1990

From top-left, clockwise: the 1990 FIFA World Cup is held in Italy and is won by West Germany; the Human Genome Project is launched; The Pale Blue Dot image is taken by Voyager 1; West Germany and East Germany reunify; British police stand on-guard during the poll tax riots; Iraq under Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, beginning the Gulf War; an earthquake kills 35,000-50,000 people in northern Iran; the Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Millennium: 2nd millennium
Centuries:
Decades:
Years:
1990 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar1990
MCMXC
Ab urbe condita2743
Armenian calendar1439
ԹՎ ՌՆԼԹ
Assyrian calendar6740
Baháʼí calendar146–147
Balinese saka calendar1911–1912
Bengali calendar1397
Berber calendar2940
British Regnal year38 Eliz. 2 – 39 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar2534
Burmese calendar1352
Byzantine calendar7498–7499
Chinese calendar己巳年 (Earth Snake)
4687 or 4480
    — to —
庚午年 (Metal Horse)
4688 or 4481
Coptic calendar1706–1707
Discordian calendar3156
Ethiopian calendar1982–1983
Hebrew calendar5750–5751
Hindu calendars
 - Vikram Samvat2046–2047
 - Shaka Samvat1911–1912
 - Kali Yuga5090–5091
Holocene calendar11990
Igbo calendar990–991
Iranian calendar1368–1369
Islamic calendar1410–1411
Japanese calendarHeisei 2
(平成2年)
Javanese calendar1922–1923
Juche calendar79
Julian calendarGregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar4323
Minguo calendarROC 79
民國79年
Nanakshahi calendar522
Thai solar calendar2533
Tibetan calendar阴土蛇年
(female Earth-Snake)
2116 or 1735 or 963
    — to —
阳金马年
(male Iron-Horse)
2117 or 1736 or 964
Unix time631152000 – 662687999

1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1990th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 990th year of the 2nd millennium, the 90th year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 1990s decade.

Important events of 1990 include the Reunification of Germany and the unification of Yemen,[1] the formal beginning of the Human Genome Project (finished in 2003), the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the separation of Namibia from South Africa, and the Baltic states declaring independence from the Soviet Union during Perestroika. Yugoslavia's communist regime collapses amidst increasing internal tensions and multiparty elections held within its constituent republics result in separatist governments being elected in most of the republics marking the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Also in this year began the crisis that would lead to the Gulf War in 1991 following the Iraq invasion and the largely internationally unrecognized annexation of Kuwait. This led to Operation Desert Shield being enacted with an international coalition of military forces being built up on the Kuwaiti-Saudi border with demands for Iraq to peacefully withdraw from Kuwait. Also in this year, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after more than 11 years.

1990 was an important year in the Internet's early history. In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server and the foundation for the World Wide Web. Test operations began around December 20 and it was released outside CERN the following year.[2] 1990 also saw the official decommissioning of the ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet system and the introduction of the first content web search engine, Archie, on September 10.[3]

September 14, 1990, saw the first case of successful somatic gene therapy on a patient.[4]

Due to the early 1990s recession that began that year and uncertainty due to the collapse of the socialist governments in Eastern Europe, birth rates in many countries stopped rising or fell steeply in 1990. In most western countries the Echo Boom peaked in 1990; fertility rates declined thereafter.[5]

  1. ^ "Yemen". Encyclopedia Britannica. November 20, 2023. Archived from the original on May 3, 2015. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  2. ^ "WWW Project History". w3.org. Archived from the original on September 23, 2013. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
  3. ^ "The first search engine, Archive". illinois.edu. Archived from the original on January 17, 2012.
  4. ^ "Gene Therapy – A Brief History". CitizenLink. Archived from the original on October 2, 2015.
  5. ^ "NCHS Data Brief ■ No. 136 ■ December 2013" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 6, 2017. Retrieved September 8, 2017.