Timeline 1988
Return to home
1988 Jan 1,
President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev exchanged
optimistic New Year's greetings, expressing mutual hope they would
reach an arms control treaty on strategic weapons within six months.
(AP, 1/1/98)
1988 Jan 2, President Reagan
and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed an agreement to
lift trade restrictions between their countries.
(AP, 1/2/98)
1988 Jan 2, An Ashland Oil
Company tank collapsed at Floreffe near Elizabeth, Penn., sending
more than 700,000 gallons of diesel oil into the Monongahela River.
(AP, 1/2/98)
1988 Jan 3, Margaret Thatcher
(b.1925) became the longest serving British PM this century.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_3)
1988 Jan 3, The Israeli Army
ordered nine Palestinian activists deported from West Beirut as part
of a controversial crackdown to stop the uprising in the occupied
territories. Israeli raids on Palestinian and Progressive Socialist
Party positions in the region of Saida make killed 21 persons and
wounded 11.
(AP, 1/3/98)(http://tinyurl.com/zz87m)
1988 Jan 4, Drinking water
began to dry up in Pittsburgh suburbs because of a massive diesel
oil spill two days earlier that fouled the Monongahela and Ohio
rivers.
(AP, 1/4/98)
1988 Jan 5, The U.N. Security
Council voted unanimously to ask Israel not to deport Palestinians
from the occupied territories in the first council vote against
Israel since 1981.
(AP, 1/5/98)
1988 Jan 5, Basketball star
"Pistol" Pete Maravich died of a heart attack during a pickup game
in Pasadena, Calif., at age 40. He had recently finished an
autobiography. In 2007 Mark Kriegel authored “Pistol: The Life of
Pete Maravich.”
(AP, 1/5/98)(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.P13)
1988 Jan 6, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was quoted by the Afghan news agency as
saying the Kremlin wanted to pull an estimated 115,000 soldiers from
Afghanistan in the coming year.
(AP, 1/6/98)
1988 Jan 7, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz, seeking to smooth a rift caused by a United
Nations vote, told reporters that overall American support for
Israel remained "unshakable."
(AP, 1/7/98)
1988 Jan 7, British actor
Trevor Howard died in England at age 71.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1988 Jan 8, An Arizona state
grand jury indicted Gov. Evan Mecham (1924-2008) and his brother,
Willard, on charges of concealing a campaign loan. Both were later
acquitted on these charges.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham)(SFC,
2/23/08, p.B5)
1988 Jan 10, In Pakistan Farooq
Sattar (28), a founding member of the MQM, became Karachi’s youngest
mayor.
(WSJ, 12/5/07, p.A22)(http://tinyurl.com/36566r)
1988 Jan 10, Soviet media
reported on an interview given to Chinese journalists by Mikhail S.
Gorbachev, who praised the state of Sino-Soviet relations and called
for a summit. The Beijing government turned aside the summit call,
saying Soviet-backed Vietnamese forces first had to withdraw from
Cambodia.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1988 Jan 11, Alexandria,
Danielle, Erica, Raymond and Veronica L'Esperance, the first US test
tube quintuplets, were born in Royal Oak, Michigan.
(www.threebluestars.com/multiples/quintuplets.html)
1988 Jan 11, Vice President
George Bush met with representatives of independent counsel Lawrence
E. Walsh to answer questions about the Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1988 Jan 11, Gregory "Pappy"
Boyington (75), World War II flying ace died in Fresno, Calif.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1988 Jan 11, The Soviet Union
announced it would participate in the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1988 Jan 12, Willie Stargell, a
21-year slugger with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in his first year of
eligibility.
(AP, 1/12/98)
1988 Jan 13, The US Supreme
Court ruled 5-3 that public school officials had broad powers to
censor school newspapers, school plays and other "school-sponsored
expressive activities."
(AP, 1/13/98)
1988 Jan 13, Lee Teng-hui
(b.1923) became president of Taiwan, the first Taiwan-born
head-of-state, following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo.
Lee Teng-hui authorized the establishment of the separatist
Democratic Progressive party (DPP).
(WSJ, 2/26/96,
p.A-1)(http://experts.about.com/e/l/le/Lee_Teng-hui.htm)
1988 Jan 14, With the United
States abstaining, the U.N. Security Council voted 14-0 to call on
Israel to stop deporting Palestinians and to allow those already
expelled to return.
(AP, 1/14/98)
1988 Jan 15, Jimmy "The Greek"
Snyder made racist remarks about black athletes. The CBS football
analyst was fired the next day.
(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/almanac/video/1988/)
1988 Jan 15, Sean MacBride
(b.1904), Ireland, commander of Irish Republican Army, died. He was
a founding member of Amnesty Int’l. and was awarded the Nobel peace
Prize in 1974. He wrote the Constitution of the Organization for
African Unity and the first Constitution of Ghana, the first UK
African Colony to achieve Independence.
(http://tinyurl.com/ggzwn)
1988 Jan 15, In Jerusalem, riot
police charged into the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques after
worshipers beat a policeman and stole his pistol during some of the
worst clashes seen on the revered Temple Mount.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1988 Jan 16, Jimmy "The Greek"
Snyder was fired as a CBS Sports commentator one day after telling a
TV station in Washington, D.C., that, during the era of slavery,
blacks had been bred to produce stronger offspring. He was fired
because he claimed blacks were superior to whites in athletics, and
he traced it back to how blacks were bred. To make matters worse, he
also said "if blacks take over coaching like everybody wants them
to, there is not going to be anything left for the white people."
(AP,
1/16/98)(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/almanac/video/1988/)
1988 Jan 16, Andrija Artukovic
(b.1899), a Croatian Ustasha and a convicted war criminal for
the crimes committed against minorities in the WWII Independent
State of Croatia (NDH), died in a prison hospital in Zagreb.
(SSFC, 4/4/10, Par.
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artukovi%C4%87)
1988 Jan 17, The Washington
Redskins won the NFC championship by defeating the Minnesota Vikings
17-10; the Denver Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns 38-33 to win the
AFC title.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Haiti held a
presidential election run by the military-led junta that was
boycotted by the opposition.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Angelo de Mojana
di Cologna, the Grand Master of The Order of St. John (Knights of
Malta), died. Fidel Castro declared a national day of mourning in
Cuba.
{Malta, Cuba}
(WSJ, 12/30/94,
p.A6)(www.worldstatesmen.org/Malta_knights.htm)
1988 Jan 18, An airliner
crashed in southwestern China, killing all 108 people on board,
according to the official Xinhua news agency.
(AP, 1/18/98)
1988 Jan 19, State Farm
Insurance Co. in California announced that it will pay $1.3 million
to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit brought by three former
employees.
(AP, 1/19/98)
1988 Jan 20, An Arizona House
committee opened hearings on the possible impeachment of Gov. Evan
Mecham.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1988 Jan 20, Philippe de
Rothschild (b.1902), Bordeaux Vineyard manager, died in Paris.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Philippe_de_Rothschild)
1988 Jan 21, Retin-A got a
boost when a study published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association said the anti-acne drug could also reduce wrinkles
caused by exposure to the sun.
(AP, 1/21/98)
1988 Jan 22, A US federal
appeals court ruled that court appointment of independent counsels
to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by high-ranking government
officials was unconstitutional; however, the Supreme Court upheld
the law the following June.
(AP, 1/22/98)
1988 Jan 23, More than 50,000
Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv to protest the treatment of
Palestinians in the occupied territories.
(AP, 1/23/98)
1988 Jan 23, Charles Glenn King
(b.1896), biochemist, died. He and a team of students isolated
vitamin C in 1932.
(http://tinyurl.com/yn4zse)
1988 Jan 24, The government of
Haiti declared Leslie Manigat winner of that country's presidential
election. However, Manigat was overthrown by Haiti's military
leader, Lt. Gen. Henri Hamphy, the following June.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1988 Jan 25, In his final State
of the Union address, President Reagan declared America was "strong,
prosperous, at peace." Vice President George Bush and Dan Rather
clashed on "The CBS Evening News" as the anchorman attempted to
question the Republican presidential candidate about his role in the
Iran-Contra affair.
(AP, 1/25/98)
1988 Jan 26, The Andrew Lloyd
Webber musical "Phantom of the Opera" opened at Broadway's Majestic
Theater. It ran for 4,000+ performances.
(AP,
1/26/98)(www.broadway.com/gen/show.aspx?SI=1235)
1988 Jan 26, Australians
celebrated the 200th anniversary of their country as a grand parade
of tall ships sailed in Sydney Harbor, re-enacting the voyage of the
first European settlers.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1988 Jan 27, The US Senate
Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Judge
Anthony M. Kennedy to the Supreme Court.
(AP, 1/27/98)
1988 Jan 28, A 13-day standoff
in Marion, Utah, between police and a polygamist clan ended in
gunfire that killed a state corrections officer and seriously
wounded the group's leader, Addam Swapp.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1988 Jan 28, Public Service of
New Hampshire filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This was the first
American utility since the Depression to go bankrupt, mostly because
of unexpected costs of a nuclear plant.
(www.nu.com/aboutnu/psnh.asp)(Econ, 6/2/07, SR
p.22)
1988 Jan 28, The Supreme Court
of Canada struck down the nation's restrictive abortion law.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1988 Jan 28, Nicaragua's
leftist government and Contra rebels began their first face-to-face
peace talks, meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1988 Jan 29, A Boston-bound
Amtrak train derailed in Chester, Penn., injuring 25 people.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1988 Jan 29, Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega received a coolly polite reception from Pope
John Paul II at the Vatican.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1988 Jan 30, Israeli troops
fired on hundreds of demonstrators in the West Bank while protests
also rocked the Gaza Strip, shattering three weeks of relative quiet
in the occupied territories.
(AP, 1/30/98)
1988 Jan 31, The Washington
Redskins beat the Denver Broncos, 42-10, to win Super Bowl XXII at
Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.
(AP, 1/31/98)
1988 Feb 1, Denying any
wrongdoing, US Attorney General Edwin Meese III said he didn't
recall part of a memo about a proposed Iraqi pipeline project that
referred to a plan to bribe Israeli officials.
(AP, 2/1/97)
1988 Feb 2, In a speech that
three major television networks declined to broadcast live,
President Reagan pressed his case for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.
(AP, 2/2/97)
1988 Feb 3, The U.S. House of
Representatives handed President Reagan a major defeat, rejecting
his request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan
Contras.
(AP, 2/3/97)
1988 Feb 3, The U.S. Senate
voted unanimously to confirm Anthony M. Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
(AP, 2/3/97)
1988 Feb 3, Robert Duncan,
American poet, died. He and his partner Jess Collins (d.2004) along
with Harry Jacobus founded the King Ubu Gallery in SF in 1953.
(SFC, 1/7/04,
p.A19)(www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/duncan/life.htm)
1988 Feb 4, Senate Republican
Leader Bob Dole twice confronted Vice President George Bush on the
floor of the Senate, accusing his GOP presidential rival of
condoning a campaign attack that amounted to "groveling in the mud."
(AP, 2/4/97)
1988 Feb 5, The Arizona House
impeached Gov. Evan Mecham, setting the stage for his conviction in
the state Senate.
(AP,
2/5/97)(http://politicalgraveyard.com/special/trouble-disgrace.html)
1988 Feb 5, A pair of
indictments were unsealed in Florida, accusing Panama's military
leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, of bribery and drug
trafficking.
(AP, 2/5/97)
1988 Feb 6, Presidential
hopefuls stormed through a final weekend of campaigning before
Iowa's precinct caucuses, with a poll for the Des Moines Register
giving Bob Dole the lead among Republicans and Dick Gephardt a
narrow lead among Democrats.
(AP, 2/6/97)
1988 Feb 7, Leslie Manigat was
sworn in as Haiti's president. However, he lost power the following
June.
(AP, 2/7/97)
1988 Feb 8, Jimmy Lee Dill
fatally shot and killed Leon Shaw in Birmingham, Alabama, and robbed
him of cocaine and about $200. Dill (49) was executed in 2009.
(SFC, 4/17/09,
p.A6)(www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10197524&nav=0rde)
1988 Feb 10, A 3-judge panel of
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the
Army's ban on homosexuals, saying gays were entitled to the same
protection against discrimination as racial minorities. The ruling
was later set aside by the full appeals court.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1988 Feb 11, President Reagan's
onetime political director, Lyn Nofziger, was convicted of illegally
lobbying top White House aides. However, the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals later overturned Nofziger's conviction, and the Supreme
Court refused to reinstate it.
(AP, 2/11/97)
1988 Feb 11, Iran launched a
campaign to retake the Fao Peninsula from Iraq with US planning
assistance. Chemical weapons were used in the attack.
(SSFC, 8/18/02,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Faw_Peninsula)
1988 Feb 12, Alexander M. Haig
dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
(AP, 2/12/98)
1988 Feb 12, The Pentagon
charged that two Soviet Navy vessels deliberately bumped two U.S.
warships in the Black Sea as the American vessels sailed through
waters claimed by the Soviet Union.
(AP, 2/12/98)
1988 Feb 13, The 15th winter
Olympics opened in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
(AP, 2/13/98)
1988 Feb 13, President Reagan
and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid met in the Mexican resort
of Mazatlan.
(AP, 2/13/98)
1988 Feb 14, Hours after
learning that his sister had died of leukemia, American David Jansen
lost his bid for a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Calgary,
Canada, when he fell during the 500-meter speed-skating event.
(AP, 2/14/98)
1988 Feb 14, Broadway composer
Frederick Loewe, who wrote the scores for "My Fair Lady" and
"Camelot," died in Palm Springs, Calif., at age 86.
(AP, 2/14/98)
1988 Feb 14, Alfredo Stroessner
was re-elected president of Paraguay.
(www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/paraguay/GOVERNMENT.html)
1988 Feb 15, Richard Feynman
(b.1918), physicist and 1965 Nobel prize winner, died. He invented
the Feynman diagrams, a shorthand way of representing how electrons
and photons interact. His book "What Do You Care What Other People
Think" was published this year. In 1992 James Gleick wrote his
biography: "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman." A
collection of his short works: "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out"
was published in 1999.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, BR p.3)(WSJ, 11/10/99,
p.A20)(http://tinyurl.com/gaxcj)
1988 Feb 15, Frederick [Fritz]
Loewe (b.1901), German-born composer (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady,
Camelot), died in California.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0517350/)
1988 Feb 15, Austrian President
Kurt Waldheim vowed in a televised address not to "retreat in the
face of slanders" concerning his service for the German Army during
World War II.
(AP, 2/15/98)
1988 Feb 15, The Soviet Union
was defeated by Afghanistan, and a total withdrawal by the Soviets
occurred. In 2003 George Crile authored "Charlie Wilson's War: The
Extraordinary Story of the largest Covert Operation in History."
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(SSFC, 5/25/03, p.M1)
1988 Feb 16, Vice President
George Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis scored big
victories in the New Hampshire Republican and Democratic
presidential primaries. Bush won the New Hampshire primary over Bob
Dole, Jack Kemp, Pete du Pont and Pat Robertson 37.7 to 28.5 to 12.8
to 10.1 to 9.4%. Dukakis won over Dick Gephardt and Paul Simon 35.9
to 19.9 to 17.2%.
(AP, 2/16/98)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)
1988 Feb 16, Richard Wade
Farley gunned down 7 people at ESL Corp. during an office rampage in
Sunnyvale, Calif. Farley was later convicted of murder and sentenced
to death.
(AP, 2/16/98)(SFC, 10/27/04, p.B1)
1988 Feb 17, Lt. Col. William
Higgins, an American officer serving with a United Nations truce
monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon. He was later
slain by his captors.
(AP, 2/17/98)
1988 Feb 18, Anthony M. Kennedy
was sworn in as the 104th justice of the Supreme Court.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1988 Feb 18, Soviet Communist
Party leaders dropped former Moscow party chief Boris N. Yeltsin
from the ruling Politburo.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1988 Feb 19, A group calling
itself the "Organization of the Oppressed on Earth" claimed
responsibility for the kidnapping in Lebanon of U.S. Marine Lt. Col.
William R. Higgins. Higgins was later slain by his captors.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1988 Feb 20, U.S. figure skater
Brian Boitano won the gold medal in the men's competition at the
Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada, with Brian Orser of Canada
placing second.
(AP, 2/20/98)
1988 Feb 20, Peter Kalikow
purchased the NY Post from Rupert Murdoch for $37.6 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/qjxa2)
1988 Feb 21, TV evangelist
Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation in Baton
Rouge, La., that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he
was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Reports linked Swaggart to an
admitted prostitute, Debra Murphree.
(AP, 2/21/98)
1988 Feb 23, President Reagan
named William L. Ball III to succeed James H. Webb Jr. as Navy
Secretary.
(AP, 2/23/98)
1988 Feb 23, Presidential
hopeful Bob Dole defeated Vice President George Bush in the South
Dakota and Minnesota Republican primaries; among Democrats, Michael
S. Dukakis won in Minnesota, Dick Gephardt in South Dakota.
(AP, 2/23/98)
1988 Feb 24, In a 8-0 ruling
that expanded legal protections for parody and satire, the US
Supreme Court overturned a $200,000 award that the Rev. Jerry
Falwell had won against "Hustler" magazine and publisher Larry
Flynt.
(AP, 2/24/98)
1988 Feb 24, A week of tropical
rainstorms left at least 275 people dead in Rio de Janeiro state,
Brazil.
(http://tinyurl.com/r629d)
1988 Feb 25, Chicago gave the
Cubs baseball team the right to install lights and play up to 18
night games.
(http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/chc/history/timeline10.jsp)
1988 Feb 25, Panama's civilian
president, Eric Arturo Delvalle announced the dismissal of Gen.
Manuel Antonio Noriega as commander of the country's Defense Forces.
The next day, Panama's National Assembly voted to oust Delvalle.
(AP, 2/25/98)
1988 Feb 26, Eric Arturo
Delvalle, ousted as president of Panama by the country's National
Assembly, called for a national strike to repudiate Gen. Manuel
Antonio Noriega.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1988 Feb 26, The Soviet Union's
hockey team clinched the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in
Calgary, Canada.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1988 Feb 27, Katarina Witt of
East Germany won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the
Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, with Elizabeth Manley of Canada
placing second and Debi Thomas of the United States, third. Debi
Thomas became the first African American to win a medal at the
Winter Olympics.
(AP, 2/27/98)(HN, 2/27/99)
1988 Feb 28, The 15th Olympic
Winter Games held its closing ceremony in Calgary, Canada.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1988 Feb 28, Ethnic unrest
broke out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the city of Sumgait.
There was an anti-Armenian pogrom in the town of Sumgait. A national
awakening occurred in Azerbaijan when conflict erupted over the
Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, included by the Soviets in the
Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh
began fighting for independence.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A15)(AP, 2/28/98)(SFC, 11/27/96,
p.A13)(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.A22)
1988 Feb 29, A Nazi document
was discovered that implicated participation of Austrian president
and former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in WWII
deportations.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1988 Feb 29, South African
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders were arrested
while kneeling near Parliament with a petition against government
bans on anti-apartheid groups. All were freed hours later.
(AP, 2/29/00)
1988 Feb, Republican George
H.W. Bush won the New Hampshire primary over Bob Dole, Jack Kemp,
Pete du Pont and Pat Robertson 37.7 to 28.5 to 12.8 to 10.1 to 9.4%.
Democrat Michael Dukakis won over Dick Gephardt and Paul Simon 35.9
to 19.9 to 17.2%.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)
1988 Feb, A Panamanian
freighter named Christina M was seized north of Hawaii with 20 tons
of marijuana. Steven Martin Wolosky and Mark Stephen Gayer were
arrested in March as leaders of a drug ring that organized the
transfer of marijuana from mother ships to smaller vessels. The 2
men faked a 1989 boating accident and went into hiding until caught
in 2000.
(SFC, 6/22/00, p.A15)
1988 Feb, Wool sold for $230 a
bale, a record price.
(NG, 5.1988, pp. 575)
1988 Feb-1988 Sep, Some 50-100
thousand Kurds were killed by poisonous gas from Iraqi forces in the
8-stage Anfal campaign. The Hussein regime bulldozed some 4,000
ethnic Kurd villages due to suspicions of Kurds siding with Iran.
Estimates held as many as 182,000 Kurds dead or missing.
(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A11)(AP, 8/21/06)(SFC, 8/21/06,
p.A6)(SFC, 4/18/03, p.A18)
1988 Mar 1, Courtney Gibbs
Eplin (21) of Texas was crowned 37th Miss USA.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1988 Mar 1, President Reagan
arrived in Brussels, Belgium, for the first NATO summit in six
years.
(AP, 3/1/98)
1988 Mar 1, Pontiac announced
the end of the Fiero automobile.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1988 Mar 1, Iraq said it had
fired 16 missiles into Tehran in the first long-range rocket attack
on the Iranian capital since the Iran-Iraq war began.
(AP, 3/1/98)
1988 Mar 2, In the 30th Grammy
Awards: Graceland, Joshua Tree, Jody Watley won.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1988 Mar 2, Dutch Liberal Party
merged with SDP.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1988 Mar 2, The U.N. General
Assembly voted overwhelmingly to order the United States to submit
to binding arbitration its plan to close the observer mission of the
Palestine Liberation Organization. A federal court later stopped the
U.S.
(AP, 3/2/98)
1988 Mar 3, The U.S. House of
Representatives rejected a package of $30 million in non-lethal aid
for the Nicaraguan Contras.
(AP, 3/3/98)
1988 Mar 4, The US Bureau of
Labor Statistics reported that the civilian unemployment rate had
dropped the previous month to 5.7 percent.
(AP, 3/4/98)
1988 Mar 5, Vice President
George Bush won the South Carolina Republican primary, with Kansas
Senator Bob Dole running a distant second, followed by Pat Robertson
and New York Congressman Jack Kemp.
(AP, 3/5/98)
1988 Mar 6, The board of
trustees at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts
college for the deaf, selected Elisabeth Zinser, a hearing woman, to
be school president. Outraged students shut down the campus, forcing
the selection of a deaf president, I. King Jordan, instead.
(AP, 3/6/08)
1988 Mar 6, British SAS
officers killed 3 IRA suspects in Gibraltar.
(http://tinyurl.com/2xbne)
1988 Mar 7, Three Israelis were
killed when three Arab gunmen hijacked a commuter bus in the Negev
Desert; the hijackers themselves were killed when Israeli forces
stormed the vehicle.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1988 Mar 7, Divine (born as
Harris Milstead in 1945), female impersonator (Pink Flamingos,
Hairspray), died.
