home

= The Amazing 90’s  = This is my 8th grade exit project on the 1990’s. It includes some of the good happenings during the 1990’s and some of the most horrific and tragic events during the 90’s. In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from jail after spending 27 years in prison. He was released on February 11, 1990. In 1956 Mandela and 155 others were charged with treason. When he was arrested in 1962 he wasn’t released until 1990. In 1962 Mandela was arrested because he went underground and launched a guerilla warfare group against Pretoria. He was later arrested in 1962 and was sentenced to five years in prison but, in 1963, he was convicted once more, this time on sabotage charges. Mandela was sentenced to life on June 12, 1964. He was sent to Robben Island, an isolated prison, for 18 years. He also spent time in Victor Verster prison near Cape Town, South Africa. He had been allowed only one visitor every month and one 500 word letter every month also. He was released at the age 71. In 1985 Mandela received an offer of freedom, but he refused until the president granted blacks full political rights and had stopped segregation. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for that act of valor. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed into 15 separate countries. The United States was happy about their collapse. When the Union fell, it basically ended the Cold War, which had taken place since the end of World War 2. The Cold War is what really ended the Soviet Union. It all changed for the Soviets when Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed president of the Communist party. Gorbachev’s goal was to rejuvenate and accelerate the lagging economy. The relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union improved under Gorbachev. Gorbachev and President H.W. Bush declared an end to the Cold War. In the same year the Berlin Wall fell, signifying the end of communism in East Germany. After the Soviet fall, there was a domino effect of Communist countries collapsing. The countries that formed from the Soviet Union are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. These countries are now self-governed. In 1990 Boris Yeltin became president of the Soviets. In Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, their communist government collapsed after the Cold War ended. In 1992, Manuel Noriega was convicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Noriega was dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. President H.W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama in 1989. The invasion was to capture and bring Noriega into U.S. custody so he can be tried. During the invasion, Noriega took refuge in the Vatican Embassy. He surrendered after ten days of taking refuge in the Embassy. He was convicted in a federal court in Miami for smuggling cocaine into the U.S... He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was later convicted in on money laundering charges. That time he was sentenced for 7 years in prison. Later that year he was retried on the same charge in Miami. He was also convicted in Panama of ordering the murder of political opponents as embezzlement and corruption. He gave himself the title of general in 1983. President H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama because a U.S. marine was murdered while walking the streets of Panama City. France wanted to extradite Noriega after his prison sentence ended in 2007, but he still remains in U.S. custody. In 1993, the great linebacker, Lawrence Taylor, retired after 13 long years in the NFL. Lawrence Taylor attended UNC Chapel Hill. While at UNC, Taylor played defensive lineman his first 2 years, and transitioned to linebacker his last 2 years. After he left UNC, the college decided to retire his jersey number, 98. In the 1981 draft 26 of 28 general managers said they wanted Lawrence Taylor on their team. Taylor was drafted as the second overall pick by the New York Giants in the 1981 draft. The decline of Taylor’s career came when Bill Parcels, the Giants head coach from 1983-1990, retired in1990 season. Also in 1990 was the first year Lawrence Taylor wasn’t elected to the Pro Bowl. Lawrence Taylor never liked the nickname LT that the fans gave him. Taylor ended his careers with 142 official sacks. He is 1 of 3 defensive players ever to receive the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award. During his career Taylor was named All-Pro 6 times, and voted to the Pro Bowl 10 times during his 13 year career. He won 2 Super Bowls, Super Bowl 21, and Super Bowl 25, with the Giants. He is considered the greatest linebacker ever partly because he broke Joe Theismann’s leg which ended Theismann’s career. Taylor ended his career with 1088 tackles, 33 forced fumbles, and 9 interceptions. Taylor was suspended from the league several times throughout his career. On June 12, 994 O.J. Simpson was arrested for double murder. The Simpson trials lasted