In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 separate states, the Persian Gulf war both began and ended and a coup in Haiti overthrew that country’s first democratically elected president. In the U.S., Los Angeles police beat motorist Rodney King on videotape, and Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls won their first NBA championship. Nirvana released its landmark single “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” helping bring indie music mainstream, while movies like “Slacker” and “My Own Private Idaho” heralded the ascendance of independent film.
Jan
16
Jan
23
Darrell Lunsford, a county constable in Garrison, Texas, is killed after pulling over a traffic violator. His murder was remarkable because it was captured on a camera set up in Lunsford’s patrol vehicle. The videotape evidence led to the conviction of the three men who beat, kicked, and stabbed the officer to death along the East Texas highway.
Feb
24
Mar
03
At 12:45 a.m. on March 3, 1991, robbery parolee Rodney G. King stops his car after leading police on a nearly 8-mile pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles, California. The chase began after King, who was intoxicated, was caught speeding on a freeway by a California Highway Patrol cruiser but refused to pull over. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) cruisers and a police helicopter joined the pursuit, and when King was finally stopped by Hansen Dam Park, several police cars descended on his white Hyundai.
Mar
13
After more than five years of fundraising, shooting and editing, the documentary Paris is Burning debuts in New York City on March 13, 1991. The groundbreaking look at the culture and characters surrounding the city’s drag ball culture changed the way many people thought about drag, queerness and even documentaries themselves.
2S0YEEE PARIS IS BURNING (1990), directed by JENNIE LIVINGSTON. Credit: Miramax / Off White Productions Inc / Prestige / Album
Alamy Stock Photo
Mar
14
In the face of widespread questioning of their guilt, British authorities release the so-called “Birmingham Six,” six Irish men who had been sent to prison 16 years earlier for the 1974 terrorist bombings of two Birmingham, England, pubs.
The Birmingham Six wave to relatives and well-wishers outside the Old Bailey following their release from the Court in London Chris Mullin MP with from left: John Walker, Paddy Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter and William Power. Picture Brian Farrell 14/3/1991 (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images).
Getty Images
Mar
31
After 36 years in existence, the Warsaw Pact—the military alliance between the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites—comes to an end. The action was yet another sign that the Soviet Union was losing control over its former allies and that the Cold War was falling apart.
May
06
On May 6, 1991, 51-year-old race car driver Harry Gant racks up his 12th National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) Winston Cup career victory in the Winston 500 in Talladega, Alabama. In doing so, Gant bettered his own record as the oldest man ever to win a NASCAR event.
May
14
May
26
On May 26, 1991, a Boeing 767 crashes into the jungle near Bangkok, Thailand, and kills all 223 people on board. The plane was owned and operated by the Austrian company Lauda-Air was the nation’s largest charter operation and famed race car driver Niki Lauda’s first foray into business after his retirement from racing.
May
28
Jul
22
Aug
18
On August 18, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest during a coup by high-ranking members of his own government, military and police forces.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, holding documents of his arrest from the attempted coup on Moscow, speaks at a press conference after the coup. Staged in protest against Gorbachev's move toward more democratic policies, the coup ultimately failed, but seriously weakened his power and that of the Communist Party. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Sygma via Getty Images)
Sygma via Getty Images
Aug
19
Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, is stabbed by a mob in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The crowd, consisting of young Black men, had been intent on seeking revenge for the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, who had been struck by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew three hours earlier. Rosenbaum died the next day.
Aug
21
Just three days after it began, the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev collapses. Despite his success in avoiding removal from office, Gorbachev’s days in power were numbered. The Soviet Union would soon cease to exist as a nation and as a Cold War threat to the United States.
Sep
05
On the sunny morning of September 5, 1991, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia, a group of activists arrive at the home of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Using ladders, several of them climb to the roof of the house, and from there they unfurl a giant piece of fabric, which is then inflated by their comrades on the front lawn. Soon, the senator’s home is surrounded by a giant, yellow condom reading “A CONDOM TO STOP UNSAFE POLITICS: HELMS IS DEADLIER THAN A VIRUS,” a decidedly unsubtle response to Helms’ vehement opposition to gay rights and to funding AIDS research and treatment.
Sep
10
On September 10, 1991, Seattle rock band Nirvana releases its breakout single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” In just a few short months, a group that was a complete nonentity to the mainstream music-buying public would become one of the most important rock bands on earth.
