1994

This article is about the year 1994. For the song by Jason Aldean, see 1994 (song). For the BBC Radio 4 comedy series, see Nineteen Ninety-Four. For other uses, see 1994 (disambiguation).

From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the 1994 South African general election, in which he was elected South Africa's first president, and which effectively brought Apartheid to an end; NAFTA, which was signed in 1992, comes into effect in Canada, the United States, and Mexico; The first passenger rail service to utilize the newly-opened Channel tunnel; The 1994 FIFA World Cup is held in the United States; Skulls from the Rwandan genocide, in which over half a million Tutsi people were massacred by Hutus.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Decades:	1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years:	1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997

1994 in various calendars

Gregorian calendar	1994 MCMXCIV
Ab urbe condita	2747
Armenian calendar	1443 ԹՎ ՌՆԽԳ
Assyrian calendar	6744
Baháʼí calendar	150–151
Balinese saka calendar	1915–1916
Bengali calendar	1401
Berber calendar	2944
British Regnal year	42 Eliz. 2 – 43 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2538
Burmese calendar	1356
Byzantine calendar	7502–7503
Chinese calendar	癸酉年 (Water Rooster) 4690 or 4630     — to — 甲戌年 (Wood Dog) 4691 or 4631
Coptic calendar	1710–1711
Discordian calendar	3160
Ethiopian calendar	1986–1987
Hebrew calendar	5754–5755
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2050–2051
- Shaka Samvat	1915–1916
- Kali Yuga	5094–5095
Holocene calendar	11994
Igbo calendar	994–995
Iranian calendar	1372–1373
Islamic calendar	1414–1415
Japanese calendar	Heisei 6 (平成６年)
Javanese calendar	1926–1927
Juche calendar	83
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4327
Minguo calendar	ROC 83 民國83年
Nanakshahi calendar	526
Thai solar calendar	2537
Tibetan calendar	阴水鸡年 (female Water-Rooster) 2120 or 1739 or 967     — to — 阳木狗年 (male Wood-Dog) 2121 or 1740 or 968
Unix time	757382400 – 788918399

1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1994th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 994th year of the 2nd millennium, the 94th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1990s decade.

The year 1994 was designated as the "International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations.

Events

The February 1994 photo of Pluto and Charon from the Hubble Space Telescope.

January

• January 1 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is established.
• January 8 – Soyuz TM-18: Valeri Polyakov begins his 437.7-day orbit of the Earth, eventually setting the world record for days spent in orbit.
• January 11 – The Irish government announces the end of a 15-year broadcasting ban on the Provisional Irish Republican Army and its political arm Sinn Féin.
• January 14 – U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign the Kremlin accords, which stop the preprogrammed aiming of nuclear missiles toward each country's targets, and also provide for the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal in Ukraine.
• January 17 – The 6.7 M_w Northridge earthquake strikes the Greater Los Angeles Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.
• January 19 – Record cold temperatures hit the eastern United States. The coldest temperature ever measured in Indiana state history, −36 °F (−38 °C), is recorded in New Whiteland, Indiana.

February

• February 3
  • In the aftermath of the Chadian–Libyan conflict, the International Court of Justice rules that the Aouzou Strip belongs to the Republic of Chad.
  • (136617) 1994 CC is discovered.
• February 5 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
• February 6 – Markale massacres: a Bosnian Serb Army mortar shell kills 68 civilians and wounds about 200 in a Sarajevo marketplace.
• February 9 – The Vance–Owen peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina is announced.
• February 12
  • Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen in Oslo (it is recovered on May 7).
  • The 1994 Winter Olympics begin in Lillehammer.
• February 21 – Revealing of the first photo of Pluto and its moon Charon taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
• February 24 – In Gloucester, local police begin excavations at 25 Cromwell Street, the home of Fred West, a suspect in multiple murders. On February 28, he and his wife are arrested.
• February 25 – Israeli Kahanist Baruch Goldstein opens fire inside the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank; he kills 29 Muslims before worshippers beat him to death.
• February 28 – Four United States F-16s shoot down four Serbian J-21s over Bosnia and Herzegovina for violation of the Operation Deny Flight and its no-fly zone.

