland postmark.
April 25
Actress Ginger Rogers, who won fame as the dance partner of Fred Astaire, dies in California. She was 83.
April 26
A minute of silence is observed across America to honor the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, which occurred a week earlier.
April 30
President Clinton cuts off U.S. trade and investment with Iran and denounces the Tehran government as an “inspiration and paymaster to terrorists.”
May 1
Federal prosecutors reach an agreement with Qubilah Shabazz, a daughter of Malcolm X, that effectively dismisses charges that she plotted to kill Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. The deal came hours before jury selection was to begin in her trial in Minneapolis.
May 4
The father and sister of Ronald L. Goldman, who was slain with Nicole Brown Simpson in Los Angeles in 1994, file a wrongful death lawsuit against O. J. Simpson.
May 7
Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris, wins the French presidency on his third try, defeating Lionel Jospin in a runoff election. Chirac’s victory ends fourteen years of Socialist rule.
May 8
Fifty years after Nazi Germany’s surrender in World War II, leaders represe
nting Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany gather in Berlin.
May 10
Terry Nichols, an Army buddy of Timothy McVeigh, is charged in the Oklahoma City bombing.
May 11
A United Nations conference extends in perpetuity the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which underwent formal review twenty-five years after taking effect.
May 17
The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee, after a thirty-month investigation, accuses Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon of sexual misconduct, tampering with evidence, and pressing lobbyists to find work for his estranged wife.
May 19
The historical fantasy Braveheart opens in Los Angeles. “It contains enough severed limbs and arrows piercing bodies to satisfy the blood-thirstiest filmgoer,” writes a critic for the New York Daily News. In 1996, the film wins the Academy Award for best picture.
May 20
The federal government abruptly closes to vehicular traffic a two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. The move is described as an important security measure in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.
May 22
In a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court rules that states cannot impose term limits on members of Congress without first amending the Constitution.
May 23
A 37-year-old man carrying an unloaded handgun scales a fence surrounding the White House and struggles with a Secret Service officer before being shot, wounded, and subdued. He is identified as Leland William Modjeski. “What caused him to go bananas, I don’t know,” the intruder’s father tells the Washington Post. “But he did go bananas.”
May 24
Heidi Fleiss, the 29-year-old “Hollywood Madam,” is sentenced to three years in prison for running a call-girl ring in Los Angeles that catered to rich and famous men. Prostitution “is very degrading and I am sure it does take its toll,” the sentencing judge tells Fleiss, who had been convicted on three pandering charges in December 1994.
May 26
Bill Gates writes an internal memorandum titled “The Internet Tidal Wave.” In it, Gates tells senior staff at Microsoft Corporation: “I now assign the Internet the highest level of importance.”
May 27
Actor Christopher Reeve is thrown from a horse during an equestrian competition in Virginia and left paralyzed.
May 31
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, accuses the entertainment industry of crossing the line “not just of taste, but of human dignity and decency.” He declares in a speech in Los Angeles that “the mainstreaming of deviancy must come to an end, but it will only stop when the leaders of the entertainment industry . . . shoulder their responsibility.”
June 1
The U.S. Postal Service issues a 32-cent stamp honoring Marilyn Monroe on what would have been her sixty-ninth birthday.
June 2
Bosnian Serbs shoot down a U.S. Air Force F-16C fighter plane on a routine NATO monitoring mission over northern Bosnia. The pilot, Captain Scott F. O’Grady, ejects from the aircraft but his fate is not immediately known.
June 6
NASA’s space-endurance record of eighty-four days is broken by astronaut Norman Thagard, a 51-year-old physician aboard the Russian space station, Mir.
June 7
The U.S. Senate votes, 91–8, to approve an antiterrorism bill that would stiffen penalties for terror-related crimes and make it easier to deport foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activity. It is the predecessor to a similar measure—the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996—that clears both houses of Congress in April 1996 and is signed into law by President Clinton.