(www.glbtq.com/arts/divine.html)
1988 Mar 7, Robert Livingston
(b.1904), actor (Lone Ranger), died of emphysema. He was born as
Robert Edgar Randall. There were 51 Three Mesquiteers yarns churned
out by Republic Pictures from 1936-1943, and Livingston appeared in
29.
(www.b-westerns.com/living.htm)
1988 Mar 8, Vice President
George Bush was the big winner in the Super Tuesday Republican
presidential primaries. Among Democrats, Michael S. Dukakis, Jesse
Jackson and Al Gore split the lion's share of delegates.
(AP, 3/8/98)
1988 Mar 8, Seventeen soldiers
died when two Army helicopters from Fort Campbell, Ky., collided in
midair.
(AP, 3/8/98)
1988 Mar 9, The day after the
Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses, Republican George Bush spent
the day in Houston, savoring his 16-state sweep, while Democrats
Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Al Gore enjoyed more modest
successes.
(AP, 3/9/98)
1988 Mar 9, Kurt Georg
Kiesinger (b.1904), West German chancellor (1966-69), died.
(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger)
1988 Mar 10, New York
Congressman Jack Kemp dropped out of the race for the Republican
presidential nomination.
(AP, 3/10/98)
1988 Mar 10, Prior to the 50th
anniversary of the Anschluss, Austrian President Kurt Waldheim
apologized on his country's behalf for atrocities committed by
Austrian Nazis.
(AP, 3/10/08)
1988 Mar 10, Pop singer Andy
Gibb died in Oxford, England, at age 30 of heart inflammation.
(AP, 3/10/98)
1988 Mar 11, Saying, "The
people have decided," Gary Hart withdrew a second time from the race
for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. Gary Hart, former
US Senator from Colorado campaigned for the democratic nomination
for president until a photograph of himself with a woman named Donna
Rice, not his wife, appeared. She sat on his lap aboard a boat named
Monkey Business. In 1996 Hart wrote a book using Machiavelli’s "The
Prince" format. It was titled: "The Patriot: An Exhortation to
Liberate America From the Barbarians."
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.C11)(AP, 3/11/98)
1988 Mar 12, Rev. Jesse Jackson
won the Democratic precinct caucuses in his native South Carolina.
(AP, 3/12/98)
1988 Mar 12, Romare Bearden
(b.1911), North Carolina-born African American artist, died in NY.
He depicted black culture and history and transferred his collages
to prints using a variety of techniques. In 2004 Jan Greenberg
authored "Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories."
(SFC, 3/24/04,
p.E1)(www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG-mam/bio5.htm)
1988 Mar 13, Yielding to
student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in
Washington, D.C., a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired,
chose I. King Jordan to become the school's first deaf president,
replacing Elisabeth Ann Zinser, a hearing woman.
(AP, 3/13/98)
1988 Mar 13, John Curtis
Holmes, former porn star, died of an AIDS-related illness. In 2003
the film "Wonderland" starred Val Kilmer as Holmes.
(ST, 10/17/03, p.22H)(http://tinyurl.com/4whfj)
1988 Mar 14, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir arrived in Washington, D.C., with what he
called new ideas for Middle East peace talks, despite maintaining a
hard-line on Israel's retention of the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
(AP, 3/14/98)
1988 Mar 15, Paul Simon
defeated Jesse Jackson in the Illinois Democratic primary, while
George Bush won a ringing victory over Bob Dole in the Republican
contest.
(AP, 3/15/98)
1988 Mar 15, NFL owners
approved the move of the St Louis Cardinals to Phoenix.
(www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nfl/az/cardsarizona.html)
1988 Mar 16, The US sent 3000
soldiers to Honduras.
(http://tinyurl.com/emoaj)
1988 Mar 16, Former National
Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, former White House aide Oliver
L. North, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Secord's
business partner, Albert Hakim, were indicted on charges relating to
the Iran-Contra affair. Poindexter and North had their convictions
thrown out; Secord and Hakim received probation after each pleaded
guilty to a single count.
(AP, 3/16/98)
1988 Mar 16, Mickey Thompson
(59), drag racer, and his wife Trudy (41) were found shot to death
at their Bradbury home 15 miles east of LA. In December, 2001,
Michael Goodwin, Thompson’s former business partner, was charged
with the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson. Goodwin’s trial
opened in 2006. On Jan 4, 2007, a jury convicted Michael Goodwin on
two counts of murder. On Mar 1, 2007, Goodwin was sentenced to 2
consecutive life terms in prison and continued to claim he was
innocent of the murder.
(www.unsolved.com/UD0204-Thompson.html)(SFC,
1/5/07, p.B10)(SFC, 3/2/07, p.B12)
1988 Mar 16-1988 Mar 17, Iraqi
jets dropped a variety of chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of
Halabja and some 5-7,000 residents were killed immediately. The
Kurdish city of Halabja, held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish
guerrillas allied with Tehran, was bombed by Iraq. Estimates of
casualties varied from several hundred to several thousand.
(SFC, 7/1/02,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack)
1988 Mar 16, Three people were
killed when Michael Stone, a pro British paramilitary member, armed
with guns and grenades attacked an IRA graveside service in Belfast,
Northern Ireland. Stone was also responsible for killing 3
Catholics in the mid 1980s. In 2000 Stone was released from prison
as part of a peace accord.
(AP, 3/17/98)(SFC, 7/25/00, p.A12)
1988 Mar 17, Planeloads of U.S.
soldiers arrived at Palmerola Air Base in Honduras in a show of
strength ordered by President Reagan.
(AP, 3/17/98)
1988 Mar 17, Apple filed suit
against Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement in the Windows
GUI.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)
1988 Mar 18, In Alabama
Elizabeth Dorleen Sennett (45), the wife of a preacher, died after
she was brutally beaten and stabbed in a contract killing. A week
after becoming a suspect in the case, the victim's husband, Charles
Sennett, shot and killed himself in his son's backyard. Sennett had
contracted Bill Gray Williams to kill his wife for $3,000. According
to court documents, Williams paid Kenneth Eugene Smith and John
Forrest Parker $1,000 each to commit the murder. Parker was
convicted in 1989 and executed for the murder in 2010.
(http://tinyurl.com/2696ump)(SFC, 6/11/10, p.A6)
1988 Mar 18, The government of
Panama, controlled by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, declared a "state
of urgency" in a move apparently aimed at forcing the reopening of
banks and other businesses that closed during Panama's economic and
political crisis.
(AP, 3/18/98)
1988 Mar 19, Two British
soldiers were shot to death after they were dragged from a car and
beaten by mourners attending an Irish Republican Army funeral in
Belfast, Northern Ireland.
(AP, 3/19/98)
1988 Mar 20, David Henry
Hwang's "M. Butterfly" premiered in NYC.
(http://tinyurl.com/pztxh)
1988 Mar 20, Eight-year-old
DeAndra Anrig found herself airborne when the string of her kite was
snagged by an airplane flying over Shoreline Park in Mountain View,
Calif. Not seriously hurt, she was lifted 10 feet off the ground and
carried 100 feet until she let go.
(AP, 3/20/98)
1988 Mar 22, Both houses of
Congress overrode President Reagan's veto of a sweeping civil rights
bill. The Civil Rights Restoration Act restored the jurisdiction
over Title IX issues in athletic programs to the Office for Civil
Rights.
(AP, 3/22/97)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.A16)
1988 Mar 22, In Angola the
battle of Cuito Cuanavale changed the region's political landscape,
accelerating the independence of Namibia and the fall of apartheid
in South Africa. While the Cuban and Angolan forces claimed victory,
South Africa claimed it lost only 31 soldiers against 4,785 who fell
on the other side.
(AP, 3/22/08)
1988 Mar 22, Iraqi jets dropped
a variety of chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Sewsenan, where
militiamen had fled following attacks on Halabja.
(SFC, 8/21/06, p.A6)
1988 Mar 23, President Reagan
announced he would visit the Soviet Union for the first time, from
May 29 until June 2, for his fourth summit meeting with Soviet
leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
(AP, 3/23/98)
1988 Mar 24, Former national
security aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter and
businessmen Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim pleaded innocent to
Iran-Contra charges. North and Poindexter were convicted, but had
their convictions thrown out; Secord and Hakim received probation
after each pleaded guilty to a single count under a plea bargain.
(AP, 3/24/98)
1988 Mar 25, In New York
City's so-called "preppie murder case," Robert E. Chambers Jr.
pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of
18-year-old Jennifer Levin. Chambers was convicted of the killing
after what he described as a session of rough sex. Chambers received
a sentence of five to 15 years in prison. He walked out of the
Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, N.Y, Feb, 2003, after
serving a full 15-year maximum sentence for the 1986 Central Park
killing.
(AP, 3/24/08)
1988 Mar 25, Robert Joffrey
(b.1930), founder of the Joffrey Ballet Company, died. In 1996 Sasha
Anawalt wrote: "The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of
an American Dance Company."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR
p.4)(www.answers.com/topic/joffrey-robert)
1988 Mar 26, Jesse Jackson
stunned fellow Democrats by soundly defeating Michael S. Dukakis in
Michigan's Democratic presidential caucuses.
(AP, 3/25/98)
1988 Mar 27, Jesse Jackson,
rejoicing from an upset victory in Michigan's primary-style caucuses
the day before, vowed that his Democratic presidential campaign
would continue to "win and grow."
(AP, 3/27/98)
1988 Mar 28, Richard Gephardt
ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, following
his third-place finish in the Michigan caucuses.
(AP, 3/28/98)
1988 Mar 29, Two top US Justice
Department officials resigned over Attorney General Edwin Meese's
legal problems.
(AP, 3/29/98)
1988 Mar 29, Sen. Bob Dole
ended his presidential candidacy. Michael Dukakis won the
Connecticut Democratic primary.
(AP, 3/29/98)
1988 Mar 29, US leaders of the
Assemblies of God ordered the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart to stop preaching
for at least a year because of "moral failure," following his
reported relationship with a prostitute.
(AP, 3/29/98)
1988 Mar 30, US House
Democratic and Republican leaders said that they had agreed in
principle on a package of about $50 million to aid the Nicaraguan
rebels.
(http://tinyurl.com/n6uak)
1988 Mar 30, An attorney for
the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart said the televangelist would return to the
pulpit, defying national Assemblies of God church officials who had
suspended him for at least a year for "moral failure."
(AP, 3/30/98)
1988 Mar 31, The novel
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
fiction, while the Charlotte (N.C) Observer won the prize for public
service for its coverage of the Praise The Lord scandal.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1988 Mar, The first McDonald's
behind the Iron Curtain opened in Belgrade.
(WSJ, 2/6/96, p.A-11)
1988 Mar, In Burma riot police
shot to death 200 demonstrators as students began an uprising for
democracy.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Parade p.5)(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1988 Mar, Israel found
Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician, guilty of
divulging nuclear secrets. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(SFC, 4/22/04, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/mysea)
1988 Mar-1988 Jun, In the
Spring Soviet germ scientists transferred hundreds of tons of
anthrax bacteria into canisters with bleach and sent them for
storage to Vozrozhdeniye Island (Renaissance Island) in the Aral
Sea, shared by Kazakstan and Uzbekistan. Western estimates had
100-200 tons buried at 5-8 feet. In 2002 Pentagon engineers dug up
the site and neutralized the anthrax.
(SFC, 3/24/03, p.A5)
(www.phaster.com/unpretentious/uzbekistan_anthrax.html)
1988 Apr 1, Independent US
counsel James C. McKay found insufficient evidence to warrant a
criminal indictment of Attorney General Edwin Meese III in
connection with the Iraq-Jordan pipeline plan or his investment in
telephone company stock.
(AP, 4/1/98)
1988 Apr 1, Jim Jordan (91),
old-time radio's "Fibber McGee," died in Beverly Hills, Calif.
(AP, 4/1/98)
1988 Apr 2, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz briefed Pope John Paul II on his Middle East peace
proposals during a private audience at the Vatican.
(AP, 4/2/98)
1988 Apr 2, In Chile police
Corp. Alfredo Rivera Rohas (35) was murdered by 3 youths while
carrying home groceries in Santiago.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1988 Apr 3, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz arrived in Israel to launch a fresh U.S. peace
initiative, telling the Israelis that the Palestinians must be
included in negotiations.
(AP, 4/3/98)
1988 Apr 4, The Arizona Senate
convicted Gov. Evan Mecham of two charges of official misconduct,
and removed him from office. Mecham was the first U.S. governor to
so censured in nearly six decades.
(AP, 4/4/98)
1988 Apr 5 Gov. Michael S.
Dukakis won a solid victory in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential
primary while, on the Republican side, Vice President George Bush
overwhelmed his opposition.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1988 Apr 5, Honduran and US
authorities captured Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros (b.1945). He was
taken from Honduras by US marshals, triggering violent protests, the
burning of a US Embassy office and the deaths of five people. In
2011 a court issued warrants for the arrest of 11 former officials
accused of helping US authorities seize the drug trafficker.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Matta-Ballesteros)(AP, 8/10/11)
1988 Apr 5 A 15-day hijacking
ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in
Iran.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1988 Apr 5, Alf Kjellin,
Swedish actor, director (Juggler), died.
(www.tv.com/alf-kjellin/person/24487/summary.html)
1988 Apr 6, Black Arctic
explorer Matthew Henson (1866-1955) was re-buried next to Robert
Peary in Arlington, Va.
(www.answers.com/topic/matthew-henson)
1988 Apr 6, Tirza Porat (15),
was killed in a West Bank melee, becoming the first Israeli civilian
to die in the occupied territories since the start of the
Palestinian uprising. Although Arabs were initially blamed, the army
concluded that a Jewish settler accidentally shot the girl.
(AP, 4/6/98)
1988 Apr 7, Albie Sachs (1935)
was working in Mozambique on legal guarantees that would be part of
the new South African Constitution when a car bomb exploded that
left him without a right arm.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1
p.7)(www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8732.html)
1988 Apr 8, The Rev. Jimmy
Swaggart was defrocked as a minister of the Assemblies of God after
he rejected an order from the church's national leaders to stop
preaching for a year amid reports he'd consorted with a prostitute.
(AP, 4/8/08)
1988 Apr 8, Pres. Reagan issued
Executive Order 12365 ordering the immediate blocking of all
property and interests in property of the Government of Panama.
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/101488e.htm)
1988 Apr 10, The hijackers of a
Kuwait Airways jetliner vowed to carry out a "slow, quiet massacre"
of their hostages, one day after one captive was killed aboard the
plane parked in Larnaca, Cyprus.
(AP, 4/10/98)
1988 Apr 11, "The Last Emperor"
won best picture at the 60th annual Academy Awards ceremony; Cher
won best actress for "Moonstruck," Michael Douglas best actor for
"Wall Street."
(AP, 4/11/98)
1988 Apr 11, Hijackers of a
Kuwait Airways jetliner killed a second hostage, dumping his body
onto the ground in Larnaca, Cyprus.
(AP, 4/11/98)
1988 Apr 11, In Amsterdam the
Royal Concert building (Concertgebouw) reopened.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Concertgebouw_Orchestra)
1988 Apr 12, The U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office issued a patent to Harvard University for a
genetically engineered mouse, the first time a patent was granted
for an animal life form.
(AP, 5/9/98)
1988 Apr 12, Sonny Bono elected
mayor of Palm Springs, Calif.
(http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800057596/bio)
1988 Apr 12, Alan Stewart Paton
(b.1903), South African writer (Cry The Beloved Country), died. He
founded and served as president of the Liberal Party (1953-68).
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apaton.htm)
1988 Apr 13, A commandeered
Kuwaiti jetliner took off from Cyprus for Algeria, after the
pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim hijackers on board freed 12 hostages.
(AP, 4/13/98)
1988 Apr 13, In South Africa
Aubrey Jabulani Ndaba, from the Pietermaritzburg area, and Oscar
Maleka, from Soweto, were working for the armed wing of the African
National Congress when they died in firefights with security forces.
In 2005 they became first of 477 missing people to be recovered.
(AP, 3/9/05)
1988 Apr 14, The Japanese Red
Army bombed a US military recreational club in Naples. 5 people were
killed.
(www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1771)
1988 Apr 14, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, the United States and the Soviet Union signed agreements
providing for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and
creation of a nonaligned Afghan state. Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The Soviets
pulled out of Afghanistan after nine years of fighting. Afghan
rebels rejected the pact and continued fighting.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)(WA, 1997,p.737)(TMC, 1994,
p.1988)(AP, 4/14/98)
1988 Apr 15, Former White House
spokesman Larry Speakes resigned from Merrill Lynch and Co. less
than a week after disclosing that he had, on two occasions,
fabricated quotations attributed to President Reagan.
(AP, 4/15/98)
1988 May 15, The Soviet Union
began the process of withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, more
than eight years after Soviet forces had entered the country.
(AP, 5/15/98)(HN, 5/15/98)
1988 Apr 16, Abu Jihad, [Khalil
al-Wazzir], PLO-leader, was murdered by Israeli assassins in
Tunisia. They left the chief strategist of the Palestinian uprising
with 170 bullets in his body. The Palestine Liberation Organization
accused Israel of assassinating al-Wazir, a top PLO military figure.
Palestinians reacted angrily, and at least 14 were shot and killed
by Israeli troops during clashes in the occupied Gaza Strip and West
Bank.
(AP, 4/16/98)(AP, 1/22/06)
1988 Apr 16, In Forli, Italy,
the Red Brigades-PCC killed Italian senator Roberto Ruffilli, an
advisor of Italian PM Ciriaco de Mita. After that, the group
activities all but ended after massive arrests of its leadership.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades)
1988 Apr 17, Louise Nevelson,
the Russian-born sculptor who became one of the world's best-known
women artists, died in New York at the age of 88.
(AP, 4/17/98)
1988 Apr 17, The
newly-restructured Iraqi Army began a major operation named "Ramadan
Mubarak" aimed to clear the Iranians out of the peninsula. The
Iranians were expelled from the peninsula within 35 hours, with much
of their equipment captured intact.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Faw_Peninsula)
(AP, 7/7/06)
1988 Apr 18, The United States
destroyed two more Iraqi oil platforms, after a mine in the Persian
Gulf injured 10 crewmen aboard a U.S. frigate. In 2003 a World Court
in a 14-2 decision ruled the US was wrong but doesn't need to pay
damages.
(AP, 11/7/03)
1988 Apr 18, An Israeli court
convicted John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, of
committing war crimes at the Treblinka death camp. Israel's Supreme
Court later overturned Demjanjuk's conviction.
(AP, 4/18/98)
1988 Apr 19, Republican George
Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis handily won the New York
presidential primaries.
(AP, 4/19/97)
1988 Apr 19, Sarah LaChapelle
(56) was found murdered at her home in East Oakland. Gregory Tate
(21) was arrested later that day in LaChapelle's stolen Oldsmobile
Cutlass. He was convicted in 1992 for her murder and in 1993 was
sentenced to death. He had cut off a finger to steal LaChapelle’s
wedding and engagement rings. In 2010 the California Supreme Court
upheld Tate’s sentence.
(http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=7544217)
1988 Apr 20, Gunmen who had
hijacked a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet were allowed safe passage out of
Algeria. An agreement also freed the remaining 31 hostages and ended
a 15-day siege in which two passengers were slain.
(AP, 4/20/98)
1988 Apr 20, Hector Felix, a
muckraking Mexican journalist, was murdered. He had dubbed Jorge
Hank, owner of the Tijuana Agua Caliente Racetrack, as “the
Abominable Snowman” for a reputed cocaine habit.
(SSFC, 8/5/07,
p.A15)(www.elandar.com/back/fall99/gato.html)
1988 Apr 21, Tennessee Sen. Al
Gore gave up his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
assuring supporters that "there will be other days for me and for
the causes that matter to us."
(AP, 4/21/98)
1988 Apr 22, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz, visiting the Soviet Union, met with President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who reportedly criticized the Reagan
administration for its "confrontational" approach to U.S.-Soviet
relations.
(AP, 4/22/98)
1988 Apr 23, A federal ban on
smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went
into effect.
(AP, 4/23/98)(WSJ, 1/27/04, p.D12)
1988 Apr 23, A drain valve was
left open at the Shell Marsh in Martinez, Ca., and 10,000 barrels of
oil (432,000 gallons) poured in the marsh adjoining Peyton Slough.
Shell cleaned the mess and paid $20 million in penalties. The marsh
was purchased with part of the funds and turned into a regional
park.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A19-20)(SFC, 4/30/04, p.A17)
1988 Apr 23, Archbishop Michael
Ramsey (b.1904), the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury
(1961-1974), died. In 2009 amateur divers found valuable coins and
medallions belonging to the former archbishop in the River Wear,
near Durham Cathedral.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ramsey)(AP,
10/23/09)
1988 Apr 23, Greek cycling
champion Kanellos Kanellopoulos pedaled a self-powered aircraft
named Daedalus 88 for 74 miles. The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics
Department's Daedalus was a human-powered aircraft flew from
Iraklion Air Force Base on Crete, Greece, crashing in the sea just
short of the island of Santorini in 3 hours, 54 minutes. Daedalus 87
had crashed on Rogers Dry Lakebed on 17 February 1988, and was
rebuilt as a backup.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus)
1988 Apr 24, Three sailors were
killed and 22 injured when fire broke out aboard the submarine USS
Bonefish off the Florida coast.
(AP, 4/24/98)
1988 Apr 25, "Nightline" went
on location to Jerusalem, Israel.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1988 Apr 25, NASA launched
space vehicle S-211.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1988 Apr 25, To the cheers of
spectators, a judge in Jerusalem sentenced John Demjanjuk to death
after the retired Ohio autoworker was convicted of being "Ivan the
Terrible," a Nazi death camp guard who had killed tens of thousands
of people. Demjanjuk's conviction was later overturned.
(AP, 4/25/98)
1988 Apr 26, Vice President
George Bush locked up the Republican presidential nomination with an
easy win in the Pennsylvania primary. Massachusetts Gov. Michael
Dukakis won the Democratic contest.
(AP, 4/26/98)
1988 Apr 27, The US Senate
approved a sweeping trade bill, 63-36, falling short of the
two-thirds vote needed to override a threatened veto by President
Reagan.
(AP, 4/27/98)
1988 Apr 28, A flight attendant
was killed and 61 persons injured when part of the roof of an Aloha
Airlines Boeing 737 peeled back during a flight from Hilo to
Honolulu.