March

• March – The People's Republic of China gets its first connection to the Internet.
• March 1 – Walvis Bay is handed over to Namibia by South Africa.
• March 6 – A referendum in Moldova results in the electorate voting against possible reunification with Romania.
• March 8 – Nine Inch Nails' second studio album, The Downward Spiral, is released to critical acclaim.
• March 12
  • A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as "proof" of the Loch Ness Monster, is confirmed to be a hoax.
  • The Church of England ordains its first female priests.
• March 14
  • Apple Computer, Inc. releases the Power Macintosh, the first Macintosh computers to use the new PowerPC microprocessors.
  • The Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released after over two years of development.
• March 15 – U.S. troops are withdrawn from Somalia.
• March 20 – Italian journalist Ilaria Alpi and TV cameraman Miran Hrovatin are assassinated in Somalia.
• March 21 – The 66th Academy Awards, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List wins seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director (Spielberg).
• March 23
  • Green Ramp disaster: two military aircraft collide over Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina causing 24 fatalities.
  • Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana.
• March 27
  • TV tycoon Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition wins the Italian general election.
  • The biggest tornado outbreak in 1994 occurs in the southeastern United States; one tornado kills 22 people at the Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama.
• March 28 – Shell House massacre: Inkatha Freedom Party and ANC supporters battle in central Johannesburg, South Africa.
• March 31 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

April

Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the 1994 South African general election

• April 2 – The National Convention of New Sudan of the SPLA/M opens in Chukudum.
• April 5 – Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, commits suicide at age 27 at his home in Seattle. His body was found three days later.
• April 6 – Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira die when a missile shoots down their jet near Kigali, Rwanda. This is taken as a pretext to begin the Rwandan genocide.
• April 7 – The Rwandan genocide begins in Kigali, Rwanda.
• April 16 – Voters in Finland decide to join the European Union in a referendum.
• April 20 – South Africa adopts a new national flag, replacing the "Oranje, Blanje, Blou" flag adopted in 1928 that was used during apartheid.
• April 21 – The Red Cross estimates that hundreds of thousands of Tutsi have been killed in Rwanda.
• April 25 – Sultan Azlan Muhibbudin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Yusuff Izzudin Shah Ghafarullahu-lahu ends his term as the 9th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
• April 26
  • Tuanku Jaafar ibni Almarhum Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Yang di-Pertuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan, becomes the 10th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
  • China Airlines Flight 140, an Airbus A300, crashes while landing at Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people.
• April 27 – South Africa holds its first fully multiracial elections, marking the final end of the last vestiges of apartheid. Nelson Mandela wins the elections and is sworn in as the first democratically elected president the following month.

May

• May 1 – Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy.
• May 5 – The Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan is signed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, effectively freezing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
• May 6 – The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers more than seven years to complete, opens between England and France, enabling passengers to travel between the two countries in 35 minutes.
• May 10
  • Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.
  • The Pinkenba Six, including future political candidate Mark Ellis, kidnap 3 Indigenous children in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
  • Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy is executed by lethal injection in the Stateville Correctional Center.
  • Serial Killer Jeffery Dahmer is baptised in prison.
  • A solar eclipse occurs in The United States
• May 17 – Malawi holds its first multiparty elections.
• May 18 – The Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is deemed safe for consumption by the FDA, becoming the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption.
• May 20 – After a funeral in Cluny Parish Church, Edinburgh attended by 900 people and after which 3,000 people lined the streets, John Smith is buried in a private family funeral on the island of Iona, at the sacred burial ground of Reilig Odhráin, which contains the graves of several Scottish kings as well as monarchs of Ireland, Norway and France.
• May 22 – Pope John Paul II issues the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis from the Vatican, expounding the Catholic Church's position requiring "the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone".
• May 26 - Michael Jackson marries Lisa Marie Presley in the Dominican Republic.

June

• June 1 – The Republic of South Africa rejoins the Commonwealth of Nations after the first democratic election; South Africa had departed the then-British Commonwealth in 1961.
• June 6–June 8 – Ceasefire negotiations for the Yugoslav War begin in Geneva; they agree to a one-month cessation of hostilities (which does not last more than a few days).
• June 12 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles. O. J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in a civil suit.
• June 15
  • Israel and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
  • The Lion King, the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time, is released by Walt Disney Feature Animation.
• June 17
  • NFL star O. J. Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings flee from police in a white Ford Bronco. The low-speed chase ends at Simpson's Brentwood, Los Angeles mansion, where he surrenders.
  • The 1994 FIFA World Cup starts in the United States.
• June 23 – NASA's Space Station Processing Facility, a new state-of-the-art manufacturing building for the International Space Station, officially opens at Kennedy Space Center.
• June 25 – Cold War: the last Russian troops leave Germany.
• June 26 – Microsoft announces it will no longer sell or support the MS-DOS operating system separately from Microsoft Windows.
• June 28 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult execute the first sarin gas attack at Matsumoto, Japan, killing eight and injuring 200.
• June 30 – An Airbus A330 crashes during a test flight near Toulouse, France, where Airbus is based, killing the seven-person crew. The test was meant to simulate an engine failure at low speed with maximum angle of climb.
• June 30
  • The Liberal Democratic Party in Japan regained power after spent 11 months of opposition, with the coalition with Japanese Socialist Party.
  • Tropical Storm Alberto forms, hitting parts of Florida causing $1.03 billion in damage and 32 deaths.

