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1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year that started on a Friday. In the Gregorian calendar, it was the 1,993rd year of Anno Domini, or of the Common Era; the 993rd year of the 2nd millennium; the 93rd year of the 20th century; and the 4th of the 1990s.

Events[link]

January[link]

• January 1
  • Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: Slovakia and the Czech Republic separate in the so-called Velvet Divorce.
  • The European Community eliminates trade barriers and creates a European single market.
  • EuroNews is launched in Europe.
  • ITV companies GMTV, Carlton Television, Meridian Broadcasting and Westcountry Television start broadcasting, replacing TV-am, Thames Television, TVS and TSW respectively.
• January 3 – In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Bill Clinton inaugurated as President of the United States.

• January 5
  • The state of Washington executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).
  • $7.4 million USD is stolen from Brinks Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York in the 5th largest robbery in U.S. history. Four men, Samuel Millar, Father Patrick Moloney, former Rochester Police officer Thomas O'Connor, and Charles McCormick, all of whom have ties to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, are accused.
  • M/V Braer, a Liberian oil tanker, runs aground off the Scottish island of Mainland, causing a massive oil spill.
• January 6 – Douglas Hurd is the first high-ranking British official to visit Argentina since the Falklands War.
• January 6–January 20 – The Bombay Riots take place in the city now known as Mumbai.
• January 7 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated, with Jerry Rawlings as president.
• January 11 – WWF Monday Night Raw premieres on the USA Network and continues to this day.
• January 14 – The Polish ferry M/S Jan Heweliusz sinks off the coast of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, killing 54 people.
• January 15 – Salvatore Riina, the Mafia boss known as 'The Beast', is arrested in Palermo, Sicily, after 23 years as a fugitive.
• January 19
  • Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) signed.
  • IBM announces a $4.97 billion loss for 1992, the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history to date.
  • Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq refuses to allow UNSCOM inspectors to use its own aircraft to fly into Iraq, and begins military operations in the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait, and the northern Iraqi no-fly zones. U.S. forces fire approximately 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Baghdad factories linked to Iraq's illegal nuclear weapons program. Iraq then informs UNSCOM that it will be able to resume its flights.
• January 20 – Bill Clinton succeeds George H.W. Bush as the 42nd President of the United States.
• January 24 – In Turkey, thousands protest the murder of journalist Uğur Mumcu.
• January 25
  • Mir Aimal Kasi fires a rifle and kills 2 employees outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
  • Social democrat Poul Nyrup Rasmussen succeeds conservative Poul Schlüter as Prime Minister of Denmark.
• January 26 – Václav Havel is elected President of the Czech Republic.
• January 31 – Super Bowl XXVII: The Buffalo Bills become the first team to lose 3 consecutive Super Bowls as they are defeated by the Dallas Cowboys, 52–17.

February[link]

The aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing.

• February 4 – Members of the right-wing Austrian FPÖ split to form the Liberal Forum in protest against the increasing nationalistic bent of the party.
• February 5 – Belgium becomes a federal monarchy rather than a unitary kingdom.
• February 8 – General Motors Corporation sues NBC, after Dateline NBC allegedly rigged 2 crashes showing that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the following day.
• February 10
  • Lien Chan is named by Lee Teng-Hui to succeed Hau Pei-tsun as Premier of the Republic of China.
  • Mani Pulite scandal: Italian legislator Claudio Martelli resigns, followed by various politicians over the next 2 weeks.
• February 11 – Janet Reno is selected by President Clinton as Attorney General of the United States.
• February 12 – Two-year-old James Bulger is abducted, tortured and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Both are later charged. See Murder of James Bulger.
• February 14
  • Glafkos Klerides defeats incumbent George Vasiliou in the Cypriot presidential election.
  • Albert Zafy defeats Didier Ratsiraka in the Madagascar presidential election.
• February 17 – A ferry sinks in Haiti, killing approximately 1,215 out of 1,500 passengers.
• February 22 – UN Security Council Resolution 808 is voted on, deciding that "an international tribunal shall be established" to prosecute violations of international law in Yugoslavia. The tribunal will is established on May 25 by Resolution 827.
• February 24 – Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney resigns amidst political and economic turmoil. Kim Campbell, his successor, becomes Canada's first female Prime Minister.
• February 26 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over 1,000.
• February 28 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, with a warrant to arrest leader David Koresh on federal firearms violations. Four agents and 5 Davidians die in the raid and a 51-day standoff begins.

