Important People:
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin 1991
He was the first President of the Russian Federation. On 12 June 1991 he was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president in Russian history. Yeltsin was himself elected president of the Russian Federation in 1991, and after the Soviet Union collapsed he remained in power.Nelson Mandela 1994
He is the former President of South Africa, and the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections. Mandela has received more than one hundred awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He is currently a celebrated elder statesman who continues to voice his opinion on topical issues. In South Africa he is often known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela's clan. The title has come to be synonymous with Nelson Mandela. Mandela, on his 89th birthday launched an initiative called Global Elders, a group of 12 wise men and women, who would address global problems by offering expertise and guidance. Eileen Collins 1999
She became the first female to head a space shuttle mission. She was the first female astronaut that to pilot and was the first commander of the Space Shuttle. She led the people with an inspiring life of adventure, leadership, and achievement. For her final mission she commanded Space Shuttle Discovery’s historic "Return to Flight" mission. She is now sharing her experiences as a test pilot, astronaut, and space flight commander with audiences around the world.Important Events of the Decade
Hale-Bopp Comet 1997
On July 23, 1995 an unusually bright comet outside of Jupiter's orbit was discovered independently by Alan Hale, New Mexico and Thomas Bopp, Arizona. The new comet, designated C/1995 O1, is the farthest comet ever discovered by amateurs and appeared 1000 times brighter than Comet Halley did at the same distance. Normally, comets are inert when they are beyond the orbit of Jupiter, so it has been speculated that Comet Hale-Bopp is either a rather large comet or experienced a bright outburst. The comet is the brightest comet since Comet West in 1976. From Hubble Space Tcet's diameter has been determined to be about 40 km. The Pic du Midi Observatory tained from their observations that the comet's rotation rate is 11.4 hours.
First nonstop balloon flight around world completed in 20 days.
Saturday, March 20, 1999, the Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon, piloted by Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, became the first balloon to fly nonstop around the world. Around-the-world ballooning is a sophisticated enterprise. It uses specially designed balloons that are nearly ten stories tall, high-tech gondolas for the crew and flight equipment, and numerous experts on the ground at mission control. The Cable & Wireless balloon launched on its around-the-world attempt from Almeira, Spain on February 17, 1999. The pilots were forced to ditch the balloon in the ocean near Tokyo, Japan on March 7. They did not complete their goal of circling the globe, but the flight set a world record for duration—17 days, 18 hours, 41 minutes. Two weeks later this record was surpassed by the Breitling Orbiter 3. Dozens of people exposed to radiation in
Japan's worst nuclear accident.
It was on September 30, 1999. In the process of purifying reactor fuel, workers were supposed to use an automatic pump to mix up to 2.4 kg of enriched uranium with nitric acid. Instead, they manually used a stainless steel bucket and mixed 16 kg of the fissile material. The uranium reached a critical mass at 10 35 am and set off an uncontrolled chain reaction that emitted radiation for almost 20 hours. The three workers who carried out the operation reported seeing a blue flash - the Cerenkov radiation that is emitted during a critical reaction before collapsing with nausea. They were rescued by colleagues and taken to a local hospital by emergency services. After the men were taken to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, just east of Tokyo, tests on Mr Ouchi and Mr Shinohara showed their lymphatic blood count had plunged to almost zero. Symptoms included nausea, diarrhoea, and dehydration. Three days after the accident the two men were transferred to the University of Tokyo Hospital for transfusion operations that were seen as the only hope of reactivating their blood producing functions. At the time the BMJ went to press, Mr Ouchi was due to receive peripheral stem cells from his brother and Mr Shinohara was to have a transfusion from congealed umbilical cord blood. David Kyd, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, said that the chances of the two men surviving were slim. JCO took more than an hour to inform the local authorities about the accident, and the central government waited 12 hours before warning 310 000 residents within a 10 km radius of the site that they should stay indoors and close their windows. Roads were closed, schools shut, and rail services suspended; the authorities advised residents not to drink water from wells or harvest their crops. The all clear came 27 hours after the accident. Since then, more than 10 000 residents have requested medical checks.Important Technological Improvemetns of the Decade:
Hubble Space Telescope 1990
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a telescope in orbit around the Earth, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble. Its position outside the Earth's Atmosphere provides significant advantages over ground-based telescopes and the Hubble can observe ultra violet light. With it, astronomers have made many observations leading to breakthroughs in astrophics. Hubble's Ultra Deep Field is the most sensitive astronomical optical image ever taken.
