| 1991-08-25
Belarus declares its independence from the Soviet Union
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| 1991-08-27
The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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| 1991-05-24
Israel conducts Operation Solomon, evacuating Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
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| 1991-05-26
Lauda Air Flight 004 explodes over rural Thailand, killing 223.
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| 1991-09-17
The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.
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| 1991-02-23
Gulf War: Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, thus beginning the ground phase of the war.
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| 1991-11-20
An Azerbaijani MI-8 helicopter carrying 19 peacekeeping mission team with officials and journalists from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan was shot down by Armenian military forces in Khojavend district of Azerbaijan.
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| 1991-11-07
Magic Johnson announces that he is infected with HIV and retires from the NBA.
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| 1991-08-31
Kyrgyzstan declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-12-25
Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-01-13
Soviet Union military troops attack Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius. Killed 14 people and wounding 1000.
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| 1991-05-19
Croatians vote for independence in a referendum.
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| 1991-06-20
The German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.
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| 1991-08-28
Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-09-19
Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists.
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| 1991-08-08
The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.
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| 1991-12-20
A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.
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| 1991-07-07
Yugoslav Wars: the Brioni Agreement ends the ten-day independence war in Slovenia against the rest of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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| 1991-02-13
Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.
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| 1991-09-02
The United States recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
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| 1991-10-05
The first official version of the Linux kernel, version 0.02, is released.
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| 1991-05-31
Bicesse Accords in Angola lay out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the United Nations' UNAVEM II mission.
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| 1991-11-14
Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
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| 1991-11-18
Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
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| 1991-05-26
Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes the first democratically elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era.
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| 1991-11-14
American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
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| 1991-03-03
In two concurring referendums: 74% of the population of Latvia votes for independence from the Soviet Union, in Estonia – 83%.
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| 1991-07-10
Boris Yeltsin begins his five-year term as the first elected President of Russia.
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| 1991-10-27
Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-09-06
The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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| 1991-06-12
1991 Kokkadichcholai massacre: the Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.
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| 1991-05-24
Eritrea gains its independence from Ethiopia.
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| 1991-03-03
United Airlines Flight 585 crashes on approach into Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing 25.
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| 1991-04-29
A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 mph, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless.
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| 1991-11-28
South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.
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| 1991-12-01
Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-09-09
Tajikstan gains independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-04-04
Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their plane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania.
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| 1991-12-12
Russian Federation gains independence from the USSR.
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| 1991-05-21
Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras.
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| 1991-09-29
Military coup in Haiti.
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| 1991-11-14
In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.
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| 1991-06-26
Ten-Day War: the Yugoslav people's army begins the Ten-Day War in Slovenia.
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| 1991-06-17
Apartheid: the South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.
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| 1991-04-26
Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado (see Andover, Kansas Tornado Outbreak).
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| 1991-12-08
The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
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| 1991-10-01
New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 commences.
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| 1991-06-25
Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence from Yugoslavia.
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| 1991-04-10
Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
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| 1991-04-02
Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm (who had resigned) as Premier of British Columbia.
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| 1991-03-09
Massive demonstrations are held against Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade. Two people are killed and tanks are deployed in the streets.
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| 1991-10-09
Ecuador becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
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| 1991-05-28
The capital city of Addis Ababa, falls to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War.
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| 1991-09-21
Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union.
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| 1991-10-30
The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.
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| 1991-03-04
Sheikh Saad Al-Abdallah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, returns to his country for the first time since Iraq's invasion.
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| 1991-12-08
The Romanian Constitution is adopted in a referendum.
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| 1991-01-16
The United States goes to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War (U.S. Time).
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| 1991-05-21
Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, flees Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end.
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| 1991-02-15
The Visegrád Agreement, establishing cooperation to move toward free-market systems, is signed by the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.
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| 1991-02-20
A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.
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| 1991-11-27
The United Nations Security Council adopts Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.
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| 1991-10-05
An Indonesian military transport crashes after takeoff from Jakarta killing 137.
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| 1991-08-19
Hurricane Bob hits the Northeast, United States.
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| 1991-07-10
The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid.
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| 1991-04-22
The Social Democratic Party of Albania is founded.
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| 1991-03-13
The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
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| 1991-04-10
A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
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| 1991-08-20
Estonia secedes from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-01-15
The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.
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| 1991-07-01
The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
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| 1991-12-31
All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.
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| 1991-06-23
Moldova declares its independence.
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| 1991-01-22
Gulf War: Three SCUDs and one Patriot missile hit Ramat Gan in Israel, injuring 96 people. Three elderly people die of heart attacks.
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| 1991-09-30
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office.
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| 1991-09-08
The Republic of Macedonia becomes independent.
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| 1991-02-07
Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in.
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| 1991-06-27
Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before is invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft starting the Ten-Day War.
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| 1991-08-20
Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
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| 1991-03-03
An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.
