During the Republican National Convention in
San Diego, California, the party nominates U.S.
senator Bob Dole and Jack Kemp for president
and vice president, respectively. (Aug. 29) The
Democrats, holding their national convention
in Chicago, renominate President Bill Clinton
and Vice President Al Gore. (Nov. 5) President
Clinton is reelected to a second term, defeating
Republican challenger Dole.
Military and war:(Jan. 9-20) Serious fighting be-
tween Russian soldiers and rebel fighters erupts
in Chechnya. (Mar. 6) Chechen rebels attack the
Russian government headquarters in Grozny, re-
sulting in the deaths of 70 Russian soldiers and
policemen and 130 Chechens. (May 27) Russian
president Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechen reb-
els to hammer out a cease-fire in the First
Chechen War. (Jun. 25) A truck bomb explodes
outside a housing complex in Saudi Arabia where
American and other foreign military troops were
residing. The explosion kills nineteen Ameri-
cans.
Society:(May 20) The U.S. Supreme Court inRomer
v. Evansrules against an amendment to the Colo-
rado constitution that would have prevented any
municipal or county government in the state
from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial
action to protect the rights of homosexuals.
(Aug. 28) Prince Charles and Princess Diana are
formally divorced in London. (Nov. 16) Mother
Teresa is given honorary U.S. citizenship.
Business and economics:Archer Daniels Midland is
fined $70 million for fixing prices on its lysine
product and another $30 million in a separate
scheme to fix the prices in the global citric acid
market. (Oct. 14) The stock market continues its
swift ascent when the Dow Jones Industrial Aver-
age closes above 6,000 for the first time. (Nov.)
The stock market gets even more bullish after the
presidential elections, gaining at an unusually
quick pace for ten consecutive days during the
month of November. (Dec. 5) Federal Reserve
chairman Alan Greenspan dampens investors’
elation about the bull market when he suggests
in a speech that “irrational exuberance” may have
“unduly escalated asset values.”
Transportation and communications: (Apr. 11)
Jessica Dubroff is killed in a crash while the seven-
year-old is attempting to set a record as the youn-
gest person to pilot an airplane across the United
States. (Jun. 12) A panel of federal judges block
the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which
would prohibit indecency on the Internet. The
judges conclude that the law infringes upon
adults’ rights to freedom of speech. (Dec. 31) In
one of the largest railroad mergers in U.S. history,
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merges
with the Burlington Northern Railroad, forming
the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.
Science and technology:(Jan. 23) The first version
of the Java programming language is released.
(Feb. 9) The element Unumbium, number 112
on the periodic table, is discovered. (May 8)
The second of two telescopes is dedicated at the
W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. At this time,
the observatory’s two telescopes, each having a
four-hundred-inch primary mirror, are the world’s
largest telescopes for optical and near-infrared
astronomy. (Jul. 5) A sheep named Dolly, the first
mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult,
is born in Midlothian, Scotland. (Nov. 7) NASA
launches the Mars Global Surveyor, which, after a
twenty-year hiatus, will resume the United States’
exploration of that planet.
Environment and health:(Jan. 19) An engine fire
forces a tugboat to go ashore on Moonstone Beach
in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, pulling the
North Cape Barge along with it. The barge leaks
820,000 gallons of home heating oil. (Feb. 15)
Another oil spill occurs, this time in Wales, when
an oil tanker runs aground, spilling 73,000 metric
tons of crude oil that kills many birds. (Mar. 20)
The British government announces that bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, better known as
mad cow disease, likely has been transmitted to
people. (May 30) The Hoover Institution releases
an optimistic report on global warming, conclud-
ing that a warmer climate would probably de-
crease mortality in the United States and provide
Americans with valuable benefits.
Arts and literature:Primar y Colors, a “fictional” ac-
count of a presidential election that closely re-
sembles the 1992 campaign of President Bill
Clinton, is released. The anonymous author is
later revealed to be political reporter Joe Klein.
(Apr. 29)Rentopens on Broadway, where it will
run for 3,066 performances. Playwright Jonathan
Larson had died of an aortic aneurysm on Janu-
ary 24, 1996, at the age of thirty-five. He will be
posthumously awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in1036 Time Line The Nineties in America