(AP, 4/28/98)
1988 Apr 29, Molloko, the 1st
California condor chick conceived in captivity, was born in the San
Diego Zoo.
(www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:6703253)
1988 Apr 29, McDonald's
announced it would open its first restaurants in Moscow.
(AP, 4/29/98)
1988 Apr 29, James McCracken
(61), US tenor, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McCracken)
1988 Apr 29, In Pakistan Pres.
Zia-ul Haq dismissed the government Mohammed Khan Junejo on charges
of incompetence.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A9)
1988 Apr 30, World Exposition,
Expo 88 opened in Brisbane, Australia.
(http://expomuseum.com/1988/)
1988 Apr 30, Gen. Manuel
Noriega, waving a machete, vowed at a rally to keep fighting U.S.
efforts to oust him as Panama's military ruler.
(AP, 4/30/98)
1988 Apr, Microsoft surpassed
Lotus to become the number one computer software vendor.
(Wired, 12/98, p.196)
1988 Apr, In China Zhu Rongji
(b.1928) was named Mayor of Shanghai.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A12)
1988 May 1, Newsweek magazine
reported that, according to a memoir by former White House chief of
staff Donald Regan (1918-2003), astrology had influenced the
planning of President Reagan's schedule. Regan's memoir was titled
"For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington."
(AP, 5/1/98)(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.A1)(SFC, 6/12/03,
p.A25)
1988 May 2, Jackson Pollock's
"Search" sold for $4,800,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/gqov4)
1988 May 2, Cincinnati Reds
baseball manager Pete Rose was suspended for 30 days by National
League president A. Bartlett Giamatti, two days after Rose shoved an
umpire during a game won by the New York Mets, 6-5. Giamatti died a
week later. In 1998 his musings on baseball were published as "A
Great and Glorious Game," ed. by Kenneth S. Robson.
(AP, 5/2/98)(SFEC, 7/5/98, BR p.9)
1988 May 3, The White House
acknowledged that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological
advice to help schedule her husband's activities. The unflattering
revelations surfaced in a yet-to-be published memoir by former chief
of staff Donald Regan.
(AP, 5/3/98)
1988 May 3, Milton A. Caniff
(b.1907), US cartoonist (Terry & the Pirates), died.
(www.comic-art.com/bios-1/caniff01.htm)
1988 May 4, As a year-long
amnesty program for certain illegal aliens in the United States came
to a close, thousands of applicants lined up nationwide on the last
day.
(AP, 5/4/98)
1988 May 4, A spectacular
explosion occurred at the Shell oil refinery in Norco, La., on the
Mississippi river just north of New Orleans. 8 people were killed
and over 40 injured.
(http://www.shellfacts.com/Chatterjee_review.html)
1988 May 4, Three French
hostages were released in Beirut by pro-Iranian kidnappers.
(AP, 5/4/98)
1988 May 5, The Rev. Eugene
Antonio Marino became the nation's first black Roman Catholic
archbishop during an installation Mass in the Atlanta Civic Center.
He stepped down in July 1990 because of a two-year affair with
Columbus resident Vicki Long.
(AP, 5/5/98)
1988 May 5, Michael Shaara
(b.1928), author of the Civil War novel "Killer Angels," died of
heart disease.
(SFEC, 6/21/98,
p.D5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shaara)
1988 May 7, Winning Colors won
the 114th running of the Kentucky Derby, becoming the third filly to
win the event.
(AP, 5/7/98)
1988 May 8, The 2nd American
Comedy Award went to Robin Williams and Tracey Ullman. The event was
broadcast on May 17.
(http://tinyurl.com/zxn8k)(http://tinyurl.com/fjfb9)
1988 May 8, French President
Francois Mitterrand was elected to a second seven-year term,
defeating conservative challenger Jacques Chirac.
(AP, 5/8/98)
1988 May 8, Science fiction
author Robert A. Heinlein died in Carmel, Calif., at age 80.
(AP, 5/8/98)
1988 May 9, Education Secretary
William J. Bennett announced he would leave his position in
mid-September.
(AP, 5/9/98)
1988 May 10, The Edgar Degas
sculpture "Danseresie of 14" (Little Dancer at 14 years of Age) sold
for $10,120,000. In 1996 it sold for nearly $12 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/lx277)(SFC, 11/13/96, p.A3)
1988 May 10, French President
Francois Mitterrand named Socialist Michel Rocard to be premier
following Mitterrand's decisive victory in France's presidential
election.
(AP, 5/10/98)
1988 May 10, In Poland an
eight-day strike by workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk ended
without an agreement.
(AP, 5/10/98)
1988 May 11, Master spy Harold
"Kim" Philby, the notorious "Third Man" of a British espionage ring,
died in the Soviet Union at age 76.
(AP, 5/11/98)
1988 May 11, Fans of Irving
Berlin paid tribute on his 100th birthday with celebrations that
included a gala at New York's Carnegie Hall.
(AP, 5/11/98)
1988 May 12, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze,
meeting in Geneva, resolved nearly all remaining questions on an
intermediate-range missile treaty.
(AP, 5/12/98)
1988 May 13, The U.S. Senate
voted 83-6 to order the U.S. military to enter the war against
illegal drug trafficking, approving a plan to give the Navy the
power to stop drug boats on the high seas and make arrests.
(AP, 5/13/98)
1988 May 13, Chet Baker
(b1929), jazz trumpet player, died in Amsterdam after "falling" from
a hotel window. A documentary on his life: "Let’s Get Lost,"
produced and directed by Bruce Weber, was released in [1987] 1989.
Baker played with Gerry Mulligan in a pianoless quartet that brought
him fame as a leading member of the West Coast "cool school."
Baker’s personal memoir "As Though I Had Wings" was written in the
late 70s and published in 1997. In 2000 J. De Valk authored "Chet
Baker: His Life and Music." In 2002 James Gavin authored the
biography "Deep in a Dream."
(SFEM, 10/1/00, p.4)(WSJ, 5/16/02,
p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chet_Baker)
1988 May 14, Twenty-seven
people, most of them teen-agers, were killed when their church bus
collided with a pickup truck going the wrong way on a highway near
Carrollton, Ky. The driver of the truck, Larry Mahoney, was
convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment;
he was released in September 1999.
(AP, 5/14/03)
1988 May 14, Peru’s military
was involved in the massacre of at least 26 peasants in the Andean
village of Cayara. A week later the military executed 3 more
peasants, before systematically killing 8 witnesses. In 2005 a
Peruvian judge ordered the arrest of 118 current and retired
military officials for the slayings.
(AP, 7/6/05)
1988 May 15, The Soviet Union
began the process of withdrawing its 115,000 troops from
Afghanistan, more than eight years after Soviet forces had entered
the country.
(AP, 5/15/98)(HN, 5/15/98)
1988 May 16, US Surgeon General
C. Everett Koop released a report declaring nicotine was addictive
in ways similar to heroin and cocaine.
(AP, 5/16/98)
1988 May 16, The US Supreme
Court ruled that police can search discarded garbage without a
search warrant.
(AP, 5/16/98)
1988 May 17, The US Commerce
Department reported that a record level of export sales gave the US
its lowest monthly trade deficit in three years in March 1988,
totaling $9.7 billion.
(AP, 5/17/98)
1988 May 18, Daws Butler
(b.1916), cartoon voice (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound), died.
(www.voicechasers.com/database/showactor.php?actorid=1250)
1988 May 18, A cheering crowd
in the Soviet town of Termez greeted the first Soviet soldiers as
they withdrew from Afghanistan. Experts agree that at least
40,000-50,000 Soviets lost their lives in action, besides the
wounded, suicides, and murders. Mujahideen continued to fight
against Najibullah's regime. Some 130,000 Red Army troops fought in
Afghanistan and 15,000 were lost.
(AP, 5/18/98)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(SFC, 10/18/01,
p.A3)
1988 May 19, Carlos Lehder
Rivas, co-founder of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel, was convicted
in Jacksonville, Fla., of smuggling more than 3 tons of cocaine into
the US.
(AP, 5/19/98)
1988 May 20, 30-year-old Laurie
Dann walked into a Winnetka, Ill., elementary school classroom,
where she shot to death 8-year-old Nicholas Corwin and wounded
several other children. After wounding a young man at his home, Dann
took her own life.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1988 May 21, Risen Star won the
Preakness Stakes.
(AP, 5/21/98)
1988 May 21, The Soviet news
agency Tass reported that the Communist Party leaders of Armenia and
Azerbaijan had been dismissed after fresh outbreaks of ethnic
tensions in the two southern Soviet republics.
(AP, 5/21/98)
1988 May 22, Janos Kadar,
installed by the Soviet Union as head of Hungary's Communist Party
in 1956, was replaced by Prime Minister Karoly Grosz.
(AP, 5/22/98)
1988 May 23, Less than a week
before a scheduled superpower summit in Moscow, Secretary of State
George Shultz went to Capitol Hill to ask for a prompt Senate vote
to ratify the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty.
(AP, 5/23/98)
1988 May 24, President Reagan
vetoed legislation that would have strengthened the nation's ability
to defend itself and its industries against trading practices of
other nations that were deemed unfair.
(AP, 5/24/98)
1988 May 24, Vice President
George Bush and Michael Dukakis won the Idaho presidential
primaries.
(AP, 5/24/98)
1988 May 25, President Reagan
left for a trip to the Soviet Union and a superpower summit with
Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
(AP, 5/25/98)
1988 May 26, The National
Hockey League's Edmonton Oilers completed a four-game sweep of the
Boston Bruins to capture their fourth Stanley Cup in five seasons.
(AP, 5/26/98)
1988 May 26, The New England
Journal of Medicine reported that the 1st NYC cases of Rocky
Mountain Spotted Fever struck 4 people in the Bronx between May and
July of 1987.
(http://tinyurl.com/nsejy)
1988 May 27, Two days before
the start of the Moscow summit, the US Senate voted 93-5 to ratify a
treaty eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles.
(AP, 5/27/98)
1988 May 28, Melvin J. Oliver
(b.1910), US jazz composer (Sy Oliver), orchestra leader, died in
NYC.
(http://nfo.net/usa/o2.html)(http://tinyurl.com/q4uva)
1988 May 28, On the eve of the
Moscow summit, Soviet television aired a 34-minute interview with
President Reagan in which he pledged to make human rights "agenda
item number one."
(AP, 5/28/98)
1988 May 29, President Reagan
began his first visit to the Soviet Union as he arrived in Moscow
for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
(AP, 5/29/98)
1988 May 29, Pakistan Pres. Zia
ul-Haq fired government and disbanded the parliament.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1988 May 30, On the second day
of the Moscow summit, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, giving a
toast at a state dinner, called for closer contacts with Americans,
adding, "This should be done without interfering in domestic
affairs, without sermonizing or imposing one's views and ways."
(AP, 5/30/98)
1988 May 31, On the third day
of the Moscow superpower summit, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev
said maybe it was "time to bang our fists on the table" to complete
work on a strategic arms treaty. President Reagan responded: "I'll
do anything that works." Reagan received a standing ovation from
students at Moscow Univ. following a short speech with questions and
answers.
(AP, 5/31/98)(HN, 5/31/99)(WSJ, 6/18/04, p.A11)
1988 May, Fires ignited in
Yellowstone Nat’l. Park by lightning. The fires expanded to become
the largest single fire in the US since the Peshtigo inferno of
1873. The fires lasted to Sep.
(HFA, '96, p.71)(SFC, 6/22/98, p.A4)
1988 May, In Malaysia
construction of the North-South Expressway was begun.
(Hem., 1/96, p.97)
1988 Jun 1, President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded their Moscow summit
by exchanging documents of ratification of the intermediate-range
nuclear arms treaty they'd signed the previous December.
(AP, 6/1/98)
1988 Jun 2, The publishers of
Consumer Reports magazine called for a ban on the Suzuki Samurai, a
popular sport utility vehicle that the magazine said tended to roll
over in sudden turns; American Suzuki Motor Corporation defended the
vehicle as safe.
(AP, 6/2/98)
1988 Jun 2, Horace A. Hildreth
(b.1901), former governor of Maine (1945-49), died.
(http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/higginson-hilger.html)
1988 Jun 3, President Reagan
returned home from the superpower summit in Moscow after a stopover
in London.
(AP, 6/3/98)
1988 Jun 3, Amber Swartz-Garcia
(7) was abducted from her home in Pinole, Ca. In 2009 police
identified cab driver Curtis Dean Anderson (d.2007), the 1999 killer
of Xiana Fairchild(7), as the person who abducted Amber
Swartz-Garcia, drove her to Arizona and killed her. Amber’s body was
never found.
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.A18)(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.B2)(SFC,
7/7/09, p.A1,7)
1988 Jun 4, US Secretary of
State George Shultz flew to Jordan, where he met with King Hussein.
Afterward, Shultz said the Jordanian monarch was reluctant to engage
in peace talks with Israel unless Israel agreed to give up land on
the West Bank.
(AP, 6/4/98)
1988 Jun 5, In the 42nd Tony
Awards Madame Butterfly won for best play and Phantom of the Opera
won for best musical.
(www.wireimage.com/Headlines.asp?navtyp=CAL&ym=198806&nbc1=1)(AP,
6/5/98)
1988 Jun 5, Clarence Pendleton
(57), chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission, died.
(AP, 6/5/98)
1988 Jun 6, Morton Thiokol
Inc., which built the booster rocket involved in the Challenger
explosion in 1986, announced it would not bid to build the next
generation of rocket motors for the nation's manned space shuttles.
(AP, 6/6/98)
1988 Jun 6, In NYC 2 large
snapping turtles were found in a Bronx sewage plant.
(http://ebeltz.net/column/chs/1988colu.html)
1988 Jun 7, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic presidential nomination by
defeating the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the New Jersey, California,
Montana and New Mexico primaries.
(AP, 6/7/98)
1988 Jun 8, The judge in the
Iran-Contra conspiracy case ruled that Oliver North, John
Poindexter, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim had to be tried
separately.
(AP 6/8/98)
1988 Jun 8, Nippon Airways
announced that painting eyeballs on Jets cut bird collisions by 20%.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1988 Jun 9, The US House ethics
committee met in closed session to discuss whether to formally
investigate charges that Speaker Jim Wright's financial dealings may
have violated House rules.
(AP, 6/9/98)
1988 Jun 10, The US House
ethics committee announced it had voted unanimously to conduct a
preliminary inquiry into allegations concerning the conduct of
Speaker Jim Wright.
(AP, 6/10/98)
1988 Jun 10, Author Louis
L'Amour died in Los Angeles at age 80. He wrote 116 western novels.
L’Amour trained troops in survival and later fought in the European
theater in tank destroyers. His early life was filled with the same
type of adventures that he wrote about. Due to economic problems and
an adventuresome spirit, L’Amour left his Jamestown, N.D., home when
he was 15 and spent the next several decades tramping the West and
sailing the world. He worked at just about everything that would
keep him alive. His writings was just beginning to be published when
the war started.
(AP, 6/10/98)(USAT, 6/10/98, p.1D)(HNQ, 7/15/01)
1988 Jun 11, Preakness winner
Risen Star captured the Belmont Stakes with a time second only to
its father, thoroughbred legend Secretariat.
(AP, 6/11/98)
1988 Jun 11, Nathan Cook
(b.1950), TV actor (Hotel), died of an allergic reaction.
(www.tv.com/nathan-cook/person/38728/summary.html)
1988 Jun 11, Nelson Mandela
spoke at Wembley Stadium, London, for the Freedomfest.
(www.geetarz.org/reviews/misc/mandela-laser.htm)
1988 Jun 11, Giuseppe Saragat
(89), president of Italy (1964-71), died.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065724)
1988 Jun 12, In runoff
elections in France, President Francois Mitterrand's Socialist Party
fell short of a majority in the National Assembly. But a right-wing
coalition also failed to retain its legislative control.
(AP, 6/12/98)
1988 Jun 13, A US federal jury
found cigarette manufacturer Liggett Group liable in the lung-cancer
death of New Jersey resident Rose Cipollone, but innocent of
misrepresenting the risks of smoking. An appeals court later
overturned the jury's award of $400,000 and ordered a new trial; the
family dropped the lawsuit in 1992.
(AP, 6/13/98)
1988 Jun 14, Howard Baker made
the surprise announcement that he would resign as President Reagan's
White House chief of staff on July 1 because of "personal
circumstances."
(AP, 6/14/98)
1988 Jun 15, PanAmSat under
Rene Anselmo (d.1995) launched its 1st satellite using $60 mil from
Anselmo’s sale of Spanish Int’l. Network. He built PanAmSat into the
largest private satellite company. It was sold to Hughes Electronics
in 1996.
(SFC, 9/20/96, p.E2)(http://tinyurl.com/7rp9z)
1988 Jun 15, Hong Kong
announced a clampdown on "boat people," saying newly arriving
Vietnamese refugees would be incarcerated and returned to Vietnam if
they could not prove that they had fled religious or political
persecution.
(AP, 6/15/98)
1988 Jun 16, Impeached and
ousted Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham and his brother, Willard, were found
innocent by a Phoenix jury of concealing a $350,000 campaign loan.
(AP, 6/16/98)
1988 Jun 17, Leaders of the
world's seven biggest industrial democracies began arriving in
Toronto for their annual economic summit, with the host, Canadian
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, forecasting progress on dismantling
farm subsidies and alleviating Third World debt.
(AP, 6/17/98)
1988 Jun 18, Vice President
George Bush launched a sharp attack against Democratic presidential
candidate Michael Dukakis, accusing the Massachusetts governor of
coddling criminals by allowing some convicts out of prison on
weekend furloughs.
(AP, 6/18/98)
1988 Jun 18, Turkey’s PM Turgut
Ozal survived an attempted assassination. He had worked to eliminate
the black market in cigarettes and suspected the cigarette smuggling
mafia.
(WSJ, 2/11/99,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgut_%C3%96zal)
1988 Jun 19, Leaders of the
world's seven wealthiest industrial democracies opened a three-day
economic summit in Toronto.
(AP, 6/19/98)
1988 Jun 19, Michael Jackson
led a rock concert in West Berlin.
(AP, 7/30/09)
1988 Jun 20, The US Supreme
Court unanimously upheld a New York City law making it illegal for
private clubs to generally exclude women and minorities.
(AP, 6/20/98)
1988 Jun 21, The Roger Rabbit
cartoon character debuted in the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
(www.metacritic.com/video/titles/whoframedrogerrabbit)
1988 Jun 21, The Los Angeles
Lakers repeated as NBA champions as they beat the Detroit Pistons,
108-105.
(AP, 6/21/98)
1988 Jun 21, Leaders of the
world's seven richest nations concluded their three-day summit in
Toronto.
(AP, 6/21/98)
1988 Jun 22, Singer Dennis Day,
Jack Benny's sidekick, died at age 71.
(AP, 6/22/98)
1988 Jun 22, Gay rights
activist Leonard Matlovich, discharged from the U.S. Air Force
because of his homosexuality, died at age 44.
(AP, 6/22/98)
1988 Jun 23, NASA climatologist
James Hansen brought the greenhouse effect to the attention of the
American public when he told Congress that worldwide temperature
increases were probably a sign of human alteration of the
atmosphere.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.A13)(SFC, 6/23/08, p.A3)
1988 Jun 23, The Yellowstone
Fire began and by Sep 11 burned some 1.6 million acres in Idaho and
Montana.
(SFC, 10/30/03, p.A15)
1988 Jun 23, Pope John Paul II
began his second papal visit to Austria, where he met with President
Kurt Waldheim, despite controversy over Waldheim's alleged
involvement in Nazi war crimes.
(AP, 6/23/98)
1988 Jun 24, Pope John Paul II,
on a visit to Austria, condemned Nazism during a stopover at the
Mauthausen death camp.
(AP, 6/24/98)
1988 Jun 25, American-born
Mildred Gillars, better known during World War II as "Axis Sally"
for her Nazi propaganda broadcasts, died in Columbus, Ohio, at age
87. (Gillars had served 12 years in prison for treason.)
(AP, 6/25/98)
1988 Jun 26, Three people were
killed when a new Airbus A-320 jetliner carrying more than 130
people crashed into a forest during an air show demonstration flight
in Mulhouse, France.
(AP, 6/26/98)
1988 Jun 27, Mike Tyson
retained the undisputed heavyweight crown as he knocked out Michael
Spinks 91 seconds into the first round of a championship fight in
Atlantic City, N.J.
(AP, 6/27/98)
1988 Jun 27, Fifty-seven people
were killed in a train collision in Paris.
(AP, 6/27/98)
1988 Jun 28, The US federal
government sued the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to force
reforms on the nation's largest labor union. The two sides reached a
settlement in March, 1989.
(AP, 6/28/98)
1988 Jun 29, The US Supreme
Court, in Morrison v. Olson, upheld the power of independent
counsels in a 7-1 decision to prosecute illegal acts by
high-ranking government officials, ruling the 1978 special
prosecutor law did not violate the Constitution.
(AP, 6/29/99)(AP, 6/29/08)
1988 Jun 30, Renegade Roman
Catholic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in
defiance of papal authority; the Vatican announced the
excommunication of all five.
(AP, 6/30/98)
1988 Jun 30, There was a
surprising display of "glasnost" during a Soviet Communist Party
conference as delegate Vladimir I. Melnikov bluntly criticized
President Andrei A. Gromyko and other longtime Kremlin figures.
(AP, 6/30/98)
1988 Jul 1, A four-day national
conference of Soviet Communist Party members ended in Moscow, with
Mikhail S. Gorbachev winning approval for sweeping changes.
(AP, 7/1/98)
1988 Jul 3, The US Navy USS
Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus A-300 in the Persian Gulf from
the cruiser ship Vincennes shortly after it took off from Bandar
Abbas for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. All 290 people aboard
were killed after the crew of the Vincennes misidentified the plane
as an Iranian F-14 fighter. In 1996 the US paid $131.8 million in
compensation of which half would go directly to the families of the
people killed. Iran filed suit in World Court in 1989 and settled
out of court in Feb, 1996.
(WSJ, 2/23/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/26/96, p.A-14)(AP
7/3/97)(AP, 7/03/10)
1988 Jul 5, US Attorney General
Edwin Meese III announced he would resign, saying he had been
vindicated by an independent prosecutor's 14-month probe into his
official conduct.
(AP, 7/5/98)
1988 Jul 6, Medical waste and
other debris began washing up on seashores near New York City,
forcing the closing of several popular beaches.