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| 1991-06-12
Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic.
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| 1991-11-12
Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
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| 1991-07-09
South Africa is readmitted into the Olympic movement after 30 years of exclusion.
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| 1991-03-26
Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay sign the Treaty of Asunción, establishing Mercosur, the South Common Market.
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| 1991-08-27
Moldova declares independence from the USSR.
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| 1991-05-05
A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after police shoot a Salvadoran man.
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| 1991-02-25
Gulf War: An Iraqi scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.
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| 1991-08-29
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
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| 1991-09-01
Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union
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| 1991-02-28
The first Gulf War ends.
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| 1991-08-06
Doi Takako, chair of the Social Democratic Party (Japan), becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives.
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| 1991-01-20
Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.
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| 1991-01-17
Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
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| 1991-05-18
Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is not recognised by the international community.
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| 1991-08-06
Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
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| 1991-06-30
32 miners are killed when a coal mine fire in the Donbass region of Ukraine releases toxic gas.
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| 1991-09-22
The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library.
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| 1991-08-24
Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-07-31
The Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai, killing 7 officers and severely wounding one other.
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| 1991-08-08
John McCarthy, British journalist held hostage in Lebanon for more than five years by Islamic Jihad, is released.
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| 1991-02-23
In Thailand, General Sunthorn Kongsompong leads a bloodless coup d'état, deposing Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan.
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| 1991-03-31
The Islamic Constitutional Movement, or Hadas, is established in Kuwait.
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| 1991-10-04
The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature.
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| 1991-09-17
Estonia, North Korea, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia join the United Nations.
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| 1991-12-16
United Nations General Assembly: UN General Assembly Resolution 4686 revokes UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 after Israel makes revocation of resolution 3379 a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.
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| 1991-09-05
The current international treaty defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, came into force.
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| 1991-04-05
An ASA EMB 120 crashes in Brunswick, Georgia, killing all 23 aboard.
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| 1991-10-25
History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
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| 1991-02-18
The IRA explodes bombs in the early morning at Paddington station and Victoria station in London.
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| 1991-08-29
Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
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| 1991-08-25
The Battle of Vukovar has begun. An 87-day siege of a Croatian city by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August-November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence.
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| 1991-10-12
Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.
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| 1991-08-28
Collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
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| 1991-12-06
In Croatia, forces of the Yugoslav People's Army bombard Dubrovnik after laying siege to the city since May.
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| 1991-05-01
Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics steals his 939th base, making him the all-time leader in this category. However, his accomplishment is overshadowed later that evening by Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers, when he pitches his seventh career no-hitter, breaking his own record.
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| 1991-10-29
The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
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| 1991-02-16
Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez is assassinated in Managua.
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| 1991-05-15
Edith Cresson becomes France's first female prime minister.
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| 1991-03-02
Battle at Rumaila Oil Field brings an end to the 1991 Gulf War.
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| 1991-09-18
Yugoslavia begins a naval blockade of 7 Adriatic port cities.
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| 1991-01-26
Mohamed Siad Barre is removed from power in Somalia, ending centralized government, and is succeeded by Ali Mahdi.
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| 1991-07-11
A Nationair DC-8 crashes during an emergency landing at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing 261. The Canadian charter flight was ferrying Hajj pilgrims on behalf of Nigeria Airways.
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| 1991-09-06
The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.
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| 1991-10-16
Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
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| 1991-10-18
Azerbaijan declares independence from USSR.
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| 1991-12-16
Independence of The Republic of Kazakhstan.
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| 1991-06-03
Mount Unzen erupts in Kyūshū, Japan, killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists.
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| 1991-08-24
Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-10-22
Dimitrios Arhondonis, metropolitan of Chalcedon elected 270th Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch as Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox church.
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| 1991-02-27
Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".
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| 1991-08-21
Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.
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| 1991-12-04
Captain Mark Pyle pilots Clipper Goodwill, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 727-221ADV, to Miami International Airport ending 64 years of Pan Am operations.
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| 1991-12-04
Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut. He was the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.
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| 1991-10-20
The Oakland Hills firestorm kills 25 and destroys 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
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| 1991-01-19
Gulf War: SCUD attack from Iraq causes 15 injuries in Israel.
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| 1991-08-21
Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.
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| 1991-11-18
After the siege of Vukovar, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
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| 1991-06-07
Mount Pinatubo explodes generating an ash column 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) high.
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| 1991-09-16
The trial of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega begins in the United States.
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| 1991-03-31
Georgian independence referendum, 1991: nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
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| 1991-02-09
Voters in Lithuania vote for independence.
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| 1991-12-26
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the USSR.
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| 1991-02-26
Gulf War: On Baghdad Radio Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein announces the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
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| 1991-08-19
Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea.
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| 1991-01-12
Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
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| 1991-01-17
Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V.
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| 1991-08-04
The Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa.
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