Year retrospective · 1990s

1990

1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1990th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 990th year of the 2nd millennium, the 90th year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 1990s decade.

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Decade

1990s

Defining moment · 1990

Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, seize what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq.

Middlesbrough, colloquially known as Boro, is a port town in North Yorkshire, England. Lying to the south of the River Tees, it lies in the Borough of Middlesbrough, and forms part of the Teesside built-up area and the Tees Valley. In 2021, it had a population of 148,215.

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Defining events of 1990

1990 Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, seize what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq.

Town in North Yorkshire, England

Middlesbrough, colloquially known as Boro, is a port town in North Yorkshire, England. Lying to the south of the River Tees, it lies in the Borough of Middlesbrough, and forms part of the Teesside built-up area and the Tees Valley. In 2021, it had a population of 148,215.
1990 Jim Gary's "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs" exhibition opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. He is the only sculptor ever invited to present a solo exhibition there.

American artist and sculptor (1939-2006)

Jim Gary was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts. These sculptures were typically finished with automobile paint although some were left to develop a natural patina during display outdoors.
1990 Widerøe Flight 839 crashes after takeoff from Værøy Airport in Norway, killing five people.

1990 aviation accident in Norway

Widerøe Flight 839, also known as the Værøy Accident, was a de Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter that crashed shortly after takeoff from Værøy Airport in Værøy Municipality in Lofoten, Norway. The accident occurred on 12 April 1990 at 14:44, killing all five people on board. The cause of the accident was strong winds that exceeded the structure's tolerance, causing the tail rudder and tailplane to crack and the aircraft to become uncontrollable.
1990 Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Country in Southern Africa

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the northeast, approximating a quadripoint, Zimbabwe lies less than 200 metres away along the Zambezi river near Kazungula, Zambia. Namibia's capital and largest city is Windhoek.
1990 STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

1990 American crewed spaceflight to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope

STS-31 was the 35th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the tenth flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery. The primary purpose of this mission was the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) into low Earth orbit. Discovery lifted off from Launch Complex 39B on April 24, 1990, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
1990 Gruinard Island, Scotland, is officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

Island off the coast of Scotland

Gruinard Island is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island approximately two kilometres long by one kilometre wide, located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. At its closest point to the mainland, it is about one kilometre offshore. In 1942, the island became a sacrifice zone, and was dangerous for all mammals after military experiments with the anthrax bacterium, until it was decontaminated in 1990.
1990 Violeta Chamorro takes office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman to hold the position.
1990 The current flag of Hong Kong is adopted for post-colonial Hong Kong during the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress.
1990 A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people.
1990 John Poindexter is convicted for his role in the Iran–Contra affair. In 1991 the convictions are reversed on appeal.