(AP, 7/6/98)
1988 Jul 6, In Mexican
elections the PRI declared itself the early winner without an
official vote count. The true results of the election were never
made public. Gortari, candidate for the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party, was losing badly to opposition candidate
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.
(AP, 3/9/04)
1988 Jul 6, A series of
explosions and fires destroyed the Piper Alpha North Sea oil
drilling platform. 167 North Sea oil workers were killed.
(AP, 7/6/98)(SFC, 8/9/04, p.B6)
1988 Jul 7, Russia’s PHOBOS 1
Mars Orbiter and lander was launched. Contact was lost on September
2, 1988.
(SFC, 11/19/96,
p.B1)(www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/space_missions.html)
1988 Jul 7, The European
Parliament adopted a resolution condemning brutalities against
Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
(www.armeniaforeignministry.com/pr_04/040227sumgait.html)
1988 Jul 7, The candidate of
Mexico's ruling party, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, claimed a
"national victory" one day after presidential elections that
opponents charged were riddled by fraud.
(AP, 7/7/98)
1988 Jul 8, Iran's
parliamentary speaker, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said his nation would not
seek revenge against the United States for shooting down an Iranian
jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people.
(AP, 7/8/98)
1988 Jul 9, Jackie Presser
(61), general president of the Teamsters Union, died in Lakewood,
Ohio. His story is included in the book: "Devil’s Pact, Inside the
World of the Teamsters Union" by F.C. Duke Zeller.
(AP, 7/9/98)(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.6)
1988 Jul 9, Dog trainer Barbara
Woodhouse died in Buckinghamshire, England, at age 78.
(AP, 7/9/98)
1988 Jul 10, Lester Garnier
(30), an off-duty SF vice cop, was shot and killed in a Walnut
Creek, Ca., parking lot. His murder remained unsolved and a new
investigation was begun in 1998. Sgt. Robert Guinan allegedly spread
rumors that Inspector Vince Repetto was responsible. Repetto sued
the police dept. In 2008 Walnut creek police identified Catherine
Kuntz (44) of Florida as a prime suspect in the murder. Kuntz was
deported to Scotland in Dec 2008.
(SFC, 5/21/98, p.A1)(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A17)(SFC,
6/4/08, p.A1)(SFC, 2/2/09, p.A11)
1988 Jul 10, Opposition party
activists in Mexico blocked a bridge linking their country to the
United States, charging that Mexico's recent presidential election
was marked by widespread fraud.
(AP, 7/10/98)
1988 Jul 11, Nine people were
killed when three Abu Nidal terrorists attacked hundreds of tourists
aboard a Greek cruise ship, the City of Poros, which was steaming
toward a marina in suburban Athens.
(AP, 7/11/98)(www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ano.htm)
1988 Jul 12, The American
League beat the National League 2-1 in the All-Star game played in
Cincinnati.
(AP, 7/12/98)
1988 Jul 12, Democratic
presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis tapped Texas Sen. Lloyd
Bentsen as his running mate.
(AP, 7/12/98)
1988 Jul 12, Russia’s PHOBOS 2
Flyby and lander was launched. It failed within 480 miles of Mar’s
moon Phobos.
(SFC, 11/19/96,
p.B1)(www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/space_missions.html)
1988 Jul 13, Final results of
Mexico's recent presidential election were released, giving the
victory to the candidate of the governing party, Carlos Salinas de
Gortari. Opponents called election "stolen."
(AP, 7/13/98)
1988 Jul 14, Speaking before
the U.N. Security Council, Iran's foreign minister, Ali-Akbar
Velayati, denounced the U.S. downing of an Iranian jetliner as "a
barbaric massacre." Vice President Bush replied that the U.S.S.
Vincennes had fired in self-defense.
(AP, 7/14/98)
1988 Jul 14, The Soviet press
agency Tass reported that Azerbaijan has rejected an attempt by
Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave, to secede and
join Armenia. Some 200,000 demonstrated in Soviet Armenia for the
incorporation of Nagorno-Karabakh.
(http://tinyurl.com/n6dfc)
1988 Jul 15, The leadership of
the Teamsters Union chose William J. McCarthy to fill out the
remaining term of the late Jackie Presser as president, narrowly
rejecting Secretary-Treasurer Weldon Mathis, Presser's hand-picked
successor.
(AP, 7/15/98)
1988 Jul 16, The Rev. Jesse
Jackson arrived in Atlanta for the Democratic national convention,
telling cheering supporters he was seeking "shared responsibility"
with nominee-apparent Michael Dukakis.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1988 Jul 17, Michael Dukakis
arrived in Atlanta to claim the Democratic nomination for president,
saying, "We're working hard to make sure we have a good convention,
a strong and united party."
(AP, 7/17/98)
1988 Jul 18, Texas Treasurer
Ann Richards delivered the keynote address at the Democratic
national convention in Atlanta, needling Republican nominee-apparent
George Bush as having been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
(HN, 7/18/98)
1988 Jul 18, Abu Nidal
terrorists killed 9 on the City of Poros cruise ship.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1988 Jul 19, Jesse Jackson
brought his 1988 presidential campaign to an emotionally charged
close at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, telling
party faithful to unite because "the only time we win is when we
come together."
(HN, 7/19/98)
1988 Jul 20, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis received the Democratic presidential nomination at
the party's convention in Atlanta.
(AP, 7/20/98)
1988 Jul 20, Iranian leader
Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a truce with Iraq, even though he said
the decision was like drinking poison.
(AP, 7/20/98)
1988 Jul 21, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at
the party's convention in Atlanta, declaring, "this election isn't
about ideology; it's about competence."
(AP, 7/21/98)
1988 Jul 21, Canada’s
Multiculturalism Act of 1988 replaced a previous policy of
assimilation with one of acceptance of diversity.
(Econ, 11/18/06,
p.39)(www.pch.gc.ca/progs/multi/policy/act_e.cfm)
1988 Jul 22, Iran and Iraq said
they would send their foreign ministers to New York to meet with
U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, after Iran said it
would accept a U.N. cease-fire resolution.
(AP, 7/22/98)
1988 Jul 23, In his weekly
radio address, President Reagan responded to the just-completed
Democratic national convention by accusing Democrats of "singing the
same sad song they sang four years ago."
(AP, 7/23/98)
1988 Jul 23, Iran accused Iraq
of pushing deep into Iranian territory and using chemical weapons.
The March 16 Iraqi chemical attack at Halabja killed thousands and
in 1999 was still causing genetic damage and deaths.
(AP, 7/23/97)(USAT, 3/24/99, p.18A)
1988 Jul 24, On the campaign
trail, Republican George Bush heard chants of "ERA," a reference to
the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, from members of a professional
women's group in Albuquerque, N.M. Democratic nominee Michael
Dukakis was heckled by anti-abortion protesters in St. Louis.
(AP, 7/24/98)
1988 Jul 25, A judge in New
York ordered the feuding San Diego Yacht Club and a New Zealand
challenger to settle the battle for the America's Cup with a
September race. The Americans used a two-hulled catamaran to easily
defeat the New Zealanders' monohull, setting off a legal dispute
that ended two years later in victory for the American team.
(AP, 7/25/98)
1988 Jul 26, U.N. Secretary
General Javier Perez de Cuellar met twice with Iran's foreign
minister in the first formal talks about a cease-fire for the
eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.
(AP, 7/26/98)
1988 Jul 27, U.N. Secretary
General Javier Perez de Cuellar held separate peace talks with the
foreign ministers of Iraq and Iran on a cease-fire in the
eight-year-old Persian Gulf war.
(AP, 7/27/98)
1988 Jul 28, Both houses of
Congress overwhelmingly approved some $6 billion in aid for
drought-stricken farmers. The US drought shrank the corn harvest by
31%.
(AP, 7/28/98)(WSJ, 8/4/05, p.A1)
1988 Jul 28, The Pentagon said
that its precautions were enough to protect against accidents even
though a safety review said that research into chemical and
biological weapons could be dangerous to surrounding communities.
(http://tinyurl.com/ouh6o)
1988 Jul 28, Jordan cancelled a
$1.3 billion development plan in West Bank.
(www.kinghussein.gov.jo/88_july31.html)
1988 Jul 29, FDIC bailed out
1st Republic Bank, Dallas, with $4 billion.
(http://tinyurl.com/lubu9)
1988 Jul 29, NASA officials
delayed a critical test-firing of the space shuttle Discovery's main
engines another three days. The test on Aug. 10 was judged a
success.
(AP, 7/29/98)
1988 Jul 30, Jordan's King
Hussein dissolved his country's lower house of Parliament, half of
whose 60 members were from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hussein
renounced sovereignty over the West Bank to the PLO.
(AP, 7/30/98)(http://tinyurl.com/ov6pf)
1988 Jul 31, The last US
Playboy Club closed in Lansing, Mich.
(www.michiganhistorymagazine.com/date/july03/07_31_1988.html)
1988 Jul 31, In a televised
speech, Jordan's King Hussein called for an independent Palestinian
state in the Israeli-occupied territories as he told the
Palestinians to take affairs into their own hands.
(HN, 7/31/98)
1988 Jul, Captain Clay Lacy
took off on a round the world flight from Boeing Field, Seattle, in
a Boeing 747SP and returned in 36 hours, 54 min., and 15 sec.
(Hem., 2/96, p.44)
1988 Jul, Petr Taborsky, a
Czech citizen, discovered that Clinoptilolite, a clay substance,
will absorb ammonium when heated past 850 degrees as a student at
the Univ. of South Florida. He later received a federal patent for
his work, but was also charged by the Univ. of South Florida for
theft and later violation of probation for using his disputed
notebooks. He refused to sign over his patent to the school and was
sentenced to 3 1/2 years in state prison.
(SFC, 6/22/96, p.A9)
1988 Jul, The apartheid regime
in South Africa, having entered into discussions with the ANC,
agreed to elections in Namibia in exchange for the withdrawal of
Cuban troops from Angola.
(AP, 3/22/08)
1988 Aug 1, Conservative
commentator Rush Limbaugh began broadcasting his nationally
syndicated radio program.
(AP, 8/1/08)
1988 Aug 1, Iran said it would
honor an immediate cease-fire in its eight-year-old war with Iraq.
(AP, 8/1/98)
1988 Aug 2, Despite threats of
a veto, President Reagan promised reluctantly to allow a
plant-closing notification bill to become law, accusing Democrats of
"political shenanigans."
(AP, 8/2/98)
1988 Aug 2, Raymond Carver
(b.1938), American poet, short story writer (Furious Season), died.
His books included “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”
(1981). In 2009 Carol Sklenicka authored “Raymond Carver: A Writer’s
Life.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver)(SSFC, 11/22/09, Books
p.F1)
1988 Aug 3, The Soviet Union
released Mathias Rust, the West German who landed a small plane in
Moscow's Red Square in May 1987.
(AP, 8/3/97)
1988 Aug 4, Hertz car rental
agreed to pay out $23 million in a consumer fraud case.
(www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n18_v40/ai_6636696)
1988 Aug 5, Treasury Secretary
James A. Baker III announced he was resigning to take over the
presidential election campaign of Vice President George Bush.
Nicholas F. Brady was nominated to take Baker's place at Treasury.
(AP, 8/5/98)
1988 Aug 6, As many as
400 drowned in India when a ferry capsized in the Ganges River.
(AP, 2/3/06)
1988 Aug 6, Iraq's president
said his country would agree to a cease-fire with Iran, provided the
Iranians promised to hold direct talks immediately after the truce
took effect.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1988 Aug 7, The Writers Guild
of America ended their 6 months strike.
(http://tinyurl.com/zlxht)
1988 Aug 7, Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Velayati signaled his government's acceptance of
Iraq's modified peace proposal aimed at bringing about a cease-fire
in the Persian Gulf.
(AP, 8/7/98)
1988 Aug 8, A renovated NYC
Central Park Zoo reopened after 4 years.
(http://nyzoosandaquarium.com/czabout)
1988 Aug 8, Sec. of State
Shultz narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Bolivia.
(www.tkb.org/MorePatterns.jsp?countryCd=BL&year=1988)
1988 Aug 8, U.N.
Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced a cease-fire
between Iran and Iraq. This became a Iraqi national holiday until it
was abolished in 2003.
(SFC, 2/24/9, p.A9)(AP, 8/8/98)(AP, 7/13/03)
1988 Aug 8-1988 Aug 13, Police
in Burma (Myanmar) killed nearly 3,000 protesters in the streets of
Rangoon.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Par. p.5)(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.T8)
1988 Aug 9, President Reagan
nominated Lauro Cavazos to be secretary of education; Cavazos became
the first Hispanic to serve in the Cabinet.
(AP, 8/9/98)
1988 Aug 9, Hockey star Wayne
Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers was traded to the Los Angeles Kings.
(AP, 8/9/98)
1988 Aug 10, President Reagan
signed the Civil Liberties Act, a measure providing $20,000 payments
to Japanese-Americans interned by the U.S. government during World
War II.
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 8/9/98, p.A1)
1988 Aug 10, Adela Rogers St.
John (b.1894), journalist (Free Soul, Honeycomb), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adela_Rogers_St._Johns)
1988 Aug 11, The U.S. Senate
confirmed Dick Thornburgh to succeed Edwin Meese III as attorney
general, by a vote of 85-0.
(AP, 8/11/98)
1988 Aug 11, Jean-Pierre
Ponnelle (b.1932), French opera director (Figaro, Barber of Seville,
numerous operas in Europe, Bayreuth, Met Opera), died in Munich,
Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Ponnelle)
1988 Aug 12, The controversial
movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," directed by Martin Scorsese,
opened in nine cities despite objections by some Christians who felt
the film was sacrilegious.
(AP, 8/12/98)
1988 Aug 12, Richard Thornburgh
became US Attorney General.
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/88aug.htm)
1988 Aug 12, Michel Basquiat
(b.1960), NY artist of Haitian descent, died of a drug overdose at
age 27. His work included "Academic Study of Male Figure" (1983) and
"Boy and Dog in a Johhnypump." In 1996 Julian Schnabel made a film
documentary titled "Basquiat." In 1998 Phoebe Hoban published
"Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art."
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.E1)(SFC, 8/16/96, p.D3)(SFEC,
7/26/98, BR p.4)
1988 Aug 12, Sein Lwin resigned
from the presidency of Burma. He was succeeded by a civilian, Maung
Maung, who in turn was ousted by the military after just a month in
office.
(AP, 4/10/04)
1988 Aug 13, Vice President
George Bush contemplated a list of potential running mates as
Republicans gathered in New Orleans for their party's national
convention.
(AP, 8/13/98)
1988 Aug 14, Pres. Reagan
arrived in New Orleans on the eve of the Republican national
convention that would nominate VP George Bush, to be its choice to
succeed him.
(AP, 8/14/98)
1988 Aug 14, Enzo Ferrari
(b.1898), Italian sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari)
1988 Aug 15, President Reagan
bade a sentimental farewell on the first night of the Republican
national convention in New Orleans, and praised the man destined to
succeed him, Vice President George Bush.
(AP, 8/15/98)
1988 Aug 16, VP George Bush
tapped Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/16/98)
1988 Aug 17, Vice President
George Bush was nominated for president at the Republican National
Convention in New Orleans.
(AP, 8/17/98)
1988 Aug 17, The US FDA
approved Minoxidil as a hair loss treatment.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1988-8/1988-08-17-ABC-10.html)
1988 Aug 17, Franklin D.
Roosevelt Jr. (Rep-D-NY, 1949-55), died on his 74th birthday in
Poughkeepsie, NY.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt,_Jr.)
1988 Aug 17, Pakistani
President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq (63) and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel
were killed in a mysterious plane crash. Zia, president from
1977-1988, was responsible for the 1977 overthrow and 1979 death of
Premier Bhutto. Zia did much to turn Pakistan towards Islamic
fundamentalism. Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, became prime
minister in November.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-1)(AP, 8/17/98)(Econ,
6/14/08, p.103)
1988 Aug 18, Indiana Sen. Dan
Quayle was nominated to be George Bush's running mate during the
Republican convention in New Orleans; meanwhile, questions were
being raised about Quayle's service in the Indiana National Guard
during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 8/18/98)
1988 Aug 18, Frederick Ashton
(b.1904), Ecuador-born dancer and choreographer, died in Suffolk,
England. In 1997 Julie Kavanaugh published "Secret Muses: The Life
of Frederic Ashton."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ashton)(WSJ, 5/15/97, p.A21)
1988 Aug 18, Hamas published a
manifesto calling for a holy war to create an Islamic state from the
Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel. It
challenged the PLO's claim as the sole representative of the
Palestinian people. The Hamas charter declared that all Palestine is
Islamic trust land, can never be surrendered to non-Muslims
and is an integral part of Muslim world.
(SFC, 3/23/04,
p.A11)(www.mideastweb.org/hamashistory.htm)
1988 Aug 19, During a news
conference in his hometown of Huntington, Ind., Republican
vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle defended his service in the
National Guard during the Vietnam War.
(AP, 8/19/98)
1988 Aug 20, Eight British
soldiers were killed by an Irish Republican Army land mine that
destroyed a military bus near Omagh, County Tyrone, in Northern
Ireland.
(AP, 8/20/98)
1988 Aug 20, A cease fire
between Iran and Iraq took effect after 8 years of war.
(www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/uniimogbackgr.html)
1988 Aug 21, More than 1,000
people were killed in an earthquake on the Nepal-India border.
(AP, 8/21/98)
1988 Aug 22, Speaking to the
Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago, Vice President George Bush
defended the Vietnam-era National Guard service of running mate Dan
Quayle, saying, "He did not go to Canada, he did not burn his draft
card and he damn sure didn't burn the American flag."
(AP, 8/22/98)
1988 Aug 23, Some striking
workers in Poland ended a walkout that had begun a week earlier, but
125 miners barricaded themselves in an underground shaft, vowing to
stay until they'd won their demands.
(AP, 8/23/98)
1988 Aug 24, Democratic
presidential nominee Michael Dukakis picked up the endorsement of
the AFL-CIO while Republican nominee George Bush campaigned in
California with President Reagan.
(AP, 8/24/98)
1988 Aug 24, Leonard Frey
(b.1938), American actor, died of AIDS. His film roles included
“Boys in the Band” (1970) and “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971).
(www.answers.com/topic/leonard-frey)
1988 Aug 24, Max Shulman
(b.1919), author (Dobie Gillis, Tender Trap), died.
(www.answers.com/topic/max-shulman)
1988 Aug 25, In his sharpest
attack yet on the Reagan administration's drug policies, Democratic
presidential nominee Michael Dukakis criticized U.S. dealings with
Panama's military leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega, as "criminal."
(AP, 8/25/98)
1988 Aug 25, Challenger
Center opened its classroom doors in Houston.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1988 Aug 25, NASA
launched space vehicle S-214.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1988 Aug 25, Iran and
Iraq began talks to end their 8 year war.
(www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/uniimogbackgr.html)
1988 Aug 25, A major fire
destroyed the historic center of Lisbon, Portugal.
(www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACOS-64CRPV?OpenDocument)
1988 Aug 26, Republican
presidential nominee George Bush denounced Democrat Michael Dukakis'
criticism of Reagan administration drug policies as "an insult," one
day after the Massachusetts governor called U.S. dealings with
Panamanian General Manuel Noriega "criminal."
(AP, 8/26/98)
1988 Aug 27, Tens of thousands
of civil rights marchers gathered in Washington, D.C., on the eve of
the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream"
speech.
(AP, 8/27/98)
1988 Aug 28, At least 40 people
were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air
show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming
debris into the crowd of spectators. Over the next 2 months the
death toll rose to 69.
(AP,
8/28/98)(www.sos.se/sos/publ/REFERENG/9003031E.htm)
1988 Aug 28, The Yan Hee
Polyclinic in Bangkok, Thailand, reported on a new slimming
technique. Overweight Thais were suppressing their appetites by
sticking lettuce seeds in their ears and pressing them in ten times
before meals.
(HTnet, 8/28/99)
1988 Aug 29, On the
presidential campaign trail, Democrat Michael Dukakis sought to
counter Republican George Bush's salvos against the Massachusetts
prison furlough program, while Bush continued to charge that Dukakis
was soft on defense.
(AP, 8/29/98)
1988 Aug 29, In NYC the Macy’s
Tap-o-Mania set a Guinness record.
(www.amug.org/~jpaul/aug29.html)(http://tinyurl.com/jk8dp)
1988 Aug 30, Top aides to
Republican presidential nominee George Bush and Democrat Michael
Dukakis met in Washington without reaching agreement on a schedule
for debates in the fall.
(AP, 8/30/98)
1988 Aug 31, Arbitrator George
Nicolau ruled sports owners conspired against free agents.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/chronology/1988AUGUST.stm)
1988 Aug 31, Fourteen people
were killed when a Delta Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff from
Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
(AP, 8/31/98)
1988 Aug 31, A 5-day power
blackout of downtown Seattle began.
(YN, 8/31/99)
1988 Aug 31, In South Africa
the Khotso House was bombed. Police chief Johan van der Merwe was
instructed to blow up the Johannesburg headquarters of the South
African Council of Churches, called Khotso House, for harboring
anti-apartheid groups. The bombing injured 21 people. He said in
1996 that the instructions came from Law and Order Minister Adriaan
Vlok, who told him that the order came directly from Pres. P.W.
Botha. In 1997 a document submitted by Vlok said the order to
destroy the headquarters came from Pres. Botha. Col. Eugene de Kock
testified in 1998 that he was called in by a police general to
blowup Khotso House. Vlok testified in 1998 that Botha dictated the
bombing. Vlok and van der Merwe were given amnesty in 1999.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A9)(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A10)(SFC,
6/4/98, p.A12)(SFC, 7/22/98, p.A11)(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A14)
1988 Aug, In California an FBI
sting operation ended in the state capital. Agents posed as Southern
businessmen seeking a bill for bond financing of a phony shrimp
processing plant. Over the next 6 years 3 former legislative aides
were convicted on charges stemming from the sting. State Senators
Paul Carpenter, Joseph Montoya, Alan Robbins (D) and Frank Hill (R)
went to prison as did GOP Assemblyman Pat Nolan. Two lobbyists were
also convicted.
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A15)
1988 Aug, Summer heat caused
poor crops in the US, but in Argentina, Olacyr de Moraes, the
world’s biggest soybean farmer reaped a good profit with world grain
prices soaring.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.92)
1988 Sep 1, Leonor Sullivan
(b.1902), Rep-D-Missouri, (1955-77), died.