March[link]

• March 4 – Authorities announce the capture of suspected World Trade Center bombing conspirator Mohammad Salameh.
• March 5 – Macedonian Palair Flight 305, a F-100 on a flight to Zurich, crashes shortly after take-off from Skopje killing 83 of the 97 on board.
• March 9 – Rodney King testifies at the federal trial of 4 Los Angeles, California, police officers accused of violating his civil rights when they beat him during an arrest.
• March 11 – Janet Reno is confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States.
• March 12
  • 1993 Bombay bombings: Several bombs explode in Bombay, India, killing 257 and injuring hundreds more.
  • North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea announces that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites.
• March 13–March 15 – The Great Blizzard of 1993 strikes the eastern U.S., bringing record snowfall and other severe weather all the way from Cuba to Quebec; it reportedly kills 184.
• March 13 – Australian federal election, 1993: The Australian Labor Party stays in power despite poor economic results.
• March 17 – The PKK announces a unilateral ceasefire in Iraq.
• March 20 – Warrington bomb attacks: An IRA bomb explodes in Warrington Town Centre and kills 2 children, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry.
• March 22 – The Intel Corporation ships the first P5 Pentium chips.
• March 24
  • The Israeli Knesset elects Ezer Weizman as President of Israel.
  • South Africa officially abandons its nuclear weapons programme. President de Klerk announces that the country's 6 warheads had already been dismantled in 1990.
• March 27
  • Jiang Zemin becomes President of the People's Republic of China.
  • Following a rash of integrist murders, Algeria breaks diplomatic relations with Iran, accusing the country of interfering in its interior affairs.
  • Mahamane Ousmane is elected president of Niger.
• March 28 – French legislative election, 1993: Gaullists win a majority and Édouard Balladur becomes Prime Minister.
• March 29 – The 65th Academy Awards, hosted by Billy Crystal, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California, with Unforgiven winning Best Picture.

April[link]

• April – The Kuwaiti government claims to uncover an Iraqi assassination plot against former U.S. President George H.W. Bush shortly after his visit to Kuwait. Two Iraqi nationals confess to driving a car-bomb into Kuwait on behalf of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.^[1]
• April 1 – The Vatican orders the moving of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz.
• April 6 – A nuclear accident occurs at Tomsk 7 in Russia.
• April 8 – The Republic of Macedonia is admitted to the United Nations.
• April 10 – African National Congress activist Chris Hani is assassinated in South Africa.
• April 16 – Bosnian War: the enclave of Srebrenica is declared a UN-protected "safe area".
• April 17 – Laurence Powell and Stacey Koon are found guilty in the second Rodney King trial.
• April 19
  • A 51-day stand-off at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ends with a fire that kills 76 people, including David Koresh.
  • South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes near Dubuque, Iowa.
• April 22
  • In Washington, DC, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated.
  • 18-year-old student Stephen Lawrence is stabbed to death in London, England; the attack is believed to have been racially motivated.
• April 23
  • The World Health Organization declares tuberculosis a Global Emergency.
  • Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
• April 26 – Oscar Luigi Scalfaro appoints Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Prime Minister of Italy.
• April 27
  • Eritrea: Eritrean independence was declared as a result of a referendum held with UN verification.
  • Yemeni parliamentary election, 1993: The General People's Congress wins a plurality of 121 seats.
  • All members of the Zambia national football team die in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon in route to Dakar, Senegal.
• April 28 – An executive order requires the United States Air Force to allow women to fly war planes.
• April 30 – Tennis star Monica Seles is stabbed in the back by an obsessed fan of rival Steffi Graf at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany.

May[link]

• May 1
  • Pierre Bérégovoy, former prime minister of France, commits suicide.
  • A Tamil Tigers suicide bomber assassinates President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka.
• May 4 – UNOSOM II assumes the Somalian duties of the dissolved UNITAF.
• May 9 – Juan Carlos Wasmosy becomes the first democratically elected President of Paraguay in nearly 40 years.
• May 15 – Niamh Kavanagh wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland with "In Your Eyes".
• May 16
  • The Grand National Assembly of Turkey elects Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel as President of Turkey.
  • After Demirel becomes the president the acting prime minister of Turkey is Erdal İnönü of SHP for 40 days.
• May 24 – Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia.
• May 27 – A mafia car bomb in via dei Georgofili, near Uffizi Gallery in Florence kills five people.
• May 28 – Eritrea and Monaco gain entry to the United Nations.
• May 29 – The first Life Ball takes place in Vienna, Austria. In 2011, the event is named the largest public-charity on HIV and AIDS in Europe.