The 1990s Government, Politics, and Law: Chronology

1990:     January 3 Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, dictator of Panama (1983–89), is arrested on drug smuggling, racketeering, and money laundering charges.

1990:     August 2 Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invades Kuwait. President George Bush freezes Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets in U.S. financial institutions; the United Nations calls on Iraq to withdraw.

1990:     August 7 The United States sends the 82nd Airborne Division and several fighter squadrons to the Middle East.

1991:     January 16 U.S. warplanes and missiles attack Iraq and occupied areas of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm, launching the Persian Gulf War.

1991:     March 3 Rodney King is beaten by Los Angeles police officers following a high-speed automobile chase.

1991:     October 11 The Clarence Thomas nomination hearings begin before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Anita Hill, a former colleague of Thomas's, accuses the Supreme Court nominee of sexual harassment.

1992:     February 1 President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin proclaim a formal end to the cold war.

1992:     April 29 Rioting erupts in south central Los Angeles after the four police officers accused of beating Rodney King are either acquitted or given light sentences. The rioting lasts until May 2.

1992:     December 24 As his term in office nears its end, President Bush pardons all former Reagan officials who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s.

1993:     February 26 The World Trade Center in New York City is bombed, killing six people and injuring more than one thousand. Several Islamic extremists are later arrested and convicted for carrying out the attack.

1993:     April 19 Federal agents storm the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ending a fifty-one-day siege in a fiery inferno and killing eighty men, women, and children.

1993:     July 20 White House deputy counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. is found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia.

1994:     February 3 President Bill Clinton ends the trade embargo against the Republic of Vietnam, which had been put into effect in 1975.

1994:     May 6 Paula Corbin Jones files suit in federal court charging President Clinton with having committed sexual harassment against her while he was governor of Arkansas.

1994:     December 5 Newton "Newt" Gingrich (R-Georgia) is chosen to be Speaker of the House.

1995:     April 19 A bomb explodes at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring more than 500.

1995:     Summer Monica Lewinsky serves as an intern at the White House.

1995:     October 3 O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

1996:     January 26 First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies before a grand jury in connection with the Whitewater real estate investment investigation

1996:     April 3 Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski is arrested by FBI agents at his Montana cabin in connection with the Unabomber case.

1996:     December 5 President Clinton appoints Madeleine Albright as the first female secretary of state.

1997:     January 17 Newt Gingrich is found guilty of ethics violations ten days after being reelected as speaker of the House of Representatives.

1997:     May 27 The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that President Clinton could not delay the civil suit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones.

1997:     June 2 Timothy McVeigh is convicted of charges in connection with the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.

1998:     January 21 President Clinton denies an alleged affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1998:     September 11 Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr submits his report to Congress on possible offenses by President Clinton that could lead to impeachment.

1998:     December 19 The U.S. House of Representatives passes two Articles of Impeachment against President Clinton.

1999:     January 7 The U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton begins, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding.

1999:     February 12 President Clinton is acquitted by the Senate on both Articles of Impeachment.

1999:     April 12 A U.S. district court judge holds President Clinton in contempt of court for giving misleading information when he was asked about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. It is the first time in U.S. history a sitting president in held in contempt of civil court.