(http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/sullivan6.html)
1988 Sep 2, Democrat Michael
Dukakis welcomed back former top aide John Sasso to his presidential
campaign, nearly a year after Sasso resigned because of his role in
torpedoing the campaign of Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden.
(AP, 9/2/98)
1988 Sep 3, On the presidential
campaign trail, Democrat Michael Dukakis paid a visit to Ellis
Island in New York, while Republican George Bush met reporters at
his official Washington residence.
(AP, 9/3/98)
1988 Sep 4, Officials in
Bangladesh reported that floods had inundated three-quarters of
their impoverished nation, claiming at least 882 lives. Monsoon
floods left over 3,000 dead this year.
(AP, 9/4/98)(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A15)
1988 Sep 5, On the campaign
trail, Republican George Bush continued to link his opponent with
"the liberal left," while Democrat Michael Dukakis charged that
under a GOP administration, "the rich have become richer, the poor
have gotten poorer."
(AP, 9/5/98)
1988 Sep 6, Lee Roy Young
became the first African-American Texas Ranger in the force's
165-year history.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1988 Sep 6, A 25-hour drama
began as technical problems kept a two-man Soviet space crew from
returning to Earth aboard a Soyuz space capsule. The problems were
cleared up, and the crew landed safely the next day.
(AP, 9/6/98)
1988 Sep 7, Vice President
George Bush startled an American Legion audience in Louisville, Ky.,
by referring to Sept. 7 as "Pearl Harbor Day," which is actually
Dec. 7. Realizing his mistake, Bush said, "Did I say Sept. 7? Sorry
about that."
(AP, 9/7/98)
1988 Sep 7, The Security &
Exchange Commission accused Drexel of violating security laws.
(http://tinyurl.com/efx9t)
1988 Sep 7, Seymour (62) and
Arlene (54) Tankleff were bludgeoned to death in their Long Island
home. Their adopted son, Martin Tankleff (17), initially confessed
to the crime after a detective falsely told him the father had
implicated him. Martin quickly withdrew the confession, but was
sentenced to 50 years following one of the nation’s first televised
trials. In 2007 he was released after detectives turned up witnesses
that implicated a business partner of his father.
(SFC, 12/28/07,
p.A3)(www.courttv.com/news/2007/1228/tankleff_ap.html)
1988 Sep 8, Two nuclear-missile
rocket motors were destroyed at an army ammunition plant in Karnack,
Texas; they were the first US weapons to be eliminated under an arms
reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.
(AP, 9/8/08)
1988 Sep 8, A. Bartlett
Giamatti, the National League president, was named to succeed Peter
Ueberroth as baseball’s 7th commissioner.
(AP, 9/8/98)
1988 Sep 9, The "Stars and
Stripes," a catamaran piloted by Dennis Conner, completed a 2-0
washout of a New Zealand monohull for the America's Cup off San
Diego. Conner's victory was eventually upheld in court.
(AP, 9/9/98)
1988 Sep 9, Financial Corp. of
America filed for bankruptcy with assets of $33.8 billion.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A4)
1988 Sep 10, Gretchen Elizabeth
Carlson of Minnesota was crowned Miss America.
(AP, 9/10/98)
1988 Sep 10, Steffi Graf of
West Germany achieved tennis' first Grand Slam since Margaret Court
in 1970 by winning the U.S. Open women's final.
(AP, 9/10/98)
1988 Sep 10, In Texas Forrest
Henderson and Richard Wrotenbery of the Houston Grand Opera chorus
were beaten and killed. In 2010 Derrick Jackson (42) was executed
for the killings. Jackson claimed that he was unfairly convicted.
(SFC, 7/21/10, p.A7)(http://tinyurl.com/2el6c2p)
1988 Sep 11, Mats Wilander of
Sweden won the men's U.S. Open title in New York.
(AP, 9/11/98)
1988 Sep 11, In Haiti 12
people died when the San Juan Bosco Church was burned.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-5568.html)
1988 Sep 12, Hurricane Gilbert,
called the storm of the century, smashed into the Gulf coast. It
slammed into Jamaica with torrential rains and winds of 145 mph,
killing 45 people and causing damage estimated at up to $1 billion.
It also devastated the Yucatan peninsula and left 225 people dead.
The storm hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Cayman
Islands and Mexico before striking Texas.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.181)(AP, 9/12/97)(SFC, 10/10/97,
p.A15)
1988 Sep 13, As Hurricane
Gilbert made its way toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, forecasters
reported the barometric pressure of Gilbert's center measured a low
of 26.13 inches, making it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in
the Western Hemisphere.
(AP, 9/13/98)
1988 Sep 14, Hurricane
"Gilbert" slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after forcing
thousands of residents to flee.
(AP, 9/14/00)
1988 Sep 15, Thousands of
coastal residents from Mexico to Louisiana were fleeing to higher
ground, a day after Hurricane Gilbert pounded the Yucatan Peninsula.
(AP, 9/15/98)
1988 Sep 16, Hurricane Gilbert
slammed into the Mexico coast for the second time in three days, its
center sweeping ashore north of La Pesca, 120 miles south of
Brownsville, Texas.
(AP, 9/16/98)
1988 Sep 17, South Korea opened
the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul. Closing ceremonies for the summer
Olympics were held on October 2. North Korea refused to participate.
Cuba and Nicaragua stayed away in solidarity.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.R2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Summer_Olympics)
1988 Sep 17, Haitian President
Henri Hamphy was ousted in a coup; Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril declared
himself president the following day.
(AP, 9/17/98)
1988 Sep 18, The Soviet Union
won the first gold medal of the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South
Korea, in the women's air rifle event, while U.S. divers picked up
silver and bronze medals in women's platform.
(AP, 9/18/98)
1988 Sep 18, In Burma
Gen’l. Saw Maung (d.1997 at 69) became chairman of a military junta,
called The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). He had
been the army chief of staff and defense minister before leading the
coup. The junta took power and put under house arrest Aung San Suu
Kyi, the elected president. After years of economic distress the
junta released Aung San in 1995 in hopes of gaining foreign economic
aid. The junta announced that Burma would henceforth be called
Myanmar, and the capital, Rangoon, Yangon.
(SFC, 6/30/96, A11)(SFC, 7/25/97,
p.A18)(www.burmawatch.org/aboutburma.html)
1988 Sep 19, Swimmer Janet
Evans gave the United States its first gold medal of the Summer
Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, by winning the 400-meter individual
medley. US swimmer Greg Louganis hit his head on the springboard
during preliminary competition.
(AP,
9/19/98)(www.infoplease.com/spot/mm-louganis.html)
1988 Sep 19, Israel succeeded
in launching a test satellite, the Ofeq ("Horizon") 1, over the
Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 9/19/08)
1988 Sep 20, Greg Louganis of
the United States won the gold medal in springboard diving at the
Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, a day after he injured his
head on the board in the preliminary round.
(AP, 9/20/98)
1988 Sep 20, The 43rd General
Assembly opened at the United Nations.
(AP, 9/20/98)
1988 Sep 21, The Soviet women's
gymnastics team won the gold medal at the Seoul Summer Olympics,
with Romania placing second and East Germany third.
(AP, 9/21/98)
1988 Sep 22, Vice President
George Bush accepted the endorsement of the Boston Police
Patrolmen's Association in the home state of Democrat Michael
Dukakis.
(AP, 9/22/98)
1988 Sep 22, The government of
Canada apologized for the World War II internment of
Japanese-Canadians and promised compensation.
(AP, 9/22/98)
1988 Sep 23, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze concluded two days of talks in
Washington with Secretary of State George P. Shultz on the subjects
of arms control and human rights.
(AP, 9/23/98)
1988 Sep 24, Members of the
eastern Massachusetts Episcopal diocese elected Barbara C. Harris
the first female bishop in the church's history.
(AP, 9/24/98)
1988 Sep 24, In Burma Aung San
Suu Kyi formed the National League for Democracy party.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1988 Sep 24, Canadian sprinter
Ben Johnson won the men's 100-meter dash in 9.79 seconds at the
Seoul Summer Olympics. He was disqualified three days later for
using anabolic steroids.
(AP, 9/24/98)(Econ, 8/2/08, SR p.15)
1988 Sep 25, Republican George
Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis clashed over deficits, drugs and
the Pledge of Allegiance in their first presidential debate.
(AP, 9/25/98)
1988 Sep 25, Former first
brother Billy Carter died in Plains, Ga., at 51.
(AP, 9/25/98)
1988 Sep 25, Florence Griffith
Joyner won the women's 100-meter dash at the Seoul Olympics.
(AP, 9/25/98)
1988 Sep 26, In a farewell
speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Reagan saw "a moment
for hope" for peace in the world, citing a new U.S.-Soviet treaty to
sharply reduce nuclear arms due during the following year.
(AP, 9/26/98)
1988 Sep 27, Canadian sprinter
Ben Johnson left for home in disgrace 3 days after placing first in
the men's 100-meter dash at the Seoul Summer Olympics. He was
stripped of his gold medal by officials who said he had used
anabolic steroids.
(AP, 9/27/98)
1988 Sep 27, Grand jury
evidence showed Tawana Brawley fabricated her rape story.
(http://tinyurl.com/jjlua)
1988 Sep 28, President Reagan
vetoed legislation designed to toughen curbs in textile, apparel and
shoe imports, arguing it would have "disastrous effects" on the
economy at a time when exports were growing.
(AP, 9/28/98)
1988 Sep 29, The space shuttle
Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking America's
return to manned space flight following the Challenger disaster.
(AP, 9/29/98)
1988 Sep 29, Florence Griffith
Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee of the U.S. won their second gold
medals of the Seoul Olympics, in the 200-meter and the long jump,
respectively.
(AP, 9/29/98)
1988 Sep 29, Britain signed the
International Convention Against Torture.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A3)
1988 Sep 29, In Chile a
17-year-old girl died from electric torture by military police. This
case was later cited by a Spanish judge as part of the 1998 warrant
against Gen’l. Pinochet.
(SFC, 11/13/98, p.D3)
1988 Sep 30, Pictures of the
solar corona first appeared on the cover of Science Magazine. Prof.
Arthur Walker (d.2000 at 64) of Stanford Univ., used X-ray and
thin-film telescopes to capture the pictures.
(SSFC, 5/6/01, p.A27)
1988 Sep 30, Joachim Prinz
(b.1902), author and Rabbi of Berlin (1926-37), died in New Jersey.
(www.joachimprinz.com/biography.htm)
1988 Sep 30, Mikhail S.
Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and
fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up.
(AP, 9/30/99)
1988 Sep, Typhoons in
Bangladesh caused severe flooding hundreds of thousands died in the
country's lowlands.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
1988 Sep, In Burma over 10,000
students led by Htun Aung Gyaw took to the jungles to organize an
armed resistance against the military regime. Gyaw was arrested by
Thai authorities in 1992 and took refugee status in the US. Military
rulers killed thousands of pro-democracy activists during the
suppression of demonstrations. Hundreds of pro-democracy supporters
were killed in Rangoon. A film was made called Beyond Rangoon that
depicts the terror and bloodshed of the period.
(SFC, 5/22/96, p.C-1)(SFC, 5/25/96, p.A12)(SFC,
9/3/96, p.A7)(SFEC, 8/23/98, Par p.10)
1988 Sep, In Kenya Julie Ward
was killed in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. In 1998 game warden
Simon ole Makallah was arrested for the murder.
(SFC, 9/16/98, p.C2)
1988 Oct 1, In a continuing
shake-up of the Soviet leadership, Mikhail Gorbachev was confirmed
as president, succeeding Andrei A. Gromyko.
(AP, 10/1/98)
1988 Oct 2, The Summer Olympic
Games concluded in Seoul, South Korea. The USSR won 55 gold medals,
E. Germany won 37, and the US won 36.
(SFC, 7/14/96, Par p.4)(HN, 10/2/98)
1988 Oct 3, Discovery completed
a four-day mission, the first American shuttle flight since the
Challenger disaster.
(AP, 10/3/98)
1988 Oct 3, Generoso Pope
(b.1927), owner of the National Enquirer, died. His wife, Lois Pope,
began a career of philanthropy. In 2008 Jack Titek authored “The
Godfather of Tabloid: Generoso Pope Jr. and the National Enquirer.”
(SFEC, 7/30/00, Par p.10)(WSJ, 8/12/08, p.A19)
1988 Oct 3, Franz Josef Strauss
(b.1915), German defense minister (1956-62), died at 73.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strau%C3%9F)
1988 Oct 3, Lebanese kidnappers
released Indian educator Mithileshwar Singh, who'd been held captive
with three Americans for more than 20 months.
(AP, 10/3/98)
1988 Oct 4, Indian professor
Mithileshwar Singh, freed the day before by his Lebanese kidnappers,
said his captors had treated him well during his 20 months of
imprisonment, but acknowledged "there is no substitute for freedom."
(AP, 10/4/98)
1988 Oct 5, Republican Dan
Quayle and Democrat Lloyd Bentsen clashed in the only
vice-presidential debate of the 1988 campaign. In a memorable
moment, Bentsen lambasted Quayle, who had suggested a parallel
between himself and John F. Kennedy, by telling him, "Senator,
you're no Jack Kennedy."
(AP, 10/5/98)
1988 Oct 5, Grandma Prisbrey,
born as Thresie (Tressa) Luella Schaefer (1896), died in California.
During her life she constructed her bottle village in Simi Valley
including 3 bottle structures to house her collection of 17,000
pencils. In 1981 the site was named a California State Historical
Landmark and in 1996 was added to the National Register of Historic
Places.
(WSJ, 10/21/08,
p.D9)(www.agilitynut.com/h/prisbrey.html)
1988 Oct 5, Brazil accepted a
constitution that obliged the government to make transfers to the 26
states and protect the jobs of public workers. This created a
difficult environment for the control of spending. The new
constitution also annulled the right of husbands to prohibit their
wives from accepting employment. The new constitution also
recognized Indian rights to reclaim their original lands and to
preserve their way of life. Almost 600 reserves were established,
encompassing 12.5% of Brazil’s territory, but many only existed on
paper. The constitution also declared health care to be the right of
the citizen and its provision to be the duty of the state.
(SFC, 9/25/96, p.A1)(Econ, 9/4/04, p.37)(Econ,
2/4/06, p.36)(SSFC, 6/10/07, p.A15)(Econ, 7/30/11, p.33)
1988 Oct 5, The Chilean
population agreed at referendum their opposition to the Pinochet
regime.
(http://tinyurl.com/ew36c)
1988 Oct 5, Israel banned Meir
Kahane's Kach Party on grounds of racism.
(http://tinyurl.com/zzkte)
1988 Oct 6, Gen. Augusto
Pinochet, the president of Chile, conceded defeat in a referendum
held the day before to determine whether he should receive a new
eight-year term of office. He was forced to call for an open
election but stayed president until his term ran out in 1990.
(TMC, 1994, p.1988)(AP, 10/6/98)(SFC, 3/25/99,
p.A3)
1988 Oct 7, The US Labor
Department reported the nation's unemployment rate for September
1988 fell back to July's level of 5.4 percent, after going up to 5.6
percent in August.
(AP, 10/7/98)
1988 Oct 8, Pope John Paul II
journeyed to eastern France, where he addressed the Council of
Europe and the European Court of Human Rights.
(AP, 10/8/98)
1988 Oct 9, Felix Wankel
(b.1902), developer of Wankel rotary engine, died in Germany.
(http://library.thinkquest.org/C006011/english/sites/wankel_bio.php3?v=2)
1988 Oct 9, Yugoslav President
Raif Dizdarevic warned citizens in a national radio and television
address that continued nationalist and economic unrest could lead to
a state of emergency.
(AP, 10/9/98)
1988 Oct 10, Vice President
Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis prepared for their second debate
of the 1988 campaign, scheduled to take place in three days.
(AP, 10/10/98)
1988 Oct 11, Violence began to
subside in Algeria, where mass rioting by youths had broken out a
week earlier, prompting the government to declare a state of siege.
(AP, 10/11/98)
1988 Oct 11, China agreed to
the opening of an Israeli Scientific Exchange office in Beijing.
(http://tinyurl.com/jatx9)
1988 Oct 12, US federal
prosecutors announced that Sundstrand Corp. had agreed to plead
guilty to fraud charges and pay a $115 million settlement for
overbilling the Pentagon for airplane parts over five years.
(HN, 10/12/98)
1988 Oct 13, Egyptian novelist
Naguib Mahfouz was named recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
(AP, 10/13/98)
1988 Oct 13, Vice President
George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis met in their second
presidential debate of the 1988 campaign.
(AP, 10/13/98)
1988 Oct 13, Absa Claude
Diallo, Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable
Rights of the Palestinian People, addressed a letter to the UN
Sec.-Gen. concerning profound concern at the “continued grave
situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the
intensification of the policy of repression pursued by Israel
against the Palestinian people.”
(http://tinyurl.com/zks7q)
1988 Oct 13, In Italy Cardinal
Archbishop Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero was forced to announce that
the Shroud of Turin did not contain the image of Christ. Scientists
at 3 leading universities carbon-dated samples to some time between
1260-1390. In 1998 it was reported that the dating work was not
definitive. Lab tests showed Shroud of Turin was not Christ’s burial
cloth. The Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp) performed
radiocarbon dating on fibers of the shroud and found that the linen
dated to between 1260 and 1390 AD. Ian Wilson wrote the 1978 book
"The Shroud of Turin" and in 1998 "The Blood and the Shroud: New
Evidence That the Most Sacred Relic Is Real."
(WSJ, 4/10/98, p.W6)(SFEC, 2/1/98,
p.A24)(http://tinyurl.com/zuanz)
1988 Oct 14, The US government
reported that wholesale prices had risen a moderate 0.4% in
September.
(AP, 10/14/98)
1988 Oct 15, The Los Angeles
Dodgers defeated the Oakland A's, 5-4, in the World Series opener
that featured a dramatic game-winning home run hit by Kirk Gibson.
(AP, 10/15/98)
1988 Oct 15, Shapurji Sorabji
(b.1892), British composer (Leon Dudley Sorabji), died. His work
included "Opus clavicembalisticum" (1930), an elaboration of
Ferrucio Busoni’s 1921 "Fantasia conatrappuntistica," itself a
metamorphosis and completion of Bach’s "The Art of Fugue."
(WSJ, 12/12/00,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaikhosru_Shapurji_Sorabji)
1988 Oct 16, The Los Angeles
Dodgers shut out the Oakland A's, 6-0, in game two of the World
Series.
(AP, 10/16/98)
1988 Oct 16, Rescue workers
near Point Barrow, Alaska, continued their efforts to save three
California gray whales trapped in Arctic Ocean ice [see Oct 26].
(AP, 10/16/98)
1988 Oct 17, Philip Morris
Companies Inc. launched an $11.5 billion takeover bid for Kraft Inc.
(AP, 10/17/98)
1988 Oct 17, Israel's supreme
court upheld a ban on Meyer Kahane's Kach Party as racist.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/0799/9907081.html)
1988 Oct 18, The TV sitcom
"Roseanne" began a 9 year showing.
(SFC, 5/20/97, p.B3)
1988 Oct 18, Maurice Allais of
France won the Nobel Prize in economics for contributions to the
theory of markets and the efficient use of resources.
(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A2)(AP, 10/18/98)(AP, 10/11/09)
1988 Oct 18, The Oakland A's
defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-1 in game three of the World
Series.
(AP, 10/18/98)
1988 Oct 18, South Korean
President Roh Tae-woo, in an address to the U.N. General Assembly,
called for a summit with North Korea's president to sign a
non-aggression pact.
(AP, 10/18/98)
1988 Oct 19, The Los Angeles
Dodgers defeated the Oakland A's 4-3 in game four of the World
Series.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1988 Oct 19, Britain banned
broadcast interviews with IRA members. Douglas Hurd introduced a
notice under clause 13(4) of the BBC License and Agreement and
section 29(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1981 prohibiting the broadcast
of direct statements by representatives or supporters of eleven
Irish political and military organizations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988)(http://tinyurl.com/f857x)
1988 Oct 19, Eight Israeli
soldiers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in south Lebanon.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1988 Oct 19, Three West Germans
were named winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry; three Americans
received the Nobel Prize in physics. Melvin Schwartz (1933-2006),
Leon Lederman and Jack Steinberger won the Nobel in Physics for
their research into the innermost structure and dynamics of matter.
Their work focused on the nature of neutrinos.
(AP, 10/19/98)(SFC, 8/29/06, p.B5)
1988 Oct 20, The Los Angeles
Dodgers won the World Series, defeating the Oakland A's in game five
by a score of 5-2.
(AP, 10/20/98)
1988 Oct 20, A man armed with
explosives blew himself up in 125 St. subway station in NYC.
(http://tinyurl.com/koyac)
1988 Oct 20, Britain ended a
suspects right to remain silent in crackdown on IRA.
(http://tinyurl.com/gghzx)
1988 Oct 21, A federal grand
jury in New York indicted former Philippine President Ferdinand E.
Marcos and his wife, Imelda, on charges of fraud and racketeering.
Marcos died before he could be brought to trial; his widow, Imelda,
was acquitted in 1990.
(AP, 10/21/98)
1988 Oct 22, The 100th Congress
adjourned in an early morning session that produced sweeping
legislation to combat drug abuse in America.
(AP, 10/22/98)
1988 Oct 22, Supreme Ct.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor OK after breast cancer surgery.
(http://tinyurl.com/fm5ru)
1988 Oct 22, Hurricane Joan hit
Nicaragua and killed 148 people. Hurricane Joan caused 216 deaths in
the Caribbean or Central America. The storm hit Colombia, Costa
Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.
(WP, 11/8/88, p.A21)
1988 Oct 24, The crew of the
USS Vincennes received an emotional homecoming in San Diego, nearly
four months after the cruiser downed an Iranian jetliner in the
Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
(AP, 10/24/98)
1988 Oct 25, ABC News reported
on potbellied pygmy porkers' popularity as pets.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1988-10/1988-10-25-ABC-19.html)
1988 Oct 25, First lady Nancy
Reagan, addressing a U.N. committee, said the United States was
responsible for its own drug problem, and charged that every
American drug user was "an accomplice to every criminal act"
committed by drug barons.
(AP, 10/25/98)
1988 Oct 26, A French
pharmaceutical company, Roussel Uclaf, announced it would halt
worldwide distribution of RU-486, a pill to induce abortions,
because of "an outcry of opinion at home and abroad." The French
government ordered the company to reverse itself two days later.
