WHAT ALL HAPPENED JANUARY TO APRIL 1990
Find out what all happened January to April 1990

Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power. (7. February 1990)

Ninety-two people are killed aboard Indian Airlines Flight 605 at Bangalore, India. (14. February 1990)

Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, United Kingdom, say they have seized what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq. (11. April 1990)

The Happy Land fire was an arson fire that kills 87 people trapped inside an illegal nightclub in the New York City borough of The Bronx. (25. March 1990)

Jim Gary's "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs" exhibition opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. (12. April 1990)

Lithuania declares itself independent from the Soviet Union. (11. March 1990)

A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry M/S Scandinavian Star, killing 158 people. (7. April 1990)

Violeta Chamorro takes office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman to hold the position. (25. April 1990)

Apartheid: F. W. de Klerk announces the unbanning of the African National Congress and promises to release Nelson Mandela. (2. February 1990)

In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. (18. March 1990)

Buster Douglas, a 40-1 underdog, knocks out Mike Tyson in ten rounds at Tokyo to win boxing's world Heavyweight title and cause one of the largest upsets in sports history. (11. February 1990)

The "Doctor of Death", Jack Kevorkian, participates in his first assisted suicide. (16. April 1990)

In Haiti, Prosper Avril is ousted 18 months after seizing power in a coup. (10. March 1990)

German reunification: An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany. (13. February 1990)

Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrenders to American forces. (3. January 1990)

Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia. (13. January 1990)

Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union. (15. March 1990)

The first McDonald's in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow. (31. January 1990)

Time Warner is formed by the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. (10. January 1990)

Japan launches Hiten, the country's first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States. (24. January 1990)