July

Brown spots mark impact sites of the Shoemaker–Levy Comet on Jupiter's southern hemisphere.

• July 2 – Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar, 27, is shot dead in Medellín. His murder is commonly attributed as retaliation for the own goal Escobar scored in the 1994 FIFA World Cup against the United States soccer team.
• July 4 – Rwandan Patriotic Front troops capture Kigali, a major breakthrough in the Rwandan Civil War.
• July 5 – Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.
• July 7 – 1994 civil war in Yemen: Aden is occupied by troops from North Yemen.
• July 8 – North Korean President Kim Il-sung dies, but officially continues to hold office.
• July 12 – The Allied occupation of Berlin ends with a casing of the colors ceremony attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
• July 16–22 – Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact the planet Jupiter.
• July 17 – Brazil wins the 1994 FIFA World Cup, defeating Italy 3–2 in a penalty shootout in the final (full-time 0–0).
• July 18
  • AMIA bombing: In Buenos Aires, a terrorist attack destroys a building housing several Jewish organizations, killing 85 and injuring many more.
  • Rwandan Patriotic Front troops capture Gisenyi, forcing the interim government into Zaire and ending the Rwandan genocide.
• July 25 – Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration as a preliminary to signature on October 25 of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, which formally ends the state of war that has existed between the nations since 1948.

August

Hurricane John near peak intensity to the south of Hawaii on August 23

• August 5 – Groups of protesters spread from Havana, Cuba's Castillo de la Punta ("Point Castle"), creating the first protests against Fidel Castro's government since 1959.
• August 11 – The formation of Hurricane John which would go one to become the longest-lasting tropical cyclone recorded worldwide. It would dissipate on September 13th, lasting a little over 31 days.
• August 12
  • Woodstock '94 begins in Saugerties, New York. It is the 25-year anniversary of Woodstock in 1969.
  • All Major League Baseball players go on strike, beginning the longest work stoppage in the sport's history.
• August 16 – The release of the IBM Simon smartphone, being the first ever commercially available smartphone.
• August 18 - 1994 Mascara earthquake. A 5.8 earthquake lefts 171 dead in Algeria.
• August 31
  • The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army announces a "complete cessation of military operations" as part of the Northern Ireland peace process. This would temporarily end in 1996 with the Docklands bombing in England before a definite ceasefire in 1997. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed and the IRA decommissioned their weapons in 2005
  • The Russian Army leaves Estonia and Latvia, ending the last traces of Eastern Europe's Soviet occupation.

September

• September 3 – Cold War: Russia and the People's Republic of China agree to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.
• September 5 – New South Wales State MP for Cabramatta John Newman is shot outside his home, in Australia's first political assassination since 1977.
• September 8 – USAir Flight 427, a Boeing 737 with 132 people on board, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport killing all on board.
• September 13 – President Bill Clinton signs the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which bans the manufacture of new firearms with certain features for a period of 10 years.
• September 14 – The 1994 World Series is officially cancelled due to the ongoing work stoppage. It is the first time a World Series will not be played since 1904.
• September 16
  • Danish tour guide Louise Jensen is abducted, raped and murdered by three British soldiers in Cyprus.
  • Britain lifts the broadcasting ban imposed on Sinn Féin and paramilitary groups from Northern Ireland.
• September 17 – Heather Whitestone is crowned the first deaf Miss America; she is crowned Miss America 1995.
• September 19
  • U.S. troops stage a bloodless invasion of Haiti to restore the legitimately elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power.
  • Andrew Wiles proves Fermat's Last Theorem, solving the 357-year-old mathematical theorem first proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637. He would publish it in 1995.
• September 28
  • The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
  • José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, Mexican politician, is assassinated on orders of Raúl Salinas de Gortari.
• September – Mohammed Omar would found the Taliban movement in his home town of Kandahar, Afghanistan.
• September–October – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to stop cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors and begins to once again deploy troops near its border with Kuwait. In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops to Kuwait.

October

• October 1
  • In Slovakia, populist leader Vladimír Mečiar wins the general election.
  • Palau gains independence from the United Nations Trusteeship Council.
  • The World Wide Web Consortium is founded by Tim Berners-Lee, becoming the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.
• October 4 – In Switzerland, 23 members of the Order of the Solar Temple cult are found dead, a day after 25 of their fellow cultists are similarly discovered in Morin-Heights, Quebec.
• October 7 - Ingvar Carlsson returns as Prime Minister of Sweden .
• October 8 – Iraq disarmament crisis: The President of the United Nations Security Council says that Iraq must withdraw its troops from the Kuwait border, and immediately cooperate with weapons inspectors.
• October 12 – NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere either October 13 or October 14).
• October 15
  • After three years of U.S. exile, Haiti's president Aristide returns to his country.
  • Iraq disarmament crisis: following threats by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S., Iraq withdraws troops from its border with Kuwait.