(AP, 10/26/98)
1988 Oct 26, US-Soviet effort
freed 2 gray whales from frozen Arctic near Barrow, Alaska [see Oct
16].
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/102688j.htm)
1988 Oct 27, The government of
the Soviet Union unveiled an $804 billion budget containing a
deficit of $58 billion that officials blamed on past mistakes.
(AP, 10/27/98)
1988 Oct 28, A French
pharmaceutical company that manufactured the abortion pill RU-486
announced it would resume distribution on command of the French
government.
(AP, 10/28/98)
1988 Oct 29, The maiden voyage
of the Soviet Union's space shuttle was delayed because of problems
with ground equipment.
(AP, 10/29/98)
1988 Oct 30, Responding to
Republican attempts to pin the term liberal on him, Democrat Michael
Dukakis declared on the campaign trail, "Yes, I am a liberal, in the
tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy."
(AP, 10/30/98)
1988 Oct 31, John
Houseman (86), actor (Paper Chase), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0002144/)
1988 Oct 31, In Lebanon the
kidnappers of American hostage Terry Anderson released a videotape
in which The Associated Press correspondent accused the Reagan
administration of blocking his release.
(AP, 10/31/98)
1988 Oct, Sir James W. Black of
Britain won the Nobel Prize in medicine for research that led to
beta-blocker drugs for heart disease and drugs for peptic ulcers.
Gertrude Elion (d.1999) and George H. Hitchings (d.1998 at 92) of
the US were awarded for research leading to drugs for AIDS, herpes,
leukemia and malaria. Elion and Hitchings were later considered as
the founders of the field of chemotherapeutics. They were among the
first to design drugs based on a biochemical understanding of the
disease process.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A9)(SFC, 3/3/98, p.D8)(SFC,
2/23/99, p.A22)
1988 Nov 1, Staten Island ferry
got its 1st pay phones.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1988 Nov 1, Israeli voters went
to the polls in parliamentary elections that resulted in a narrow
victory for the right-wing Likud bloc, requiring the creation of a
coalition government.
(AP, 11/1/98)
1988 Nov 2, A computer worm,
named Morris, unleashed by a Cornell University graduate student
began replicating, clogging thousands of computers around the
country, but causing no real damage. The virus infected an estimated
6,000 university and military computers over the Internet.
(AP, 11/2/98)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.C3)
1988 Nov 3, Talk-show host
Geraldo Rivera's nose was broken as Roy Innis brawled with skinheads
at TV taping.
(http://tinyurl.com/kjyk7)(www.videosift.com/story.php?id=5400)
1988 Nov 3, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir, whose Likud bloc won a narrow victory in
parliamentary elections, began meeting with representatives of
religious and rightist parties, seeking support for a coalition
government.
(AP, 11/3/98)
1988 Nov 3, The Soviet Union
agreed to allow the teaching of Hebrew.
(http://tinyurl.com/z5nps)
1988 Nov 4, In a ceremony at
O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, President Reagan signed a
measure providing for U.S. participation in an anti-genocide treaty
signed by President Truman in 1948.
(AP, 11/4/98)
1988 Nov 5, With the end of the
1988 campaign in sight, Michael Dukakis vowed to work for those
living on "the family budget, not the family fortune" while George
Bush pledged not to be "outhustled by the liberal governor from
Massachusetts."
(AP, 11/5/98)
1988 Nov 6, Andrei D. Sakharov,
the father of the Soviet dissident movement, arrived in the United
States for a two-week trip, less than two years after he was freed
from internal exile in the Soviet Union.
(AP, 11/6/98)
1988 Nov 7, On the eve of
Election Day, Vice President George Bush confidently said the nation
was "coming in behind my candidacy" while Democrat Michael Dukakis
vowed to pull off a stunning "November surprise."
(AP, 11/7/98)
1988 Nov 8, The US held
elections and Republican VP George Bush defeated Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis. Bush was elected the 41st president with 54% of the
popular vote. He and Dan Quail were elected over Dukakis and
Bentson. There have been 14 American vice presidents who have gone
on to serve as president. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van
Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A.
Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman,
Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, George Bush.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A10)(AP, 11/8/98)(HN,
11/6/98)(HNQ, 2/20/00)
1988 Nov 8, Evan Bayh, Indiana
secretary of state, was elected as state governor.
(Econ, 2/20/10,
p.28)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Bayh)
1988 Nov 9, John N. Mitchell
(b.1913), former Attorney General under Pres. Nixon, died in
Washington. He was a major figure in the Watergate scandal and
served 19 months at a federal prison in Alabama (1977-1979) for his
role in the scandal. In 2008 James Rosen authored “The Strong Man:
John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.”
(AP, 1/19/98)(AP, 11/9/02)(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.W8)
1988 Nov 10, The Department of
Energy announced that Texas would be the home of a $4.4 billion
atom-smashing super collider. However, support for the project
declined as cost estimates soared, and Congress finally voted in
October 1993 to kill it.
(AP, 11/10/98)
1988 Nov 11, Oldest known
insect fossils (390 million yrs) was reported in Science.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1988 Nov 11, Police in
Sacramento, Calif., found the first of seven bodies buried on the
grounds of a boardinghouse. Landlady Dorothea Puente (d.2011 at 82)
later charged in the deaths of 9 people; she was convicted of 3
murders and sentenced to life in prison in 1993.
(AP, 11/11/98)(SSFC, 1/13/02, p.A21)(SFC,
3/28/11, p.A4)
1988 Nov 12, The Palestine
National Council, the legislative body of the PLO, opened a four-day
meeting in Algiers, during which delegates proclaimed an independent
Palestinian state.
(AP, 11/12/98)
1988 Nov 13, Former
Czechoslovakia leader Alexander Dubcek received an honorary degree
in Italy, the first time he was allowed outside his country in 18
years.
(AP, 11/13/98)
1988 Nov 13, Antal Dorati (82),
Hungarian-US conductor and composer, died.
(www.classical-composers.org/comp/dorati)
1988 Nov 14, The TV series
“Murphy Brown” featured Candice Bergen working as an investigative
journalist and producer of a TV news magazine. The show continued to
1998.
(LSA, Spring, 2009,
p.44)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Brown)
1988 Nov 14, Israeli President
Chaim Herzog formally asked Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to form a
new government.
(AP, 11/14/98)
1988 Nov 15, The Palestine
National Council, the legislative body of the PLO, proclaimed the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state at the close of a
four-day conference in Algiers.
(AP, 11/15/98)
1988 Nov 15, The Soviet Union
launched its first space shuttle, Buran, on an unmanned, 3 1/2 hour
flight. It was designed by Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky (d.2001 at 97). The
Buran orbited Earth twice, landed, and never flew again. Russia
built about a dozen shuttles, mostly test models, and later scrapped
the program.
(AP, 11/15/98)(SFC, 12/5/01, p.A23)(WSJ, 4/11/05,
p.A18)
1988 Nov 16, Voters in Pakistan
cast ballots in their first open election in 11 years, resulting in
victory for populist candidate Benazir Bhutto.
(AP, 11/15/98)
1988 Nov 17, President-elect
Bush announced his choice of New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu to be
White House chief of staff. Sununu had earlier said "In Iowa they
grow corn, in New Hampshire, we grow presidents."
(AP, 11/17/98)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.D1)
1988 Nov 17, Hollywood gossip
columnist Sheilah Graham died in West Palm Beach, Fla., at age 84.
(AP, 11/17/98)
1988 Nov 18, President Reagan
signed legislation creating a Cabinet-level drug czar and providing
the death penalty for drug traffickers who kill.
(AP, 11/18/98)
1988 Nov 19, Michaela Joy
Garecht (9) was kidnapped outside a market in Hayward, Ca., and has
not been seen since.
(www.geocities.com/farmgirl1032001/michaela_garecht.html)
1988 Nov 19, Shipping heiress
Christina Onassis (37) died in Buenos Aires of pulmonary edema. Her
4th marriage to Thierry Roussel had recently broken up.
(SFEC,11/16/97, Par p.2)(AP, 11/19/98)
1988 Nov 19, Benazir Bhutto was
elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A9)
1988 Nov 20, Egypt and China
announced they were recognizing the Palestinian state proclaimed by
the Palestine National Council.
(AP, 11/20/98)
1988 Nov 21, President-elect
George Bush announced he was retaining Dick Thornburgh as attorney
general and Lauro Cavazos as education secretary, and appointing
Richard Darman budget director.
(AP, 11/21/98)
1988 Nov 21, Canada's
Progressive Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney, won the country's general election.
(AP, 11/21/98)
1988 Nov 22, Americans honored
President Kennedy on the 25th anniversary of his assassination, with
2,500 people turning out in Dallas, and visitors stopping by his
gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery.
(AP, 11/22/98)
1988 Nov 22, Louis Barragan
(b.1902), considered the most important Mexican architect of the
20th century, died in Mexico City. A 1996 book: "Barragan: The
Complete Works" focuses on 119 works and projects.
(SFEM, 9/22/96,
p.36)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Barrag%C3%A1n)(WSJ, 9/1/07,
p.P12)
1988 Nov 23, President-elect
Bush announced his choice of Brent Scowcroft to be his national
security adviser.
(AP, 11/23/98)
1988 Nov 23, President Reagan
announced he was pocket-vetoing a bill designed to further restrict
lobbying by former federal employees, saying it was "excessive and
discriminatory."
(AP, 11/23/98)
1988 Nov 24, A state of
emergency was declared in the cities of Kirovabad and Nakhichevan in
Azerbaijan.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A15)
1988 Nov 24, South Africa's
justice minister announced that Nelson Mandela would not be returned
to prison upon his recovery from tuberculosis, but would instead
remain in custody in another location.
(AP, 11/24/98)
1988 Nov 25, An earthquake
centered in eastern Canada and measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale
was felt widely across Canada and in the northeastern United States.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1988 Nov 26, The United States
denied an entry visa to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who was seeking
permission to travel to New York to address the U.N. General
Assembly.
(AP, 11/26/98)
1988 Nov 26, In Iran Kazem
Sami, leader of a liberal Islamic movement, was murdered.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C2)
1988 Nov 27, The United States
was hit by a flood of worldwide criticism for its refusal a day
earlier to allow PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to address the United
Nations.
(AP, 11/27/98)
1988 Nov 27, Actor John
Carradine, known for his roles in horror films, died in Milan,
Italy, at age 82.
(AP, 11/27/98)
1988 Nov 28, Picasso's "Acrobat
& Harlequin" sold for $37.6 million at auction in England.
(www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=211)(http://tinyurl.com/fgt8v)
1988 Nov 28, President-elect
Bush announced that Marlin Fitzwater, President Reagan's chief
spokesman, was staying on for his administration.
{BushHW, USA}
(AP, 11/28/98)
1988 Nov 28, Major U.S. banks
boosted their prime lending rates half a percentage point to 10.5
percent.
(AP, 11/28/98)
1988 Nov 29, US Senate
Democrats elected George Mitchell of Maine to be majority leader,
the post vacated by Robert Byrd of West Virginia.
(AP, 11/29/98)
1988 Nov 29, A divided US
Supreme Court ruled that the rights of criminal defendants are not
violated when police unintentionally fail to preserve potentially
vital evidence.
(AP, 11/29/98)
1988 Nov 30, The UN General
Assembly (151-2) adopted resolution 43/28 in which it has been
informed of the decision of the Host Country, the US, to deny the
PLO's Arafat a visa.
(www.palestine-un.org/chron/eighties.html)
1988 Nov 30, Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts & Co. (KKR) was declared winner of the corporate
free-for-all to take over RJR Nabisco Inc. with a bid of $24.53
billion. The 1991 book "Barbarians at the Gate," by Bryan Burrough
and John Helyar, described the takeover.
(AP, 11/30/98)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(WSJ, 8/10/01,
p.A1)
1988 Nov 30, Margaret Mee,
artist and naturalist, died in a car crash in England. She had
recently completed her painting of the night-bloomer Selenicereus
witii in the Amazon jungle. In 1999 an exhibit of her 30 years of
Brazilian jungle artwork was put on display at the Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History.
(SFC, 5/29/99,
p.A7)(http://ravenel.si.edu/botany/botart/mee.htm)
1988 Dec 1, At least 1300 were
killed after a cyclone hit Bangladesh. Half a million were left
homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/gtev9)
1988 Dec 1, J. Vernon McGee,
founder of "Thru the Bible Radio Network," died.
(WSJ, 12/19/02,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Vernon_McGee)
1988 Dec 1, Carlos Salinas de
Gortari was sworn in as president of Mexico. He succeeded Pres.
Miguel de la Madrid. One of his first acts was to turn Agualeguas,
the lost family patrimony, into his official retreat.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-6)(SFC, 9/2/97, p.A7)(AP,
12/1/98)
1988 Dec 1, Benazir Bhutto was
named 1st female PM of a Moslem country, Pakistan.
(www.cnn.com/resources/video.almanac/1988/index.html)
1988 Dec 1, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev won nearly unanimous approval for a more
dynamic political structure from the Supreme Soviet, which voted
itself out of existence in favor of a new Congress of People's
Deputies.
(AP, 12/1/98)
1988 Dec 2, The film "Naked
Gun," a movie based on TV's "Police Squad,” was released.
(http://tinyurl.com/gbm6c)
1988 Dec 2, The space shuttle
Atlantis was launched on a secret four-day mission.
(AP, 12/2/98)(http://tinyurl.com/gjp7w)
1988 Dec 2, Benazir Bhutto was
sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan.
(AP, 12/2/98)
1988 Dec 2, The 5 gunmen, who
hijacked Soviet Aeroflot jet, surrendered in Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/hkvkb)
1988 Dec 3, Barry Sanders of
Oklahoma State University won the Heisman Trophy.
(AP, 12/3/98)
1988 Dec 3, In South Africa 11
black funeral mourners were slain in Natal Province in an attack
blamed on security forces. The Trust Feed massacre was masterminded
by policeman Brian Mitchell. He was later convicted of 11 murders in
the botched assassination attempt and served less than five years of
a 30-year sentence. He was freed from prison in 1996 by the
Reconciliation Commission.
(SFC, 12/11/96,
p.C3)(www.doj.gov.za/trc/media/1996/9607/s960725k.htm)(AP, 12/3/98)
1988 Dec 4, John Maher, ex-con
and co-founder of Delancey Street in San Francisco, died in New
York. Grover Sales (d.2004) authored a biography of John Maher.
(SFC, 2/25/04,
p.A19)(www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3917524.html)
1988 Dec 4, The government of
Argentina announced that hundreds of heavily armed soldiers had
ended a four-day military revolt.
(AP, 12/4/98)
1988 Dec 4, In Venezuela,
former President Carlos Andres Perez was declared the winner of the
country's presidential election.
(AP, 12/4/98)
1988 Dec 5, A federal grand
jury in North Carolina indicted PTL founder Jim Bakker and former
aide Richard Dortch on fraud and conspiracy charges. Bakker was
convicted of all counts; Dortch pleaded guilty to four counts and
cooperated with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence.
(AP, 12/5/98)
1988 Dec 5, The US Space
Shuttle Atlantis continued its classified mission.
(http://www.astronautix.com/craft/atlantis.htm)
1988 Dec 6, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev arrived for his second U.S. visit to address the
United Nations and meet with President Reagan and President-elect
Bush.
(AP, 12/6/98)
1988 Dec 6, The space shuttle
Atlantis landed in California.
(AP, 12/6/98)
1988 Dec 6, Rock-and-roll
pioneer Roy Orbison died near Nashville, Tenn., at age 52.
(AP, 12/6/98)
1988 Dec 6, Arafat met
prominent American Jews in Stockholm, Sweden.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1988-12/1988-12-06-NBC-15.html)
1988 Dec 7, A magnitude 6.9-8.0
earthquake devastated Spitak in northern Armenia; an estimated
25,000-55,000 people died with some $14 billion in losses.
(AP, 12/7/97)(AP,
6/22/02)(www.who.int/archives/inf-pr-1997/en/pr97-08.html)
1988 Dec 8, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev cut short his U.S. visit in order to return home
following a killer earthquake in Armenia.
(AP, 12/8/98)
1988 Dec 9, In the wake of the
Armenian earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives,
countries around the world began sending emergency supplies and
offering pledges of relief funds.
(AP, 12/9/98)
1988 Dec 10, Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev visited the republic of Armenia, the scene of a
devastating earthquake that had killed an estimated 25,000 people.
(AP, 12/10/98)
1988 Dec 11, SES Astra SA, a
subsidiary of SES Global, launched a communications satellite, made
by GE Astrospace. Sky Television, later BSkyB (1990), became its 1st
customer when it bought 4 transponders in 1989.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra)
1988 Dec 11, Sixty-two people
were killed when tons of illegal fireworks exploded in a Mexico City
marketplace.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1988 Dec 11, A Soviet military
transport plane crashed, killing nearly 80 people involved in
Armenian earthquake relief efforts.
(AP, 12/11/98)
1988 Dec 12, In the Clapham
rail disaster 35 people were killed in a triple train collision
during morning rush-hour in south London.
(AP, 12/12/98)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.51)
1988 Dec 13, PLO chairman
Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where
it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a
visa to visit New York. Arafat accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338,
which recognized Israel's right to exist.
(AP, 12/13/98)(SSFC, 6/3/07,
p.E6)(www.mideastweb.org/arafat1988.htm)
1988 Dec 14, In a dramatic
policy shift, President Reagan authorized the United States to enter
into a "substantive dialogue" with the Palestine Liberation
Organization, after chairman Yasser Arafat said he was renouncing
"all forms of terrorism."
(AP, 12/14/98)
1988 Dec 14, Sixty more
survivors were pulled from rubble of earthquake that rocked Armenia.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1988 Dec 15, Yasser Arafat in
exile declared Palestinian independence. It was considered a
symbolic act and no state boundaries were delineated.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 11/15/00, p.A1)
1988 Dec 15, U.S. Ambassador
Robert H. Pelletreau Jr. telephoned the PLO's headquarters in
Tunisia, one day after President Reagan authorized direct talks.
(AP, 12/15/98)
1988 Dec 16, President-elect
Bush chose former Texas Sen. John Tower to be his secretary of
defense, a nomination that went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate.
(AP, 12/16/98)
1988 Dec 16, Political cult
leader Lyndon LaRouche was convicted of tax and mail fraud.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaRouche)
1988 Dec 16, Sylvester James
(b.1947), disco superstar, died in San Francisco of AIDS-related
causes.
(SFC, 10/10/98,
p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_%28singer%29)
1988 Dec 17, In his first
public statement since the US decided to open direct talks with the
PLO, Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir expressed shock, calling the US
decision a "painful" blow.
(AP, 12/17/98)
1988 Dec 18, PLO chairman
Yasser Arafat met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to
discuss how to continue the momentum gained by the first U.S.- PLO
dialogue.
(AP, 12/18/98)
1988 Dec 19, President-elect
Bush nominated New York Congressman Jack Kemp to be his secretary of
Housing and Urban Development.
(AP, 12/19/98)
1988 Dec 19, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to a Likud-Labor coalition to govern
the Jewish state.
(AP, 12/19/98)
1988 Dec 20, The International
Committee of the Red Cross suspended its operations in Lebanon after
receiving death threats.
(AP, 12/20/98)
1988 Dec 21, Drexel Burnham
Lambert Inc. pleaded guilty to SEC charges of security felonies and
paid a $650 million fine.
(www.kipnotes.com/Scandal.htm)
1988 Dec 21, Bob Steele (60),
[Robert Bradbury], died after short illness.
(http://www.b-westerns.com/steele0.htm)
1988 Dec 21, Pan Am Flight 103
was downed over Lockerbie, Scotland by a terrorist bomb. 270 people
were killed aboard the Boeing 747. Libya was accused of
responsibility for the bombing, which killed 259 people onboard and
11 on the ground. Two Libyan operatives, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and
A-Amin Khalifa Fahimah, were indicted in 1991 and thought to be in
hiding in Libya. They were sent to the Netherlands for trial in 1999
and implicated Mohammed Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist jailed in
Sweden. In 2000 Ahmad Behbahani (32) told a 60 Minutes journalist
from a refugee camp in Turkey that he proposed the Pan Am operation
and coordinated the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi
Arabia. He also claimed that Iran was behind the 1994 bombing in
Argentina that killed 86 people. Behbahani was later called a fraud
by the CIA and FBI. In 2001 a Scottish court convicted Abdel Basset
Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, of murder in the 1998
bombing of Pan am Flight 103. A 2nd Libyan, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah,
was acquitted. The conviction was upheld in 2002. In 2003 Libya set
up a $2.7 billion fund for families of 270 people killed.
(WSJ, 12/18/95, p.A-9)(SFC, 5/11/96, p.A-8)(SFC,
6/7/97, p.A4)(AP, 12/21/97)(WSJ, 4/6/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/25/99,
p.A14)(SFC, 6/5/00, p.A9)(SFC, 6/6/00, p.A10)(SFEC, 6/11/00,
p.A20)(SFC, 1/31/01, p.A11)(SFC, 3/15/02, p.A9)(AP, 8/15/03)
1988 Dec 22, President-elect
Bush appointed Dr. Louis W. Sullivan secretary of health and human
services, Samuel K. Skinner transportation secretary and Manuel
Lujan Jr. interior secretary.
(AP, 12/22/98)
1988 Dec 22, Chico Mendes, a
rubber tapper and political and environmental activist, was murdered
in Acre state by a death squad allegedly directed by Hildebrando
Pascoal.
(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/22/08, p.A17)
1988 Dec 23, Pope John Paul II
met with Yasser Arafat at the Vatican. The pontiff told the PLO
leader he believed Palestinians and Jews had "an identical
fundamental right" to their own countries.
(AP, 12/23/98)
1988 Dec 24, President-elect
Bush nominated Elizabeth H. Dole, onetime transportation secretary,
to be his secretary of labor.
(AP, 12/24/98)
1988 Dec 25, Christmas services
were held in Lockerbie, Scotland, where residents mourned the loss
of 270 lives in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 with relatives of
the victims.
(AP, 12/25/98)
1988 Dec 26, Another body from
the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was found, bringing the confirmed
death toll to 240.
(AP, 12/26/98)
1988 Dec 26, An anti African
student rebellion took place in China.
(http://tinyurl.com/z2b7t)
1988 Dec 27, Bulgaria stopped
jamming Radio Free Europe after more than 3 decades.
