Portal:1990s

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The 1990s Portal

From top left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope orbits the Earth after it was launched in 1990; American jets fly over burning oil fields in the 1991 Gulf War; the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993; the World Wide Web gains massive popularity worldwide; Boris Yeltsin greets crowds after the failed August Coup, which leads to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991; Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell; the funeral procession of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a 1997 car crash, and was mourned by millions; hundreds of thousands of Tutsi people are killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994

The 1990s (pronounced "nineteen-nineties"; shortened to "the '90s") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on 1 January 1990, and ended on 31 December 1999.

Culturally, the 1990s are characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media, which continues into the present day. Movements such as hip hop, the rave scene and grunge spread around the world to young people during that decade, aided by then-new technology such as cable television and the World Wide Web.

In the absence of world communism, which collapsed in the first two years of the decade, the 1990s was politically defined by a movement towards the right-wing, including increase in support for far-right parties in Europe[1] as well as the advent of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party[2] and cuts in social spending in the United States,[3] Canada,[4] New Zealand,[5] and the UK.[6] The United States also saw a massive revival in the use of the death penalty in the 1990s, which reversed in the early 21st century.[7] During the 1990s the character of the European Union and Euro were formed and codified in treaties.

A combination of factors, including the continued mass mobilization of capital markets through neo-liberalism, the thawing of the decades-long Cold War, the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet from the middle of the decade onwards, increasing skepticism towards government, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world and within countries. The dot-com bubble of 1997–2000 brought wealth to some entrepreneurs before its crash between 2000 and 2001.

The 1990s saw extreme advances in technology, with the World Wide Web, the first gene therapy trial, and the first designer babies[8] all emerging in 1990 and being improved and built upon throughout the decade.

New ethnic conflicts emerged in Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, the former two which led to the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, respectively. Signs of any resolution of tensions between Israel and the Arab world remained elusive despite the progress of the Oslo Accords, though The Troubles in Northern Ireland came to a standstill in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of violence.[9]

The Channel Tunnel (French: Tunnel sous la Manche), sometimes referred to informally as the Chunnel, is a 50.46-kilometre (31.35 mi) undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. It is the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland. At its lowest point, it is 75 metres (246 ft) below the sea bed and 115 metres (377 ft) below sea level. At 37.9 kilometres (23.5 mi), it has the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world and is the third-longest railway tunnel in the world. The speed limit for trains through the tunnel is 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph). The tunnel is owned and operated by Getlink, formerly Groupe Eurotunnel.

The tunnel carries high-speed Eurostar passenger trains, LeShuttle services for road vehicles and freight trains. It connects end-to-end with high-speed railway lines: the LGV Nord in France and High Speed 1 in England. In 2017, rail services carried 10.3 million passengers and 1.22 million tonnes of freight, and the Shuttle carried 10.4 million passengers, 2.6 million cars, 51,000 coaches, and 1.6 million lorries (equivalent to 21.3 million tonnes of freight), compared with 11.7 million passengers, 2.6 million lorries and 2.2 million cars by sea through the Port of Dover. (Full article...)
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Nelson Mandela voting during the South African general election, 1994, which marked the end of Apartheid

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Braxton in 2015

Toni Michele Braxton (born October 7, 1967) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and television personality. She has sold over 70 million records worldwide and is one of the best-selling female artists in history. Braxton has won seven Grammy Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, seven American Music Awards, and numerous other accolades. In 2011, Braxton was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. In 2017 she was honored with the Legend Award at the Soul Train Music Awards.

In the late 1980s, Braxton began performing with her sisters in a music group known as The Braxtons; the group was signed to Arista Records. After attracting the attention of producers Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and being signed to LaFace Records, Braxton released her self-titled debut studio album in 1993. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 10 million copies worldwide. In addition, the singles "Another Sad Love Song" and "Breathe Again" became international successes. The album brought Braxton three Grammy Awards, including the Grammy for Best New Artist. (Full article...)

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Sources

  1. ^ Merkl, Peter; Leonard, Weinberg (2 August 2004). Right-wing Extremism in the Twenty-first Century. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-76421-0.
  2. ^ "India – The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism".
  3. ^ ROSEN, RUTH (27 December 1994). "Which of Us Isn't Taking 'Welfare'? : Poor children rank low in government largess; why is the comfortable class so mean?". Los Angeles Times.
  4. ^ Séguin, Gilles. "Provincial Welfare Reforms in the 1990s – Canadian Social Research Links".
  5. ^ Maloney, Tim (1 May 2002). "Welfare Reform and Unemployment in New Zealand". Economica. 69 (274): 273–293. doi:10.1111/1468-0335.00283.
  6. ^ "Policy Exchange – Shaping the Policy Agenda" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2014.
  7. ^ https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/19/report-us-executions-dipped-in-2013
  8. ^ Handyside, AH; Kontogianni, EH; Hardy, K; Winston, RM (1990). "Pregnancies from biopsied human preimplantation embryos sexed by Y-specific DNA amplification". Nature. 344 (6268): 768–70. Bibcode:1990Natur.344..768H. doi:10.1038/344768a0. PMID 2330030.
  9. ^ Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2004). The Roaring Nineties. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32618-5.
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