Sep
29
On September 29, 1991, My Own Private Idaho, an independent film written and directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, premieres in New York theaters. The movie told the story of two young male hustlers, one of whom (Phoenix) is a hapless narcoleptic searching for the mother who abandoned him, and the other of whom (Reeves) comes from a wealthy family (the character was inspired, in part, by Shakespeare’s Prince Hal in Henry IV). The pair meets in Portland, Oregon, and later travels to Idaho and Italy. My Own Private Idaho–the title reportedly came from a song by the rock band the B-52s–was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards and won for Best Screenplay, Best Male Lead (Phoenix) and Best Film Music.
Oct
10
Former U.S. postal worker Joseph Harris shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey. The night before, Harris had killed his former supervisor, Carol Ott, with a three-foot samurai sword, and shot her fiance, Cornelius Kasten, in their home. After a four-hour standoff with police at the post office, Harris was arrested.
Oct
15
Oct
16
George Jo Hennard drives his truck through a window in Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and then opens fire on a lunch crowd of over 100 people, killing 23 and injuring 20 more. Hennard then turned the gun on himself and died by suicide. The incident was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.
Oct
19
On October 19, 1991, a fire begins in the hills of Oakland, California. It went on to burn thousands of homes and kill 25 people. Despite the fact that fires had ravaged the same area three times earlier in the century, people continued to build homes there.
Oct
30
On October 30, 1991, the so-called “perfect storm” intensifies in the North Atlantic, producing remarkably large waves along the New England and Canadian coasts. Over the next several days, the storm spread its fury over the ocean off the coast of Canada. The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its six-member crew were lost in the storm. The disaster spawned the bestselling book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and a blockbuster Hollywood movie of the same name.
Nov
07
On November 7, 1991, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson stuns the world by announcing his sudden retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers, after testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, many Americans viewed AIDS as solely a gay white man’s disease. Johnson, who is Black and identifies as heterosexual, was one of the first sports stars to go public about his HIV-positive status.
Find out what happened on November 7 in this video of This Day in History. On this day in 1874, the Republican Party was first depicted by their elephant symbol in a cartoon in an edition of Harper’s Magazine. On November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrow the government of Russia and seized power. David Dinkins was elected as the first African American Mayor of New York City on November 7, 1989. Lastly, on November 7, 1991, hall of famer Magic Johnson announced his early retirement from the NBA. During a routine physical Magic Johnson was diagnosed with having the HIV virus. Now this hall of famer educates young people around the nation on how to defend themselves against AIDS.
Nov
18
Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon free Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite after more than four years of captivity. Waite, looking thinner and his hair grayer, was freed along with American educator Thomas M. Sutherland after intense negotiations by the United Nations.
This This Day in History video explains what occurred on November 18 throughout history. On November 18, 1820, the seal hunter Nathaniel Palmer and his crew became the first Americans to visit Antarctica. On November 18, 1883, the United States and Canadian Railroads established the five standard time zones for the continent. This stopped the confusion of having so many different time zones. On November 18, 1963, the Bell Telephone Company unveiled the first ever push button telephone. Lastly, on November 18, 1991, Terry Waite was released by his kidnappers in Lebanon. Waite spent five years in captivity, four of them being in solitary confinement.
Nov
24
On November 24, 1991, Freddie Mercury, British rock superstar and frontman for the band Queen, died from bronchial pneumonia caused by AIDS.
Freddie Mercury of Queen performs on stage at Live Aid on July 13th, 1985. (Credit: Peter Still/Redferns/Getty Images)
Getty Images / Peter Still / Redferns
Dec
02
Opening testimony takes place in the highly publicized rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Jean Kennedy Smith, the president’s sister and a former ambassador to Ireland. Smith, then a 30-year-old medical student at Georgetown University, was accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old Florida woman in the early hours of March 30, 1991, at the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach compound.
Dec
04
On December 4, 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity.
American journalist Terry Anderson speaks at a press conference after his release by his Lebanese captors in 1991. (Photo by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Dec
17
After a long meeting between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, a spokesman for the latter announces that the Soviet Union will officially cease to exist on or before New Year’s Eve. Yeltsin declared that, “There will be no more red flag.” It was a rather anti-climactic culmination of events leading toward the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
Dec
25
Mikhail Gorbachev announces that he is resigning as president of the Soviet Union. In truth, there was not much of a Soviet Union from which to resign—just four days earlier, 11 of the former Soviet republics had established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively dismembering the USSR. The Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, had already ceased to exist.
Dec
28
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