(http://tinyurl.com/jh6vq)
1988 Dec 27, Hundreds of
residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, paid silent tribute to five of the
Americans killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, as coffins
containing victims' remains began the journey home.
(AP, 12/27/98)
1988 Dec 28, British
authorities investigating the explosion that destroyed Pan Am Flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, concluded that a bomb caused the blast
aboard the jumbo jet.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1988 Dec 29, The Federal
Aviation Administration, responding to the bombing of Pan Am Flight
103, announced tightened security measures for U.S. air carriers at
103 airports in the Middle East and Western Europe.
(AP, 12/29/98)
1988 Dec 30, President Reagan
and President-elect Bush were subpoenaed to testify as defense
witnesses in the pending Iran-Contra trial of Oliver North. The
subpoenas were subsequently quashed.
(AP, 12/30/98)
1988 Dec 30, Isamu Noguchi
(b.1904), Japanese-American sculptor, died. Noguchi designed sets
for choreographer Martha Graham for 40 years. In 1997 Hiro Narita
made a film of the artist for PBS: "Isamu Noguchi: Stones and
Paper."
(WSJ, 1/4/05,
p.D8)(www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2004/sr04_030.htm)
1988 Dec 31, President Reagan
and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev exchanged New Year's messages
in which both leaders expressed optimism about future superpower
relations.
(AP, 12/31/98)
1988 Dec, Thieves stole three
paintings by van Gogh, with an estimated value of $72 million to $90
million, from the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in a remote section of the
Netherlands. Police later recover all three paintings.
(AP, 2/11/08)
1988 Dec, Tahir Mirza Hussain
(18), a British Pakistani visiting relatives near Chakwal, Pakistan,
was physically and sexually assaulted by a taxi driver with a gun. A
struggle followed during which the gun went off and driver Jamshad
Khan was fatally injured. Hussein reported the incident to police
and was arrested. In 1989 he was sentenced to death. In May, 1996, a
high court acquitted him of all charges, but an Islamic court
charged him with armed robbery and in August, 1998, he was again
sentenced to death.
(SSFC, 5/21/06, p.A16)
1988 Artist Brett-Livingstone
Strong began his work called "The Presidential Monument." Sculpting
and transport cost him $650,000. He sold rights to the work to
American Spirit Corp. which was backed by Michael Jackson. Jackson
found temporary storage at the headquarters of the narcotics squad
in Washington. American Spirit ran out of cash and put the monument
up for auction where Howard Tullman purchased it in 1993 for
$135,000. Tullman was still looking for a place to put it and then
sell replicas to the public.
(WSJ, 6/20/96, p.1,20)
1988 Robert Rauschenberg
created his collage work "Port of Entry." It was acquired by the SF
MOMA in 1999.
(SFC, 5/8/99, p.E1)
1988 Katie McCamant and husband
Chuck Durrett published “Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to
Housing Ourselves.”
(SFCM, 5/18/08, p.4)
1988 Alger Hiss, former US
State Dept. official, authored "Recollections of a Life."
(SFC, 5/9/00, p.A25)
1988 David Henry Hwang wrote
his play "M. Butterfly." He won a Tony Award for best new play.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, DB p.44)
1988 Craig Lucas wrote his play
"Prelude To a Kiss."
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.37)
1988 The David Mamet play
"Speed-the-Plow" opened on Broadway.
(SFC,11/19/97, p.E5)
1988 McGeorge Bundy
(1919-1996), security advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson, wrote "Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the
First 50 Years."
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.A22)
1988 Martin Daly and Margot
Wilson wrote their book "Homicide," an evolutionary view of
homicidal human behavior.
(NH, 11/96, p.13)
1988 Martin B. Duberman wrote a
biography of Paul Robeson.
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1988 "A Brief History of Time"
by physicist Stephen Hawking was published. Hawking was later quoted
on an imaginary direction of time perpendicular to the axis of real
time.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, Par p.16)
1988 Dilip Hiro authored
"Islamic Fundamentalism."
(FT, 12/14/02, p.V)
1988 Alan Hollinghurst authored
his 1st novel, “The Swimming Pool Library.” Edmund White later
described it as the best book about gay life yet written by an
English author.
(Econ, 4/17/04, p.82)
1988 Yuji Ichioka (d.2002 at
66), San Francisco born historian, authored "Issei," a study of 1st
generation Japanese-Americans.
(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A30)
1988 "Moonwalk" by Michael
Jackson was published.
(SFC, 8/28/96, E10)
1988 Paul Kennedy authored his
best seller "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," in which he
argued that a nation’s clout ultimately rests on its economic base.
(WSJ, 3/29/01, p.A12)
1988 "Dr. Zhivago" by Boris
Pasternak was first published in the Soviet Union.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B3)
1988 "Life Beyond
Liebfraumilch" by Stuart Pigott was published.
(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A1)
1988 Robert H. Super
(1915-1996), Prof. of English at U of Mich., published "The
Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope." Prof. Super
also wrote a biography of the English poet Walter Savage Landor and
edited the 11-volume complete prose works of Matthew Arnold.
(LSA, fall/96, p.37)
1988 Mo Udall, Arizona state
representative, authored "Too Funny to be President."
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.A5)
1988 The Council on Economic
Priorities founded by Tepper Marlin began publishing its "Shopping
for a Better World." The book proposed that consumers have the power
to change companies by the simple expedient of refusing to buy.
(Hem., Nov. '95, p.25)
1988 The book "Fumbling the
Future" was published. It detailed the failure of Xerox Corp. to
take commercial advantage of the inventions coming out of its
Research Center in Palo Alto.
(Hem., Nov. '95, p.39)
1988 "Images of the Ice Age" by
Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut was published.
(NH, 7/96, p.73)
1988 Sarah Holmes Boutelle
(d.1999 at 90) published her biography "Julia Morgan, Architect."
The book won a California Book Award Silver medal the
following year.
(SFC, 5/29/99, p.A23)
1988 Connie Bruck authored “The
Predator’s Ball,” an account of how Drexel Burnham Lambert came to
the pinnacle of Wall Street power in a few short years.
(WSJ, 1/20/07, p.P10)
1988 Freeman Dyson, physicist,
wrote "Infinite in All Directions." His message was the "unbounded
prodigality of life and the consequent unboundedness of human
destiny."
(Wired, 2/98, p.132)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1988 Robert Fulghum authored
“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
(SSFC, 8/26/07, p.H1)
1988 Gerald Grant authored "The
World We Created at Hamilton High."
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A22)
1988 "Caribou" by wildlife
biologist Michio Hoshino was published.
(NH, 7/96, p.4)
1988 Emily Hahn (1905-1997)
wrote: "Eve and the Apes," and "Look Who’s Talking," where she
examined communications among beasts and between beasts and humans.
(SFC, 2/19/96, p.A20)
1988 F.A. Hayek, economist,
wrote his final book "The Fatal Conceit."
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A18)
1988 Ian Hamilton wrote "J.D.
Salinger: A Writing Life." Salinger sued Hamilton for using portions
of unpublished correspondence.
(SFC,11/21/97, p.A2)
1988 Donald A. Norman published
"The Design of Everyday Things," an assault on the design of
everyday objects.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.12)
1988 Joseph D. Pistone wrote of
his 6 undercover years with the mob in "Donnie Brasco: My Undercover
Life in the Mafia." It was made into a film in 1997.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, DB p.48)
1988 Dirk Vellenga wrote "Elvis
and the Colonel" that described the marketing of Elvis Presley by
Colonel Tom Parker.
(SFC,1/22/97, p.E2)
1988 Michael Blake wrote his
novel "Dances With Wolves." He sold the film rights to Kevin Kostner
for $25,000.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, Par, p.30)
1988 Peter Carey wrote "Oscar
and Lucinda" and won the Booker Prize.
(SFEC,12/21/97, DB p.51)
1988 Jane Hamilton wrote her
novel "The Book of Ruth."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.61)
1988 Albert A. Hutler (d.1998
at 89) authored "Agony of Survival," a recounting of his efforts to
aid concentration camp survivors in 1945, when he served as chief of
the Displaced Persons Section of the US 7th Army Military
Government.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1988 Doris Lessing authored her
novel "The Fifth Child." It was about a monster child to the age of
15. A sequel followed in 2000.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, BR p.3)
1988 David Macaulay published
"The Way Things Work." In 1999 it was turned into a 3D version.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.E1)
1988 Gerald J. Whitrow (d.2000
at 87), mathematician and philosopher, published "Time in History."
(SFC, 6/27/00, p.A23)
1988 James Michener wrote his
novel "Journey."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1988 Shirley Temple Black wrote
her best-selling autobiography "Child Star."
(SFC, 1/26/06, p.E3)
1988 The dance show "Tango x 2"
was created by Milena Plebs and Miguel Angel Zotto.
(WSJ, 11/13/96, p.A20)
1988 The PBS special "The Power
of Myth" with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell was shown.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.A17)
1988 The TV series "In the Heat
of the Night" started and ran to 1994.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.D2)
1988 The TV show St. Elsewhere
ended 6 seasons on NBC with a final May show titled: "The Last One."
(SFEC, 4/19/98, DB p.38)
1988 Mark-Anthony Turnage
composed his opera "Greek," a violent, vulgar, jazz-heavy, skinhead
version of "Oedipus Rex.’
(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.A24)
1988 The work "Crest of a
Knave" by Jethro Tull won the Grammy best hard rock/metal
performance category.
(SFEC, 2/21/99, DB p.38)
1988 M.C. Hammer (aka Stanley
Kirk Burrell) released his first "rap music" album, "Feel My Power"
on Bustin’ Records.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, DB p.34)
1988 "Touch Me I’m Sick" by
Mudhoney was released and is considered to be the first grunge
record.
(SFC, 7/30/97, p.E6)
1988 Bill Graham produced a
worldwide tour on behalf of Amnesty Int’l. featuring Bruce
Springsteen, Sting and Peter Gabriel. They toured Costa Rica, India
and Zimbabwe.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)
1988 Suzanne Vega came to fame
with her anti-child abuse anthem "Luka."
(SFEC, 4/25/99, BR p.4)
1988 The Museum of American
Finance was founded in NYC and housed on Broadway. On Jan 11, 2008,
it opened in new quarters at 48 Wall Street, the former headquarters
of the Bank of New York.
(Econ, 1/19/08, p.93)(www.financialhistory.org/)
1988 In Oklahoma City the
Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory, designed by I.M. Pei, was
built. The 224-foot long steel and acrylic cylinder stood 7-stories.
(SFCM, 3/20/05, p.30)
1988 The Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. was completed. It received its 1st
shipment of nuclear waste in 1999.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A3)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A2)
1988 Junipero Serra
(1713-1784), Spanish Roman Catholic missionary to the Indians in
California and Mexico, was beatified.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.A18)
1988 Winona LaDuke founded the
nonprofit White Earth Land Recovery Project to reacquire reservation
land for the White Earth band of Ojibwa Indians.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.A3)
1988 Al Aho, Peter Weinberger,
and Brian Kernighan designed a new programming language named AWK,
and wrote : The AWK Programming Language.
(I&I, Penzias, p.132)
1988 Purdue Univ. began hosting
the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Reuben Lucius "Rube"
Goldberg (b.1883), cartoonist, was known for drawing vastly
complicated machines that performed simple tasks.
(WUD, 1994, p.607)(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.A28)
1988 The Sonoma Creek Winery
was founded near Sonoma, California.
(SFC, 4/9/96, z1 p.7)
1988 The first gathering of
Airstream enthusiasts was held in Huntsville, Ala., and attracted
2,741 trailers. The Airstream was born when Wally Byam
(d.1962) riveted shiny aluminum to a steel frame on wheels in
the 1930s.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A12)
1988 Leaders in Pine County
Nevada in an effort to bolster the local economy established an
anything-goes car race event. Drivers could compete in 13 different
speed classes from 95 mph to unlimited.
(WSJ, 5/30/96, p.A1)
1988 The Detroit Pistons
basketball team opened their new Palace of Auburn Hills with 180
luxury suites.
(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.B1)
1988 The Kentucky Derby was won
by Winning Colors ridden by Gary Stevens.
(WSJ, 5/5/97, p.A16)
1988 The Pulitzer Prize for
drama went to Alfred Uhry for the play "Driving Miss Daisy."
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.54)
1988 Neil Sheehan won a
Pulitzer prize for "A Bright Shining Lie," about the war in Vietnam.
In 1997 it was made into an HBO movie.
(SFC,12/22/97, p.E4)
1988 Chicago Tribune reporter
Ann Marie Lipinski won a Pulitzer Prize for a 10-month investigative
series on corruption in the Chicago City Council.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.8)
1988 The Nobel Peace Prize was
awarded to the UN Peacekeeping Operations.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)
1988 Gertrude B. Elion
(1918-1999), American biochemist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
(AP,
10/5/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_B._Elion)
1988 A Bush ad campaign accused
Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis as being soft on crime and
featured Willie Horton, a black man convicted of murder.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A1)
1988 In the US televangelist
Pat Robertson failed in his campaign for president.
(SFC, 6/16/96, BR p.6)
1988 Lamar Alexander became the
president of the Univ. of Tennessee and reacquired his stake in
Blackberry Farm Inn and transferred it to his wife.
(WSJ, 2/15/96, p.A-14)
1988 The US Congress passed the
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A10)
1988 The US government filed
suit to impose federal supervision of the Teamsters Union after the
death of its general president, Jackie Presser, on grounds of
alleged Mafia control.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.6)
1988 A US Civil Liberties Act
was passed.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.C4)
1988 The US Supreme Court in
the Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier case allowed principals to censor
high-school newspapers.
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A22)
1988 The US government Family
Support Act strengthened job training requirements and allowed
states to experiment with work-for-welfare rules.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, zone 1 p.5)
1988 The US Trademark Law
Revision Act was passed. As of Nov, 1989, entities would be allowed
to apply for a trademark based on their intent to use it within 36
months.
(Wired, 6/97, p.94)
1988 The US Congress granted
the WW II merchant mariners veteran status.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A13)
1988 In southern California
Hedayat Esclaminia, a government official under the Shah of Iran,
was abducted, by his son Reza (26), a member of the "Billionaire
Boys Club." Hedayat suffocated and died in a steamer trunk. Reza was
convicted and sentenced to life. In 1998 his conviction was
overturned based on unfair evidence and a new trial was scheduled.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A14)
1988 Voters in California
passed Proposition 99 which levied a tax on cigarettes to in part
fund education and research programs.
(SFEM, 7/14/96, p.32)
1988 The Chinese Hoy Sun
Cemetery was established in Colma, Ca.
(www.colmahistory.org/History.htm)
1988 Voters in California
approved the construction of the 1,400 acre Los Vaqueros dam in
Contra Costa County. The dam was scheduled to be completed in 1997
and filled with 100,000 acre feet of water by 1998.
(SFC, 9/3/96, p.A11)
1988 In San Francisco a 7-bed
hospice care program began at Laguna Honda. In 1990 it expanded to
15 beds and added an AIDS ward.
(SFC, 8/26/08, p.B5)
1988 In San Francisco Chu Fung
opened the Candlestick RV Park.
(SSFC, 1/3/10, p.C3)
1988 In California the Navarro
River Redwoods State Park was purchased by the Save the Redwoods
League, setting aside 12 miles of parklands along the Navarro River.
(www.savetheredwoods.org/league/pdf/90th_timeline.pdf)
1988 Gregory Thomas Frazier,
author and professor, founded Audiovision, a SF Bay Area company
that specialized in description services for TV, film and live
theater for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired.
(SFC, 7/16/96, p.A14)
1988 Lotfi Mansouri became the
general director of the San Francisco Opera. He succeeded Terence A.
McEwen.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, DB p.47)(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A11)
1988 Anita Monga began
programming the films for San Francisco’s Castro Theater, owned by
Blumenfeld Enterprises.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, p.A8)
1988 In San Francisco the open
air Stonestown Shopping Center was enclosed.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.C1)
1988 The square-rigged
Balclutha was moved to San Francisco’s Hyde Street Pier.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.D3)
1988 In San Francisco Terry
Brisbane took over the Cornerstone Independent, a nondenominational
church on Valencia St. Albert Brisbane had bought the building in
1963.
(SSFC, 4/15/01, p.A8)
1988 In San Francisco The USF
Center for the Pacific Rim was founded.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, BR p.5)
1988 The San Francisco Shopping
Center at 865 Market St. opened.
(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.21)
1988 In San Francisco a law was
passed to allow artists to live in old industrial buildings.
(SFC, 3/30/98, p.A1)
1988 In San Francisco 78% of
the voters approved a ballot measure for a new library.
(SFC, 4/14/96, EM, p.22)
1988 San Francisco Mayor Art
Agnos appointed Frank Quinn (1923-1996) to the Fire Commission.
Quinn pushed for integration and new equipment. Quinn was also the
first president of the SF Human Rights Commission. Quinn also wrote
a book about Indian culture: "Indians of California, Past and
Present."
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A24)
1988 The San Francisco
Redevelopment Agency gave the SF Museum of Modern Art land for a new
home on Third Street.
(SFC, 10/21/04, p.A15)
1988 San Francisco raised cable
car prices to $2.00.
(SFC, 3/2/05, p.B7)
1988 San Francisco accepted an
offer by Gannett Outdoor Advertising for 1,000 free bus shelters
with 15 years of maintenance in exchange for the right to place
advertising on the sides. Lewis Lillian (1935-2007), political
figure and advertising executive, played a key roll in the deal.
(SSFC, 12/16/07, p.C7)
1988 Connie "Chip" Armstrong
Jr., former firefighter, acquired Hamilton Taft & Co., a SF
payroll tax firm, after he discovered that company officials had
diverted payroll tax money to themselves. He filed suit, acquired
the company and proceeded to embezzle $85 million. The company went
bankrupt in 1991 and he was convicted in 1997.
(SFC, 2/27/97, p.A16)
1988 In San Francisco Chronicle
Publ. Purchased Motor Books and later renamed it MBI.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A8)
1988 In San Francisco the
Academy of Art College was rejected in its bid for accreditation by
the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), due to the
lack of full-time, permanent faculty.
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.B2)
1988 Robert Corrigan, former
chancellor of the Univ. of Massachusetts, became the 12th president
at SF State Univ.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, Z1 p.4)
c1988 In Chicago Norma
Alcantana and Frank Dueno originated a scheme for smuggling in deaf
Mexicans to sell trinkets on the streets and later to have traded
trinket vendors to a New York operation led by Renato
Paoletti-Lemus.
(SFC, 7/30/97, p.A4)
1988 Cesar Chavez, founder of
the United Farmworkers Union, fasted for 36 days to protest the use
of pesticides on crops picked by farmworkers.
(SFC, 4/15/98, p.A16)
1988 In Alaska the White Pass
& Yukon railroad opened for tourists visiting the state from
cruise ships and the new road to Skagway.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1988 Cliff Stoll, physicist and
astronomer, detected a German spy ring roaming through the files of
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and other US defense-related
organizations. In 1995 he wrote "Silicon Snake Oil."
(SFC, 7/7/96, DB p.31)
1988 James Calvin Tillman (26)
was arrested in Connecticut for alleged abduction and rape. He was
convicted in 1989 and sentenced to 45 years in prison. In 2006 he
was released from prison after tests showed that forensic evidence
from the crime scene did not match his DNA.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198487,00.html)
1988 In Hawaii the 54,000 acre
Molokai Ranch on Molokai was bought by Brierly Investments, a New
Zealand-based, multibillion-dollar company.
(SFEC, 8/10/97, p.T7)
1988 Baldwin Piano & Organ
Co. acquired the Wurlitzer Co.
(WSJ, 6/29/99, p.A1)
1988 Basin Electric Power
Cooperative of Bismarck, ND, paid the US government $85 million for
the Dakota Gasification Co. of Beulah, which had begun as a $1.5
billion public-private venture under the Carter administration to
reduce US dependence on Middle East oil.
(SFC, 10/15/03, p.A4)
1988 Frederic W. Cook, head of
his executive compensation consulting firm, came up with a new type
of stock option, the reload, that put him and his firm on the map.
Reloads were awards that were automatically replaced each time they
were exercised.
(http://donmihaihai.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/agency-problem-at-its-darkest/)
1988 AT&T laid a telephone
cable laid under the Atlantic Ocean that permitted 37,800
simultaneous phone calls, doubling the number of phone calls that
could be made at one time.
(HNQ, 3/5/99)
1988 European Airbus jets were
sold to Canada. In 1996 there were allegations of kickbacks in the
deal and in 1996 Swiss Bank records were sought in a corruption
probe. Prime Minister Mulroney filed suit in 1996 for being named in
the scandal.
(WSJ, 6/20/96, p.A14)
1988 Privately held Amstar
Corp. [Domino sugar] sold its sugar business to Tate & Lyle PLC,
and became a holding company for Milwaukee Electric Tool.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1988 Herman Cain led an
executive team buyout for Godfather’s Pizza from Pillsbury for $50
million.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, Par p.5)
1988 McDonald’s introduced the
"McChicken."
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1988 Senior management with GE
Capital led a $3.8 billion leveraged buyout of Montgomery Ward from
Mobil Corp.
(SFC, 12/29/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/29/00, p.A3)
1988 America’s Mellon
Bank spun off its bad energy and property loans into Grant Street
National Bank, financed with junk bonds and private equity. This
established a precedent for what later became known as the good
bank/bad bank.
(Econ, 1/24/09, p.82)
1988 Rupert Murdoch bought TV
Guide, the flagship of a magazine group valued at $3 billion.
(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W10)
1988 National Distillers and
Chemical Corp. sold its liquor business to American Brands and
changed its name to Quantum Chemical Corp.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1988 Microsoft revenues rose to
$590 million with 2,793 employees.
(Wired, 12/98, p.197)
1988 Nintendo of Japan launched
its Nintendo Power magazine aimed at boys 8-15 years old. It claims
a subscription based circulation of 1 million.
(Hem, 4/96, p.30)
1988 The J. Peterman Co. was
founded after John Peterman bought a duster raincoat in Jackson
Hole, Wyo. His 13th store opened in SF in 1998 and the operation
went bust in 1999 with $40 million in debt and was sold to the Paul
Harris Co. for $10 mil.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.B1)
1988 RJR Nabisco was bought by
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts for $24.5 billion.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.B1)
1988 George Soros, billionaire
financier, traded shares of French bank Societe Generale prior to a
takeover. A court in 2002 alleged insider knowledge and fined him
$2.2 million. Soros had declined to participate in takeover deal but
bought shares that gained him $2.28 million.
