1989

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s – 1980s – 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years:	1986 1987 1988 – 1989 – 1990 1991 1992

1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1989th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 989th year of the 2nd millennium, the 89th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1980s decade. A wave of counter revolutions ended the Eastern Bloc and the Cold War during the year.

Events[change | change source]

Clean up after Exxon Valdez oil spill

January 7 – Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito. The Heisei period begins.
January 8 – the Kegworth Air Disaster – A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport – 44 dead
January 10 – Cuban troops begin withdrawing from Angola
January 10 – Assistant Australian Federal Police commissioner Colin Winchester is shot dead in the driveway of his Canberra home.
January 17 – A gunman kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in Stockton, California.
January 20 – George Herbert Walker Bush succeeds Ronald Wilson Reagan as President of the United States of America
January 24 – Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair
January 30 – American Olympic medalist Bruce Kimball is sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing two teenagers in a drunk driving accident.
February 3 – Paraguayan leader Alfredo Stroessner is removed from office.
February 14 – Iran issues a fatwa (death warrant) against the writer Salman Rushdie for his novel, The Satanic Verses.
March 24 – The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurs at Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. Until 2010 it is the worst oil spill in United States history.
May - Tornadoes hit Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
June 4 – Protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, are brutally crushed. An image of a lone protestor defying a tank is shown worldwide.
August – First sighting of the Aurora, a supposed hypersonic aircraft
September - Hurricane Hugo strikes the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and North Carolina. The hurricane causes $8 billion in damage in the United States, about $10 billion in total. Many people die from this hurricane.
October 17 – A major earthquake strikes San Francisco, California.
October 18 – East Germany's leader Erich Honecker resigns.
November 2 – Bad Religion releases No Control, which is considered one of the band's best known works in the history of punk music, along with its predecessor Suffer, which came out in the previous year.
November 17 – The Berlin Wall in Germany starts to come down.
December 22 – The main crossing from East into West Berlin is officially reopened.
December 22 – In Romania, Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is removed from office.
December 25 – Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena are executed by a firing squad.