November

• November 5
  • A letter by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, announcing that he has Alzheimer's disease, is released.
  • George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
  • Influential Afrikaner theologian and critic of apartheid Johan Heyns is assassinated; the killers are never apprehended or identified.
• November 6
  • A flood in Piedmont, Italy, kills dozens of people.
  • Bražuolė bridge bombing in Lithuania damages a railway bridge but trains are stopped in time to avoid casualties.
• November 7 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world's first internet radio broadcast.
• November 8
  • Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich leads the United States Republican Party in taking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm congressional elections, the first time in 40 years the Republicans secure control of both houses of Congress. George W. Bush is elected Governor of Texas.
  • Hurricane Gordon hits Central America, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, Haiti and the Southeastern United States, causing $594 million in damages and 1,152 fatalities.
• November 11 – Duy Tan University, Vietnam's University, was established.
• November 13
  • Voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union in a referendum.
  • The first passengers travel through the Channel Tunnel.
  • Dale Earnhardt wins his 7th and final NASCAR championship.
• November 15 – 1994 Nepalese general election — The CPN (UML) is a elected with a minority government, becoming the first democratically elected Communist party in Asia.
• November 16 – A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the State of California from implementing Proposition 187, that would have denied most public services to illegal aliens.
• November 20 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol.
• November 27 – According to Chinese government official confirmed report, a Fuxin Yiyuan dance hall caught fire in Liaoning Province, China, killing 233 persons, another 71 persons were rescued.
• November 28 – Voters in Norway decide not to join the European Union in a referendum.
• November 30 – The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro catches fire in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia with nearly a thousand passengers and crew aboard. After unsuccessful attempts by the crew to extinguish the fire, the vessel is evacuated and sinks two days later. During the evacuation, two die and eight are wounded.

December

• December 1 – Ernesto Zedillo takes office as President of Mexico.
• December 2 – The Australian government agrees to pay reparations to indigenous Australians who were displaced during the nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 1960s.
• December 3
  • Sony releases the PlayStation video game system in Japan; it will sell over 100 million units worldwide by the time it is discontinued in 2006.
  • Taiwan holds its first full local elections: James Soong is elected as the first and only directly-elected Governor of Taiwan; Chen Shui-bian becomes the first direct elected Mayor of Taipei; Wu Den-yih becomes the first directly-elected Mayor of Kaohsiung.
• December 11 – Russian president Boris Yeltsin orders troops into Chechnya.
• December 13
  • The trial of former President Mengistu begins in Ethiopia.
  • Fred West, 53, a builder living in Gloucester, UK, is remanded in custody, charged with murdering 12 people (including two of his own daughters) whose bodies are mostly found buried at his house in Cromwell Street. His wife Rosemary West, 41, is charged with 10 murders.
• December 14 – Construction commences on the Three Gorges Dam, at Sandouping, China.
  

  The Netscape Navigator web browser as it first appeared in December 1994
• December 15 – The initial release of Netscape Navigator, a web browser that will control the majority of the usage share for web browsers for the rest of the 1990s.
• December 19
  • A planned exchange rate correction of the Mexican peso to the US dollar, becomes a massive financial meltdown in Mexico, unleashing the 'Tequila' effect on global financial markets. This prompts a US$50 billion "bailout" by the Clinton administration.
  • Civil unions between same-sex couples are legalized in Sweden.
• December 31 – This date is skipped by the Phoenix Islands to switch from the UTC−11 time zone to UTC+13, and by the Line Islands to switch from UTC−10 to UTC+14. The latter becomes the earliest time zone in the world, one full day ahead of Hawaii.

Date unknown

• Fundación Arco Iris – a Catholic NGO is founded in Bolivia.
• Pyroclastic flows – clouds of scalding gas, pumice, and ash – rapidly descend an erupting Mount Merapi volcano in central Java, causing sixty deaths.
• Online service America Online offers gateway to World Wide Web for the first time. This marked the beginning of easy accessibility of the Web to the average person in the U.S.
• The population of Nigeria exceeds 100 million, making it the first African state to have a population above 100 million.

Births and deaths

Main pages: Category:1994 births and Deaths in 1994

Nobel Prizes

• Physics – Bertram Brockhouse, Clifford Shull
• Chemistry – George Andrew Olah
• Medicine – Alfred G. Gilman, Martin Rodbell
• Literature – Kenzaburō Ōe
• Peace – Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
• Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences – Reinhard Selten, John Forbes Nash Jr., John Harsanyi

Templeton Prize

• Michael Novak

Fields Medal

• Efim Zelmanov, Pierre-Louis Lions, Jean Bourgain, Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

Right Livelihood Award

• Astrid Lindgren, SERVOL (Service Volunteered for All), H. Sudarshan / VGKK (Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra), Ken Saro-Wiwa / MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People)