Portal:1990s

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The 1990s Portal

From top left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope orbits the Earth after it was launched in 1990; American jets fly over burning oil fields in the 1991 Gulf War; the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993; the World Wide Web gains massive popularity worldwide; Boris Yeltsin greets crowds after the failed August Coup, which leads to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991; Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell; the funeral procession of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a 1997 car crash, and was mourned by millions; hundreds of thousands of Tutsi people are killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994

The 1990s (pronounced "nineteen-nineties"; shortened to "the '90s") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on 1 January 1990, and ended on 31 December 1999.

Culturally, the 1990s are characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media, which continues into the present day. Movements such as hip hop, the rave scene and grunge spread around the world to young people during that decade, aided by then-new technology such as cable television and the World Wide Web.

In the absence of world communism, which collapsed in the first two years of the decade, the 1990s was politically defined by a movement towards the right-wing, including increase in support for far-right parties in Europe[1] as well as the advent of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party[2] and cuts in social spending in the United States,[3] Canada,[4] New Zealand,[5] and the UK.[6] The United States also saw a massive revival in the use of the death penalty in the 1990s, which reversed in the early 21st century.[7] During the 1990s the character of the European Union and Euro were formed and codified in treaties.

A combination of factors, including the continued mass mobilization of capital markets through neo-liberalism, the thawing of the decades-long Cold War, the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet from the middle of the decade onwards, increasing skepticism towards government, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world and within countries. The dot-com bubble of 1997–2000 brought wealth to some entrepreneurs before its crash between 2000 and 2001.

The 1990s saw extreme advances in technology, with the World Wide Web, the first gene therapy trial, and the first designer babies[8] all emerging in 1990 and being improved and built upon throughout the decade.

New ethnic conflicts emerged in Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, the former two which led to the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, respectively. Signs of any resolution of tensions between Israel and the Arab world remained elusive despite the progress of the Oslo Accords, though The Troubles in Northern Ireland came to a standstill in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of violence.[9]

Clockwise from top: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and an F-15C flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; British troops from the Staffordshire Regiment practicing casualty evacuation; camera view from a Lockheed AC-130; the Highway of Death; and M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.

On 2 August 1990, Iraq, governed by President Saddam Hussein, launched an invasion of neighboring Kuwait and fully occupied the country within two days. Initially, Iraq ran the occupied territory under a puppet government known as the "Republic of Kuwait" before proceeding with an outright annexation in which Kuwaiti sovereign territory was split, with the "Saddamiyat al-Mitla' District" being carved out of the country's northern portion and the "Kuwait Governorate" covering the rest. Varying speculations have been made regarding intents behind the Iraqi invasion, most notably including Iraq's inability to repay a US$14 billion debt the country had borrowed from Kuwait to finance its prior war with Iran. Kuwait's demands for repayment were coupled with its surge in petroleum production levels, which kept revenues down for Iraq and further weakened its economic prospects; throughout much of the 1980s, Kuwait's oil production was above its mandatory quota under OPEC, which kept international oil prices down. Iraq interpreted the Kuwaiti refusal to decrease oil production as an act of aggression towards the Iraqi economy, leading up to the hostilities. (Full article...)
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  • ... that Univel was an early-1990s attempt to compete with Microsoft on the desktop, but one industry consultant said of the company's goal, "they're dreaming"?
  • ... that Nippon Steel, one of Japan's largest steelmakers, sold notebook computers in the U.S. in the early 1990s?
  • ... that in the early 1990s, several TV stations in Northern California experimented with moving prime time up an hour?
  • ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
  • ... that the singer Luci van Org followed up her mainstream success from the 1990s by starting a "Latin–disco–pop–country crossover" band?
  • ... that Derek Jeter discusses his biracial upbringing and experiencing racism in Michigan in the 1980s and 1990s in The Captain?

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Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult

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Houston at the Welcome Home Heroes concert in 1991

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, film producer, and philanthropist. Known as "the Voice", she was ranked second on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest singers of all time and is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales of over 220 million records worldwide. Houston influenced many singers in the recording industry and was known for her powerful, soulful vocals, vocal improvisation skills, as well as popularizing the use of gospel singing techniques in pop music, and live performances. She had 11 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one singles on the chart. Houston also enhanced her popularity by entering the film industry. Her accolades include eight Grammy Awards, 22 American Music Awards, two Emmy Awards, and 30 Guinness World Records. Houston's inductions include the Grammy Hall of Fame (twice), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the BET Walk of Fame, the Soul Train Hall of Fame, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

Houston began singing at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, as a child and became a background vocalist while in high school. She was one of the first black women to appear on the cover of Seventeen after becoming a teen model in 1981. With the guidance of Arista Records chairman Clive Davis, Houston signed to the label at age 19. Her first two studio albums, Whitney Houston (1985) and Whitney (1987), both peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and are among the best-selling albums of all time. Hit singles from the albums, including "How Will I Know", "Greatest Love of All" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", established her as a catalyst in the acceptance of black female artists on MTV. Her third studio album, I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990), yielded two Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles, the title track and "All the Man That I Need". Houston's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 received widespread media coverage. (Full article...)

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Sources

  1. ^ Merkl, Peter; Leonard, Weinberg (2 August 2004). Right-wing Extremism in the Twenty-first Century. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-76421-0.
  2. ^ "India – The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism".
  3. ^ ROSEN, RUTH (27 December 1994). "Which of Us Isn't Taking 'Welfare'? : Poor children rank low in government largess; why is the comfortable class so mean?". Los Angeles Times.
  4. ^ Séguin, Gilles. "Provincial Welfare Reforms in the 1990s – Canadian Social Research Links".
  5. ^ Maloney, Tim (1 May 2002). "Welfare Reform and Unemployment in New Zealand". Economica. 69 (274): 273–293. doi:10.1111/1468-0335.00283.
  6. ^ "Policy Exchange – Shaping the Policy Agenda" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2014.
  7. ^ https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/19/report-us-executions-dipped-in-2013
  8. ^ Handyside, AH; Kontogianni, EH; Hardy, K; Winston, RM (1990). "Pregnancies from biopsied human preimplantation embryos sexed by Y-specific DNA amplification". Nature. 344 (6268): 768–70. Bibcode:1990Natur.344..768H. doi:10.1038/344768a0. PMID 2330030.
  9. ^ Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2004). The Roaring Nineties. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32618-5.
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