(SFC, 12/21/02, p.B1)
1988 Toyota began to build cars
in the US in Kentucky.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1988 TRW developed the first
original-equipment keyless remote entry system.
(F, 10/7/96, p.72)
1988 Volkswagen ceased US
production.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1988 Wal-Mart opened its 1st
supercenter in Washington, Mo.
(SFC, 8/4/05, p.C1)
1988 Wells Fargo acquired
Barclays Bank of California.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)
1988 Natalie Spingarn (d.2000
at 78) authored her "Cancer Survivor’s Bill of Rights" for the 75th
anniversary of the American Cancer Society.
(SFC, 6/24/00, p.A23)
1988 The US Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) named ”chronic fatigue syndrome” (CFS), to describe
ongoing symptoms of overwhelming fatigue.
(SFCM, 6/5/05, p.6)
1988 Dean Kamen, inventor,
bought North Dumpling Island, 3 acres off the Connecticut coast. His
inventions included the 1st portable insulin pump.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.B3)(http://tinyurl.com/2pntdd)
1988 Michael Free of PATH, a
nonprofit creator of medical technologies for developing countries,
created a new syringe and needle that became disabled after a single
injection. The autodestruct syringe was licensed exclusively to
Becton Dickinson, which agreed to supply UNICEF and health
ministries of developing nations and to pay a $50,000 patent
maintenance fee.
(SFC, 10/28/98, p.A1)
1988 Dr. Eliane Gluckman became
the first person to perform a cord blood transplant for a case of
Franconi’s anemia.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A7)
1988 Vancomycin-resistant
enterococcus (VRE) was first detected in Europe. The vancomycin
antibiotic was developed in 1958.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.C1,4)
1988 Albert Fert of France and
Peter Grunberg of Germany independently discovered the phenomenon of
giant magnetoresistance. It was later adopted for use in computer
hard-drives. In 2007 they won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their
discovery.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.94)
1988 On the 30th anniversary of
the IGY, it was measured that the amount of carbon dioxide gas in
the atmosphere had climbed to 350 ppm. The amplitude of the annual
breaths increased by almost 20% from 1958-1982.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.36,
249)(www.nas.edu/history/igy/)
1988 Kevin E. Trenberth
pre-published a paper titled: "Origins of the 1988 North American
Drought," wherein in attributed the draught to conditions of the
atmosphere and hydrosphere, i.e. El Nino. The summer of ‘88 was a
record for hurricanes.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.99,107)
1988 Beal Mountain mine opened
near Butte, Mont. Its owner promoted open-pit cyanide leaching for
extracting gold from ore as modern and environmentally friendly.
Pegasus Gold Corp., a Canadian company, extracted nearly 460,000
ounces of gold over a decade before closing the mine and declaring
bankruptcy in 1998. It left behind a 70-acre, cyanide-contaminated
leach pond with a leaky liner and tons of rubble that sends
selenium-laced runoff into streams, threatening cutthroat trout and
other fish. The 2009 economic stimulus included some funds for
cleaning up this and other similar sites.
(AP, 2/15/09)
1988 An undersea glow along
edges of new born crust was first detected by researchers Cindy Lee
Van Dover and John Delaney that remained inexplicable. They recorded
the dim glow from the research submarine Alvin. Theories to explain
the glow were attributed to: Triboluminescence,
Crystalloluminescence or Sonoluminescence.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, A2)
1988 A memo from a Camp
Lejeune, NC, lawyer, Staff Judge Advocate A.P. Tokarz, to the base's
assistant facilities manager said the Marine Corps had known for
years that a fuel farm, built in 1941, was leaking 1,500 gallons a
month and had done nothing to stop it. "It's an indefensible waste
of money and a continuing potential threat to human health and the
environment.”
(AP, 2/18/10)
1988 The zebra mussel first
appeared in the US. It is capable of laying up to 5 million eggs per
year.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A3)
1988 13 western states of the
US were subject to bubonic plague due to flea infected
rodents.
(NG, 5/88, p.686)
1988 The world’s seafood supply
peaked at 34 pounds a person per year. In 2001 the supply fell to 25
pounds per person per year.
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.E1)
1988 Ralph Rotty, compiler of
the world’s annual industrial statistics, died. He translated the
statistics into tonnage of carbon dioxide at the Institute for
Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. His assistant Gregg Marland
took over.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.249)
1988 Staff members of
Afghanistan’s National Museum moved most of its artifacts into
storage as the Soviet occupation ended. An inventory in 2004 showed
that most of the stored items survived the civil war and the Taliban
years.
(SFC, 11/18/04, p.A16)
1988 In the Arctic original
navigational records were uncovered from Admiral Peary’s 1909
dog-sled voyage indicating that he probably never got closer than
121 miles from the North Pole.
(SFC, 9/11/08, p.B4)
1988 Adventure Network Int’l.
began flying tourists to Antarctica.
(SFC,12/897, p.A18)
1988 A national awakening
occurred in Azerbaijan when conflict erupted over the Armenian
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, included by the Soviets in the Republic
of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh began
fighting for independence.
(CO, Grolier’s Amer. Acad. Enc./ Azerbaijan)(SFC,
11/27/96, p.A13)(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.A22)
1988 The Armenian population in
Nagorno-Karabakh began fighting for independence. Armenia’s conflict
with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region erupted.
(SFC, 11/27/96, p.A13)(WSJ, 5/14/97, p.A22)
1988 The Australian Capital
Territory (ACT), a region comprising Canberra, gained
self-government.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.50)
1988 Australia pioneered the
use of plastic money.
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.71)
1988 In Australia the
Murray-Darling Basin Commission was established to regulate water
use in the river system. In 2003 the mouth at Adelaide dried up for
a 2nd time since European settlement. 4 states shared the
Murray-Darling river system, which fed two-thirds of the country’s
irrigated farmland.
(Econ, 7/12/03, p.38)(Econ, 4/24/10, p.41)
1988 Bangladesh’s military
ruler declared Islam the state religion by amending the charter, but
it barely affected the secular legal system mainly based on British
common law. In 1996 the Supreme Court ruled the provision in the
constitution is undemocratic. In 2011 the Cabinet decided to keep
the provision of state religion considering the national reality.
(AP, 6/21/11)
1988 In Bangladesh
monsoon floods left over 3,000 dead this year.
(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A15)
1988 Belgium passed a law that
forbade the ritual execution of animals at home.
(WSJ, 1/4/07, p.A1)
1988 In Belarus mass graves
were discovered in the Kurapaty region outside of Minsk. Initial
reports said the bodies belonged to people killed in Stalin purges.
Pres. Lukashenko later said the bodies belonged to Belarusian Jews
killed by Nazis.
(SSFC, 9/2/01, p.A14)
1988 A census found that
southern Bhutan had a lot of illegal Nepalese settlers. Protestors
of the census were jailed, some expulsion orders were issued and
others were harassed out.
(WSJ, 3/6/97, p.A1)(Econ, 10/25/03, p.39)
1988 Brazil granted Indians
some territory and pledged to demarcate the land within five years.
Hitherto Indians were considered wards of the state and denied full
rights for centuries.
(AP, 2/8/06)
1988 The Chin army began
fighting a low-level rebellion for more autonomy for the mainly
Christian Chin in Burma's northwest, where government troops have
been trying to force them to convert to Buddhism.
(AP, 6/25/05)
1988 Britain set its top income
tax rate at 40%.
(Econ, 11/29/08, p.13)
1988 In Canada Claude Comair, a
Lebanese-born, computer animation specialist, founded the DigiPen
Institute of Technology in Vancouver. It taught students
fundamentals of video game development and in 1996 moved to Seattle.
(WSJ, 10/13/98, p.A1)
1988 Former Central African
Republic ruler Jean-Bedel Bokassa was sentenced to death for murder
and embezzlement. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
(AFP, 12/1/10)
1988 Chile was kicked out of
America’s system of preferences and cut its average tariffs from 20%
to 15% in a bid to lower the cost of imports.
(Econ, 5/28/05, p.78)
1988 Ricardo Claro (1934-2008),
Chilean industrialist, became head of Compania SudAmericana de
Vapores (CSAV), a shipping company. He expanded the company 10-fold
by 2007 raising its revenues to $4.15 billion.
(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.A6)
1988 In China the Zhong Gong
meditation-exercise sect was founded. By 2000 it had attracted some
20 million followers and was ordered suppressed by the government as
an "evil cult."
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.A10)
1988 China began hosting its
Peasant Olympics in the city of Quanzhou. The event continued every
4 years.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.54)
1988 China amended its
Constitution.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.A22)
1988 Hainan, a resource-rich
tropical island about the size of Sri Lanka, became a separate
province. The capital is Haikou. Hainan, the home to a new strategic
naval harbor, also developed a beach resort at Sanya.
(Econ, 12/13/08,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan)
1988 Chinese troops killed 70
Vietnamese sailors in a clash over the Spratly Islands.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.40)
1988 China abolished its silk
monopoly.
(WSJ, 7/9/96, p.A13)
1988 Huawei, a Chinese maker of
telecom equipment, was founded. By 2008 it was ranked a the world’s
4th largest maker of network equipment.
(Econ, 9/26/09, SR p.13)
1988 US intelligence detected a
Chinese test of a neutron bomb. The 1999 Cox report held that the
technology was believed to have been stolen from the US. In July,
1999, China announced that it had developed the design technology to
make neutron bombs in 1988 and could make miniaturized nuclear
weapons.
(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A3)(SFC, 7/15/99, p.A9)(WSJ,
7/16/99, p.A1)
1988 In China Cardinal Ignatius
Kug was released following 32 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/29/99, p.A16)
1988 China Merchants convinced
the government to allow it back into the insurance business. It was
permitted to establish Ping An Insurance, at first providing
coverage for trucks moving goods from a single part of Shenzhen.
(Econ, 7/23/11, p.69)
1988 The China Agribusiness
Development Trust and Investment Corp. (CADTIC) was set up to
channel domestic and foreign funds into the agricultural sector. By
1997 it was closed with reports of being involved in smuggling, tax
evasion and ruinous real estate speculation.
(SFC,2/17/97, p.B3)
1988 Atlanta-based United
Parcel Service (UPS) first entered the Chinese market in a
partnership with Sinotrans.
(www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2004/11/29/daily33.html)
1988 In Colombia the direct
election of mayors and town councils was begun to give
municipalities control over a substantial amount of federal funds.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A12)
1988 In Czechoslovakia
Jiri Ruml (1925-2004) helped re-launch Lidove Noviny, becoming its
editor-in-chief. The Lidove Noviny daily had been an established
paper until the communists took power in 1948 in then-Czechoslovakia
and banned the anti-communist publication.
(AP, 2/22/04)
1988 Febres Cordero's four-year
presidential term ended, but as the combative leader of the rightist
Social Christians, Ecuador's largest and best organized party, he
continued to dominate Congress and the courts for the next 15 years.
(AP, 10/9/06)
1988 Controls on capital
movement across borders were abandoned by France, Italy and other
member states of the European Community.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-44)
1988 Pernod Ricard SA acquired
the Irish whiskies Jameson, Paddy and Bushmills.
(WSJ, 9/7/05, p.B2)
1988 French Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre was expelled for defying the liberal reforms of the 1962-65
Vatican Council. The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre after he
consecrated four bishops without Rome's consent. The bishops also
were excommunicated.
(AP, 5/5/06)
1988 In France Patrice Vic (31)
jumped out of his 12th story apartment window. His death was later
linked to counseling sessions and charges to the Church of
Scientology.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A10)
1988 In Germany there was an
attempted murder of Hans Titmeyer, later chief of the Bundesbank.
Birgit Hogefeld, RAF member, was later convicted of taking part.
(WSJ, 11/6/96, p.A1)
1988 BMW began selling the
325iX all-wheel-drive sports sedan in the US. It stopped 3 years
later.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1988 In Guatemala Pres. Cerezo
declared another blanket amnesty, approved by congress, that covered
government acts from 1982-1988.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A13)
1988 Some 4,000 tons of toxic
ash from an incinerator in Philadelphia, that wandered the oceans
since 1986, was dumped in Lapierre, Haiti.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.A10)
1988 In India Prannoy Roy set
up New Delhi Television Ltd. (NDTV) in a rented 2-bedroom apartment
and a staff of 8. In 1998 his operation inaugurated a 24-hour news
channel on Rupert Murdoch's Star TV network.
(WSJ, 10/4/99, p.B1)
1988 Saddam Hussein began the
construction of the “Hands of Victory” monument in Baghdad following
the conclusion of war with Iran. In 2007 the government of PM Nouri
al-Maliki ordered the destruction of the monument.
(WSJ, 2/21/07, p.A6)
1988 Iraq re-asserted its claim
to Kuwait.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A9)
1988 The Iraqi assault on
Kurdish villages was part of a campaign known as Anfal. Estimates
held as many as 182,000 Kurds dead or missing.
(SFC, 4/18/03, p.A18)
1988 Iraqi archeologists
unearthed a collection of artifacts from the Assyrian civilization
of 800 BCE that became called the Treasure of Nimrud.
(WSJ, 6/6/03, p.A1)
1988 Israel repealed its
anti-sodomy laws. The laws had not been enforced for 30 years.
(www.tau.ac.il/law/aeyalgross/Danilowitz.htm)
1988 In Japan the Recruit
Scandal exposed leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who
were accused of accepting stock and cash bribes from the Recruit
Co., a personnel recruiting and publishing conglomerate.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1988 In Jordan soon after the
beginning of the "intifada," King Hussein renounced rights to the
West Bank and retained a role as guardian of Jerusalem's holy
places.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1988 Outgoing Pres. Amin
Gemayel appointed Lebanese army commander Gen. Michel Aoun as
interim prime minister.
(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A8)
1988 In Malaysia an amendment
to the constitution denied the regular courts all jurisdiction over
matters dealt with by the Muslim sharia courts.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.42)
1988 In Mexico the government
privatized Masa, Mexicana de Autobuses SA.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1988 In Mexico the Democratic
Revolutionary Party (PRD) was founded.
(WSJ, 12/11/96, p.A18)
1988 Mauritius formed a
National Computer Board to spur technology.
(SFC, 10/28/02, p.E6)
1988 Benazir Bhutto (b.1953)
authored her autobiography. She served 2 terms as prime minister of
Pakistan (1988-1990, 1993-1996). In 2007 she published an
update.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.89)
1988 In Peshawar,
Pakistan, “The Essential Guide for Preparation” by Sayyid Imam
al-Sharif (b.~1950), aka Dr. Fadl, appeared and became one of the
most important texts in training for jihadis. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif,
a co-founder of al-Qaida, was jailed in Yemen in 2001 and
transferred to Egypt in 2004, where he changed his radical position
and published "Document of Right Guidance for Jihad Activity in
Egypt and the World," also transliterated as "Rationalizing Jihad in
Egypt and the World". In it he proclaimed “We are prohibited from
committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyed_Imam_Al-Sharif)
1988 Sir Rabbie Namaliu
(b.1947) began serving as Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea and
continued to 1992.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbie_Namaliu)
1988 In Papua New Guinea
Francis Ona threatened to close down the Panguna open-pit copper
mine on Bougainville. He demanded half the profits for local
landowners, $11.5 billion compensation for environmental damage, and
independence for Bougainville.
(WSJ, 3/18/98, p.A1,14)
1988 In Peru Tupac Amaru
kidnapped industrialist Hector Jeri, a 70-year-old former air force
general. He spent 5 months in a cell until released by a payment of
more than $1 million.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.A10)
1988 In southern Peru Eduardo
and Mirtha Ananos began making a cola drink. By 2003 their Kola Real
was being marketed in Mexico and Ecuador.
(WSJ, 10/27/03, p.A1)(Econ, 10/11/03, p.69)
1988 In northern Peru a tomb
was looted and its contents put on the black market. A golden
head-dress, the image of a sea god, believed to have been taken from
the La Mina archaeological site in the Jequetepeque valley, was
recovered in 2006 by London police from a lawyer’s office.
(AP, 8/17/06)
1988 In the Philippines Ed
Gerlach, American priest, started the Bahay Tuluyan center for
street kids in the Ermita district (a former red-light area) of
Manila.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, p.D1)
1988 In the Philippines Rogelio
Roxas testified that Ferdinand Marcos had used the help of a Nevada
mining engineer to import a smelter to melt down 1,000 tons of gold
bullion and a 3-foot gold statue of Buddha filled with diamonds. The
treasure had been confiscated from all over Asia by the Japanese.
(SFC, 10/12/97, p.A18)
1988 The Philippine Congress,
at the urging of Mrs. Aquino, passed the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP), which limited individual landowners to 7
hectares of farmland, but the legislation was filled with loopholes.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.49)
1988 Saudi-born Osama bin Laden
founded al Qaida (the base), a Sunni fundamentalist operational hub
for terrorist activities. The organization’s intent was to establish
an Islamic caliphate throughout the world.
(SFC, 8/28/98, p.A3)(SSFC, 7/30/06, p.A10)
1988 Hargeysa, the capital of
Somaliland, was shelled for 2 months. Some 2,000 people were later
believed killed and buried in mass graves.
(SFC, 7/11/98, p.A12)
1988 In South Africa Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela assaulted and kidnapped a young activist and was
later convicted on the charges. Lolo Sono beaten and his body was
never found. It was reported that she played a role in as many as a
dozen killings.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A8)
1988 In South Korea the sale of
foreign tobacco was made legal.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.C3)
1988 Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1988 In Russia Mikhail
Khodorkovsky started a bank and began to manage government money.
The bank later rigged the auction that allowed him and associates to
acquire a majority stake in the Yukos oil company.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.25)
1988 Singapore introduced
“Group Representation Constituencies” (GRCs), which merged some
single-member electoral divisions.
(Econ, 5/14/11,
p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituencies_of_Singapore)
1988 In Slovenia journalists of
the weekly magazine Mladina ran news stories about secret arms deals
between Yugoslavia and Ethiopia as well as political corruption.
(SFC, 4/14/97, p.A8)
1988 South Korea saw the
formation of a National Headquarters for Labor Law Reform.
(www.socialistworld.net/publications/southkorea/sk13.html)
1988 In Spain the intelligence
agency, CESID, kidnapped 3 street people to test an experimental
tranquilizer they hoped to use on a fugitive Basque separatist
leader.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A10)
1988 Chandrika Kumaratunga (42)
watched her husband, a film star and rising politician in Sri Lanka,
get killed by a political rival. Her mother and father had both
served as prime ministers.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A12)
1988 At Davos, Switzerland,
during the World Economic Forum, Prime Ministers Papandreou of
Greece and Ozal of Turkey embarked on a peace initiative, setting up
a hot-line and vowing to avoid war.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)
1988 Hon Hai, a small Taiwanese
plastics manufacturer, opened a factory in Shenzhen, China. By 2009
it had grown to the size of a city with over a quarter of a million
employees.
(Econ, 2/21/09, p.70)
1988 In Tibet Tashi Tsering
completed his 15,000 word, trilingual Chinese-Tibetan-English
dictionary. He wrote an autobiography in 1997 with 2 American
professors titled: "The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography
of Tashi Tsering."
(WSJ, 9/4/97, p.A9)
1988 Nationalist movements
rocked the USSR.
(TMC, 1994, p.1988)
1988 In Russia Yuri Churbanov,
husband of Galina Brezhnev (d.1998), was convicted of taking bribes
after a trial that exposed corruption at the highest levels of the
Kremlin. Galina was the daughter of former Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev.
(SFC, 7/1/98, p.A22)
1988 In Switzerland banking
regulators published the first Basel Capital Accord, Basel 1. It
recognized that some loans and investments were less risky than
others and weighed them accordingly. Work on the Basel 2 accords,
Int’l. Convergence of Capital Measures and Capital Standards,” began
in 1996 and were published in 2004.
(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.10)
1988 The UN and World
Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). The authority issued ist first assessment
on global warming in 1990 and continued with reports every 5 years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change)(SFC,
11/4/99, p.A5)
1988 Enrique Iglesias, former
Uruguayan foreign minister, became head of IDB, the Inter-American
Development Bank. In 2005 he was named head of the Ibero-American
summits.
(Econ, 6/4/05, p.37)
1988 In Uzbekistan Islam
Karimov rose to the top spot of the Uzbek Communist Party.
(WSJ, 9/8/98, p.A23)
1988 Pope John Paul II
excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of France who stood for
maintaining the Church's traditions without change.
(WSJ, 8/17/95, p.A-1)
1988 Vietnam began letting US
military search teams into the countryside to look for the remains
missing US servicemen.
(SFC, 5/25/98, p.A4)
1988 Vietnam’s exports totaled
about $1 billion. In 2004 exports reached $30 billion.
(SFC, 5/30/06, p.C1)
1988 In Zimbabwe Kevin Woods,
Michael Smith and Philip Conjwayo were convicted of plotting a car
bombing against exiled members of South Africa's now-governing
African National Congress. The explosives detonated before reaching
their target in the city of Bulawayo, killing the Zimbabwean driver.
In 2006 Pres. Mugabe pardoned the 3 men on humanitarian grounds.
(AP, 7/2/06)
1988-1989 In Sudan the war induced famine killed
some 250,000 people.
(SFC, 11/3/98, p.A10)
1988-1990 Roseanne was the top ranking US network
show on television for two seasons with rankings of 25.5 and 23.4%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1988-1991 In Israel Michael Bruno (1932-1996) as
governor of the Bank of Israel helped to formulate the government’s
economic stabilization policy.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.A24)
1988-1992 The president of South Korea was Roh Tae
Woo. In 1995 he confessed to presiding over a huge slush fund with
some $650 million in concealed contributions. Mr. Woo was arrested
on charges that he received $307 mil. in bribes from 30 business
leaders during his term as president.
(WSJ, 10/30/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 11/17/95,
p.A-1)(WSJ, 8/27/96, p.A1)
1988-1994 In Liverpool, England,
Dr. Dick van Velzen, a Dutch pathologist, cut thousands of parts
from children who died during this period for research without the
knowledge of their parents.
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.80)
1988-1994 Carlos Salinas was president of Mexico.
His secretary, Justo Ceya, was ordered to be arrested in 1998 on
charges that he illegally amassed a fortune while in office.
(SFC, 4/8/97, p.A6)(SFC, 7/23/98, p.A10)
1988-1998 The fighting in Kashmir left 300,000
dead over this period.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
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