June 8
Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady, whose fighter jet was shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2, is rescued by U.S. Marines in a helicopter raid.
June 10
Some 70,000 people gather in New York’s Central Park for the premiere of Disney’s animated film Pocahontas, which critics pan for taking excessive liberties with the historical record.
June 12
Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady, who was rescued six days after being shot down over Bosnia, is feted at lunch at the White House and then given a rousing welcome at the Pentagon.
June 13
Secret Service officers don elbow-length blue rubber gloves before searching the possessions of a delegation of forty gay and lesbian elected officials invited to the White House. News reports said the officers wore the gloves for protection—evidently fearing HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A few days later, President Clinton writes to the gay and lesbian officials, apologizing for “the inappropriate and insensitive treatment” they had received.
June 15
In one of the most memorable moments of his prolonged double-murder trial, O. J. Simpson is asked to put on the bloody gloves prosecutors say the killer wore in slashing his victims, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Facing the jury, Simpson appears to struggle to pull the gloves over his fingers. “Too tight,” he says. The demonstration is a stunning blunder by the prosecution and a turning point in the trial.
June 16
The XIX Winter Olympic Games, to take place in 2002, are awarded to Salt Lake City.
June 19
Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, is detained trying to enter China. He spends sixty-six days in jail before being expelled to the United States.
June 21
Representatives of Netscape and Microsoft meet at Netscape’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. According to Netscape’s cofounder, Marc Andreessen, Microsoft proposed that the companies carve up the market for Web browsers—an offer Netscape said it turned down. Microsoft later said Andreessen erred in his description of the meeting and denied seeking to divvy up the browser market.
June 22
The movie Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks, premiers in the United States.
June 23
Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the first successful vaccine to combat the scourge of polio, dies in California at age 80.
June 24
The underdog New Jersey Devils win the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup championship by completing a four-game sweep of the Detroit Red Wings. It is their first title.
June 25
Warren E. Burger, former chief justice of the United States, dies in Washington, D.C., of congestive heart failure. He was 87.
June 26
The United Nations marks its fiftieth anniversary in ceremonies at its birthplace in San Francisco.
June 27
The space shuttle Atlantis blasts off on a mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir and bring home American astronaut Norman Thagard.
June 28
The U.S. House of Representatives approves a proposed constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag. The measure is later defeated in the Senate.
July 1
After 904 performances, the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman closes at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York City.
July 2
Bill Gates is worth $12.9 billion, making him the world’s richest private person, Forbes magazine says.
July 3
Publication date of Time magazine’s exaggerated cover story about “cyberporn.” Critical reaction to the article quickly develops online—a telling example of the Internet’s emergent potential to debunk and discredit shoddy research.
July 4
The space shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir separate flawlessly after being docked in orbit for five days.
July 5
The 113-year-old typewriter manufacturer, Smith Corona Corporation, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. The venerable maker of portable typewriters was unable to withstand or adapt to competition from personal computers.
July 6
The United Nations–designated “safe area” at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia c
omes under attack by Bosnian Serb forces—the opening salvos of what ends in a massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
July 7
The space shuttle Atlantis lands at Cape Canaveral with astronaut Norman Thagard aboard. Thagard had spent three and a half months on Russia’s space station, Mir.
July 8
A deadly heat wave builds in the midsection of the United States. Before it subsides ten days later, the heat will have claimed more than 800 lives, most of them in Illinois.
July 9
The Grateful Dead perform at Soldier Field in Chicago, at what would be their final concert. A month later, Jerry Garcia, the band’s founder and frontman, dies of heart failure.
July 10
The defense opens its case at the O. J. Simpson double-murder trial in Los Angeles, calling Simpson’s grown daughter, Arnelle, to testify.
July 11
The United States and Vietnam restore diplomatic relations, twenty years after the end of the Vietnam War.
July 13
Six union locals representing 2,500 journalists, printers, truck drivers, and other workers at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News go on strike. The labor dispute would last nineteen months.
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