Servicing Mission 1 took place in December 1993 when Hubble's imaging flaw was corrected. Servicing Mission 2 occurred in February 1997 when two new instruments were installed. Servicing Mission 3 was split into two distinct missions: SM3A occurred in December 1999 when urgently needed repairs were made to Hubble; and then SM3B followed in March 2002 when the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was installed.
Following the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, the fifth servicing mission (SM4), initially planned for 2004, was canceled on safety grounds. NASA determined that a manned mission would be too dangerous, due to a lack of access to the International Space Station(ISS), which can serve as a safe haven for an astronaut crew. The Shuttle cannot travel between the Hubble and ISS orbits. The organization later reconsidered this position, and, on October 31, 2006, NASA administrator Mike Griffin gave the green light for a final Hubble servicing mission to be flown by Atlantis. The mission is now planned for September 2008.As a safety precaution, NASA will have the orbiter Discovery standing by at Launch Complex 39B to provide rescue in the event of an emergency. The planned repairs to the Hubble will allow the telescope to function until at least 2013, when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is due to be launched. The JWST will be far superior to Hubble for many astronomical research programs, but will only observe in infrared, so that it will not replace Hubble's ability to observe in the visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum.
The Pathfinder transmits thousands of pictures from the Mars.
The Pathfinder interplanetary spacecraft from Earth ended its epic, 309-million-mile journey on July 4, 1997, by successfully delivering a pyramid-shaped Mars station, complete with camera, weather tower and instrument-laden rover named Sojourner, in an historic safe landing on the Martian surface at 1707Making the first landing by a U.S. spacecraft on Mars in 21 years, Pathfinder bounced to a halt in the dry mouth of an ancient channel carved by flood waters. Shortly after it landed, scientists back on Earth were surprised to hear Pathfinder transmitting signals they had not expected to hear until four hours later in the day. The radio information told mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the craft was in a stable condition on the Martian ground with its revolutionary airbags deflated
as planned and its three unfolding steel and graphite petal-feet planted firmly on Martian soil. Pathfinder sent out a 22-lb., remote-controlled buggy named Sojourner to explore the Red Planet and send back photographs of the rocky Martian landscape.
Popular Consumer Product of the Decade:
On May 22, Microsoft releases Windows version 3.0, which sells close to thirty million copies in a year; Windows becomes the industry standard in consumer operating systems.
Famous book of the Decade:
Memoirs of a Geisha by Authur S. GoldenOne of the more remarkable literary feats pulled off in recent years was by Arthur Golden in his best-selling first novel, ``Memoirs of a Geisha.''
The publishing world marveled at how Golden -- white, male, member of a powerful media clan -- was able so convincingly to recreate the lost and forgotten world of prewar Japan, as seen through the eyes of a young girl growing to womanhood. In the novel, Chiyo is snatched in 1929 from poverty in a fishing village and raised in slavery to become a geisha.
Important Scientific Discoveries of the Decade:
THE WORLD's first course of gene therapy began last week. Doctors in Bethesda, Maryland, infused white blood cells back into a four-year-old girl, after genetically altering them to correct a fatal illness.W. French Anderson, a haematologist at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, directed the experiment in collaboration with Michael Blaese of the National Cancer Institute. 'If this works, gene therapy might very well become a majorL new revolution in medicine,' Anderson said.
Credits: wekipedia.com, infoplease.com, http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade90.html