for 8 months. It is considered the longest trial in U.S. history. Right before the arrest, Simpson led California Highway Patrol on a high speed chase. The victim’s bodies were found outside Simpson’s former wives house. The victims were Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. O.J. Simpson was charged with murder of the 1st degree. Simpson was found innocent. He was charged with civil charges by the families of the victims. The trial was held in the California Superior Court. In the civil trial he was found guilty. He was forced to pay monetary restitution. The trials started on September 17, 1996. The cause of their deaths was brutal stabbing. In 1995 there was a sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway. The gas attack killed a total of 12 people. It left 3,800 to 6,000 people injured. The attack was meant to kill 3 police officers. A group of religious cultists were the ones who released the toxic nerve gas. The name of the cult was Aum Shinrikyo. They built a facility to make biological and chemical weapons. At that facility they tested many chemicals like botulin toxin, anthrax, cholera, Q fever, and the Ebola virus. In 1994, a couple of the cult members drove a truck into a neighborhood in Matsumoto. Then used remote computers to activate the gas in the trucks. Their targets were 3 judges who were going to rule against the cult. The sarin gas was first introduced in Nazi Germany. Sarin gas is 500 times stronger than cyanide. A pinhead size drop of sarin can kill a full grown adult. The symptoms are bleeding from the nose and the mouth, fevers, coma, convulsions, difficulty breathing, foaming at the mouth, loss of consciousness, loss of memory, loss of vision, nausea, vomiting, paralysis, respiratory problems, seizures, and uncontrollable trembling. Some of the people who survived this attack had permanent symptoms, along with disturbed sleep and post-traumatic stress disorder. Shoko Asahara was the leader of the cult. In 1996, Tupac Shakur was killed at age 25. Tupac Shakur was born on June 16, 1971. He took ballet as a teen. Tupac died on Friday, September 13, 1996. He was involved with an east coast west coast rapper rivalry. He liked to insult his enemies in his songs. Tupac Shakur was shot 6 times in the chest on the way to a boxing match in Vegas. He died 6 days later from the wounds. After his death many of his albums were released selling millions of copies. Along with Tupac being a rapper he was also an actor. Days after his death, his posse smoked some of his ashes with weed. The last movie Tupac starred in was called Gang Related. Tupac Shakur died at the young age of 25. In 1997, the Heaven’s Gate cult committed a mass suicide. It’s the country’s worse mass suicide. Thirty-nine people died. 18 men and 21 women died. Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles created the cult. Applewhite first met Nettles when he checked himself into a mental hospital to stop his homosexual urges and was hearing voices in his head. She was the nurse that took care of him. Nettles died of cancer in 1985. The members of the cult thought there was a spaceship following the comet Hale-Bopp. Applewhite also believed that bodies were just temporary containers for the soul. Before they committed the suicide they choose one person to stay back and spread the word about this belief. All the members of the cult wore all black during the suicide. On their shirt’s they had a patch that said Heaven’s Gate Away Team. Also the men were castrated. It took 3 days for all 39 members to die. Later that year 2 former member’s committed suicide bringing the death toll to 41. In 1998, Google was founded by 2 PhD students at Stanford University. Google was founded on September 4, 1998. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google started off as a research project. Google’s original name was Backrub. The Google engineers spend 20% of their time developing projects that interested them. The origin of the word Google is Googol which represents 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google was a private company until 2004.Google owns YouTube. Google HQ is in Mountain View, California. The name of the HQ is Googolplex. In 2004 Google was worth 23 billion. Google is the number one search engine in the world. It is popular for many of its apps. In 1999 a 7.6 earthquake hit Turkey. The earthquake lasted about 45 seconds. The city of Izmit was the closest to the epicenter. 18,000 people were found dead, 44,000 were injured, and 300,000 houses were damaged. 40,000 businesses were found the same way. The earthquake was followed by more than 1,300 aftershocks. This created a second quake. This one lasted 30 seconds. It was a 7.2 on the Richter scale. The earthquake was on August 17. The earthquake happened on the longest and most studied strike-slip fault, North Anatolian. This earthquake is marked as the 11th earthquake to have a magnitude greater than 6.4 on the North Anatolian fault.