Seattle
- Pike Place Market celebrated its 85th anniversary. A farmers' market that had survived urban-renewal threats and become a tourist landmark.
- Starbucks went public on NASDAQ, transforming a Seattle coffee roaster into a global brand and making its founders wealthy beyond imagination.
- Boeing dominated the regional economy, employing more than 100,000 in the Puget Sound.
The United States
- Clinton signed NAFTA into law, integrating the US, Canadian, and Mexican economies and igniting a trade debate that would simmer for the next three decades.
- The World Trade Center was bombed by Islamist extremists in February; six died and over a thousand were injured, a warning the country did not yet fully absorb.
- The 51-day standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco ended in fire, killing 76 people and hardening a new vein of anti-government fury.
The World
- The Oslo Accords gave the world a brief, hopeful glimpse of Israeli–Palestinian peace; Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn.
- "Velvet Divorce": Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1.
- Toni Morrison became the first Black American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, a recognition long overdue.
Program
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