1990 was an important year in the Internet's early history. In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server and the foundation for the World Wide Web. Test operations began around December 20 and it was released outside CERN the following year.[2] 1990 also saw the official decommissioning of the ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet system and the introduction of the first content web search engine, Archie, on September 10.[3]
September 14, 1990, saw the first case of successful somatic gene therapy on a patient.[4]
Due to the early 1990s recession that began that year and uncertainty due to the collapse of the socialist governments in Eastern Europe, birth rates in many countries stopped rising or fell steeply in 1990. In most western countries the Echo Boom peaked in 1990; fertility rates declined thereafter.[5]
The first Internet companies catering to commercial users, PSINet and EUnet begin selling Internet access to commercial customers in the United States and Netherlands respectively.[6][7]
Thousands storm the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin in an attempt to view their government records.
Martin Luther King Day Crash – Telephone service in Atlanta, St. Louis, and Detroit, including 9-1-1 service, goes down for nine hours, due to an AT&T software bug.
Clashes break out between Indian troops and Muslim separatists in Kashmir.
The government of Haiti declares a state of emergency, under which it suspends civil liberties, imposes censorship, and arrests political opponents. The state of siege is lifted on January 29.
February 14 – The Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is sent back from the Voyager 1 probe after completing its primary mission, from around 5.6 billion kilometers (3.5 billion miles) away.
April 14 – Junk bond financier Michael Milken pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges. He agreed to pay US$500 million in restitution and was sentenced on November 21 to 10 years in jail.
April 21 – Japanese Yoshio Tani, M.Sc. murders gold merchant Turkka Elovirta and businessman Juhani Komulainen in Siuntio, Finland, having convinced them to buy a nonexistent 500 kilogram stash of Nazi gold.[22][23]
In the Philippines, gunmen kill two United States Air Force airmen near Clark Air Base on the eve of talks between the Philippines and the United States over the future of American military bases in the Philippines.[25]
May 21 – In Kashmir, a Kashmiri Islamic leader is assassinated and Indian security forces open fire on mourners carrying his body, killing at least 47 people.
May 28 – 1990 Arab League summit: Saddam Hussein receives the emir of Kuwait for a diplomatic visit, at a time where his country and its decent oil revenues were being pushed into bankruptcy by Kuwait's lowering of the price of oil. A dictator with ambitions, Saddam wanted to continue increasing his military strength, and so confronted Kuwait instead. After the public events, Hussein invited Arab leaders to a private meeting. Here, he threatened war on Kuwait unless Kuwait stopped lowering the price of oil, recalls then-Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz.[citation needed]
Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army shoot and kill Major Michael Dillon-Lee and Private William Robert Davies of the British Army. Dillon-Lee is killed outside his home in Dortmund, Germany and Davies is killed at a railway station in Lichfield, England.
The 1990 FIFA World Cup begins in Italy. This was the first broadcast of digital HDTV in history; Europe would not begin HDTV broadcasting en masse until 2004.[29]
Somali President Siad Barre's bodyguards massacre anti-government demonstrators during a soccer match; 65 people are killed, more than 300 seriously injured.
At 12:34:56 (a.m. and p.m.), the date and time using American formats was 12:34:56, 7/8/90 (1234567890). The next such event will occur on July 8, 2090.[35]
By the end of June, Saddam and his lieutenants suspect a conspiracy against Iraq, devised by Kuwait and orchestrated by the US. Earlier in July they threaten invasion on Kuwait unless $10 billion is sent to Iraq from Kuwait. When Kuwait refuses, on July 16, Iraqi forces begin to gather in southern Iraq near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.
RELCOM is created in the Soviet Union by combining several computer networks. Later in August, the Soviet Union got its first connection to the Internet.[39]
The government of Peru announces an austerity plan that results in huge increases in the price of food and gasoline. The plan sets off days of rioting and a national strike on August 21.
Egypt, Syria, and 10 other Arab states vote to send military forces to Saudi Arabia to discourage an invasion from Iraq.
A passenger bus, traveling along the route "Tbilisi-Agdam", is blown up; 20 people died and 30 were injured. The organizers of the crime were Armenians A. Avanesian and M. Tatevosian who were brought to criminal trial.[36]
Indonesian commercial television network SCTV was established as the nation's third television station after RCTI, and also debuted as local television channel in Surabaya. During its earlier days, SCTV was the rival for RCTI, the first commercial television network. SCTV began broadcasting nationwide from Jakarta by January 29, 1991.
Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush delivers a nationally televised speech in which he threatens the use of force to remove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait.
First Pizza Hut opens in the People's Republic of China, nearly 3 years after the first KFC opened there in 1987.[43]
A judge in Australia orders the arrest of media tycoon Christopher Skase, former owner of the Seven Network, after he fails to give evidence in a liquidator's examination of failed shipbuilding company Lloyds Ships Holdings, an associate of Skase's Qintex Australia Ltd.[44]
A new constitution comes into effect in the Kingdom of Nepal, establishing multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy; this is the culmination of the 1990 People's Movement.
President Bush signed new Clean Air Act, focused on urban pollution and cancer-causing emissions from industrial sources.
People's Republic of Bulgaria is dissolved after the seventh Grand National Assembly voted to change the country's name to the Republic of Bulgaria and removed the Communist state emblem from the national flag.
November 17 – Soviet President Gorbachev proposes a radical restructuring of the Soviet government, including the creation of a Federal Council to be made up of the heads of the 15 Soviet republics.
November 19–21 – The leaders of Canada, the United States, and 32 European states meet in Paris to formally mark the end of the Cold War.
Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first land connection between Great Britain and the mainland of Europe for around 8,000 years.
Kleiner, Carolyn (July 24, 2000). "Van Gogh's vanishing act". Mysteries of History. U.S. News & World Report. Archived from the original on December 8, 2013. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
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