The 1990s Lifestyles and Social Trends: Chronology

1990:      Robert Bly's Iron John is published, giving a boost to the growing men's movement.

1990:     January 1 Maryland becomes the first state to ban the sale of cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials.

1990:     November 1 Under pressure from environmental groups, McDonald's agrees to replace polystyrene containers with paper wrappers.

1991:     February 14 Homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples begin registering under a new law in San Francisco to be recognized officially as "domestic partners."

1991:     September 5 to 7 Naval and Marine aviators attending the thirty-fifth annual Tailhook convention assault dozens of women, including fourteen fellow officers at a hotel, in a drunken ritual called "the gauntlet."

1991:     October In New York City, the first Planet Hollywood restaurant opens.

1992:     June 9 William Pinckney becomes the first African American to sail solo around the world.

1992:     August 11 The Mall of America, the biggest shopping complex built in the United States, opens in Bloomington, Minnesota.

1992:     November Filmmaker Spike Lee's movie Malcolm X debuts in theaters, helping create a market for T-shirts and baseball caps bearing a simple "X" honoring the slain 1960s leader of the Nation of Islam.

1993:     January 18 The Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday is observed for the first time in all fifty states.

1993:     February 2 Smoking is officially prohibited at the White House.

1993:     April 25 Gay-rights activists and supporters march on Washington demanding equal rights for gays and lesbians and freedom from discrimination.

1994:     August Sportswear designer Tommy Hilfiger unveils his first complete line of tailored men's clothing, showing classic styles in suits, sport jackets, and coats.

1994:     September 3 In Alaska, a local Native American tribal council exiles two teenage Tlingit boys, who beat and robbed a pizza delivery man, to an uninhabited island for eighteen months.

1994:     October 11 The Colorado Supreme Court strikes down an antigay-rights measures as unconstitutional.

1995:     April 19 A bomb explodes in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

1995:     June 21 The Southern Baptist Convention formally apologizes for its history of racism.

1995:     October 16 Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan leads the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

1996:     July 12 The U.S. House of Representatives votes overwhelmingly to define marriage in federal laws as the legal union of a man and a woman only, regardless of what individual states recognize.

1996:     September 19 Internationl Business Machines (IBM) announces it will extend health benefits to partners of homosexual and lesbian employees.

1997:      In a Time/CNN poll, 22 percent of Americans believe that aliens from outer space have been in contact with humans; another 13 percent believe that aliens have abducted human beings in order to observe them or perform experiments on them.

1997:     March 26 Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate religious cult commit suicide in their residence near San Diego. They anticipated being taken to a higher level of consciousness in a flying saucer supposedly trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.

1997:     June A pair of century-old Levi's jeans found in a mine shaft sell for twenty-five thousand dollars.

1998:     February 10 A college dropout who had e-mailed threats to Asian students is convicted of committing the first "hate crime in cyberspace."

1998:     October 16 Anti-gay protestors demonstrate outside the funeral of twenty-one-year-old Matthew Wayne Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, who died October 12 after having been beaten on October 7.

1998:     December Khakis are everywhere, replacing denim jeans as the first choice in casual dress for both men and women.

1999:     February 9 The Reverend Jerry Falwell warns in his National Liberty Journal that Tinky-Winky, a character on the popular children's television program Teletubbies, promotes a homosexual lifestyle.

1999:     February 11 In a landmark ruling, a federal jury in Brooklyn holds gun manufacturers liable for shootings carried out with illegally obtained handguns.