Top News Stories from 1994

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: Yasir Arafat (Palestine), Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin (both Israel)
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U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

President: William J. Clinton
Vice President: Albert Gore, Jr.
Population: 260,289,237
Life expectancy: 75.7 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 53.7
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000) 46.6
More U.S. Statistics...

Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars): $6,947.00 billion
Federal spending: $1460.84 billion
Federal debt $4643.7 billion
Consumer Price Index: $148.2
Unemployment: 6.1%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.29

Sports

Super Bowl
Dallas d. Buffalo
World Series
Not Held
NBA Championship
Houston d. New York
Stanley Cup
NY Rangers d. Vancouver
Wimbledon
Women: Conchita Martinez d. M. Navratilova (6-4 3-6 6-3)
Men: Pete Sampras d. G. Ivanisevic (7-6 7-6 6-0)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Go For Gin
NCAA Basketball Championship
Arkansas d. Duke
NCAA Football Champions
Nebraska (13-0-0)
World Cup
Brazil d. Italy

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction:

The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx

Music: Of Reminiscences and Reflections, Gunther Schuller
Drama: Three Tall Women, Edward Albee
Academy Award, Best Picture: Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen and Branko Lustig, producers (Universal)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
Record of the Year: "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston
Album of the Year: The Bodyguard—Original Soundtrack Album, Whitney Houston (Arista)
Song of the Year: "A Whole New World" (Theme From Aladdin), Alan Menken and Tim Rice, songwriters
Miss America: Kimberly Clarice Aiken (SC)
More Entertainment Awards...

Events

  • Kurt Cobain kills himself. He was 27.
  • Ninety-five million viewers watch O. J. Simpson and Al Cowlings drive along Los Angeles freeways in history's most exciting low-speed chase.
  • Steven Spielberg wins his first directing Oscar for Schindler's List.
  • For the first time in history, chain bookstores outsell independent stores, signaling what many fear to be the death of smaller booksellers at the hands of superstores.
  • Tom Hanks wins his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar. He won in 1993 for his role in Philadelphia and in 1994 for Forrest Gump.
  • ER and Friends debut on NBC, establishing NBC's dominance of the Thursday-night lineup.
  • Woodstock '94 commemorates the original weekend-long concert. Green Day and Nine Inch Nails join Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers.

Movies

  • Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show, Nobody's Fool

Books

  • James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
  • Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: George A. Olah (US), University of Southern California in Los Angeles, for research that opened new ways to break apart and rebuild compounds of carbon and hydrogen
Physics: Clifford G. Shull (US) and Bertram N. Brockhouse (Canada), for adapting beams of neutrons as probes to explore the atomic structure of matter
Physiology or Medicine: Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell (both US), for discovery of G-proteins that help cells respond to outside signals
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...
  • White House launches Web page. Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term "spamming" to the Internet vocabulary. Background: Computers and Internet
  • Dr. Ned First (US) clones calves from cells of early embryos. Background: Cloning Milestones
  • The FDA approves the Flavr Savr tomato, the first genetically-engineered food product.

Death

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