1996 Timeline

Jan. 2, 1996 - Former Interior Secretary  James Watt pleads guilty to misdemeanor count of attempting to sway a grand jury investigating 1980s influence-peddling at the  Department of Housing and Urban Development; AT&T announces elimination of 40,000 jobs, primarily through layoffs.

Jan. 5, 1996 - U.S. troops begin a phased withdrawal from Haiti; Congress approves legislation sending federal employees back to work after shutdown.

Jan. 8, 1996 - A massive blizzard hits the eastern half of the US.  At least 50 deaths are blamed on the weather.

Jan. 15, 1996 -  Russian troops attack Pervomayskaya, Russia, where Chechen rebels have been holding up to 100 hostages since Jan. 9.

Jan. 16, 1996 - Armed men in Trabzon, Turkey, hijack a Black Sea ferry, and demand that Russian troops stop fighting Chechen rebels.

Jan. 17, 1996 - Russian forces give up hope of saving any hostages and unleash a scorching barrage of rockets on Pervomayskaya; Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers are handed long prison sentences for plotting to blow up New York-area landmarks.

Jan. 18, 1996 - Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson files for divorce from Michael Jackson.

Jan. 21, 1996 -  Yasser Arafat wins in a landslide election (88 percent of the vote) in first Palestinian election.

Jan. 23, 1996 - President Clinton delivers State of the Union address and urges Republicans to "finish the job'' in achieving a balanced budget.

Jan. 26, 1996 - Hillary Clinton testifies in secret to a grand jury investigating her link to the Whitewater probe; hours before a midnight deadline, a confrontation-weary Congress votes to avert a third federal shutdown since November and finance dozens of agencies for seven more weeks; Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz is shot and killed at suburban Philadelphia estate of John E. du Pont; du Pont surrenders 48 hours later.

Jan. 29, 1996 - Navy F-14 fighter jet crashes in Nashville, Tenn., demolishing three houses and killing five people, including three on the ground; French president Jacques Chirac orders early end to underground nuclear tests in South Pacific.

Jan. 31, 1996 - The last Cubans held in refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base board a plane for Florida.

Feb. 3, 1996 - Sgt. 1st Class Donald A. Dugan, 38, is killed in northern Bosnia after a piece of ammunition exploded in his hands, becoming the first U.S. soldier killed there while on duty.

Feb. 5, 1996 - Elizabeth Taylor files for divorce from Larry Fortensky, her seventh husband.

Feb. 9, 1996 - A former member of the city's beach detail shoots and kills five former co-workers and wounds sixth before killing himself at a Fort Lauderdale beach house.

Feb. 12, 1996 - Bob Dole wins Iowa Republican caucuses.

Feb. 14, 1996 - Sen. Phil Gramm drops out of GOP presidential race.

Feb. 16, 1996 - U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter bans government from enforcing new law that punishes anyone who makes ``indecent'' material available to minors over computer networks; Amtrak passenger train and Maryland Rail Commuter train collide just north of the nation's  capital during heavy snowstorm, killing at least 12 people and injuring at  least three dozen; Russian military engineers blow up remnants of Chechen presidential palace.

Feb. 20, 1996 - Pat Buchanan wins New Hampshire primary by small margin over Dole; gangsta-rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg and his former bodyguard are acquitted of murder in the shooting death of gang member.

Feb. 21, 1996 - Photographs from Hubble Space Telescope verify the existence of a black hole equal to the mass of 2 billion suns.

Feb. 22, 1996 - Alan Greenspan is renominated as chairman of Federal Reserve; Russia and head of the International Monetary Fund reach deal  for loan of more than $10 billion to back up free-market reforms.

Feb. 23, 1996 - Iraqi defectors Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid and his brother Saddam Kamel al-Majid are murdered by clan members after returning to Iraq.

Feb. 24, 1996 - Steve Forbes wins the Delaware primary; Cuba downs two small American planes that it claims were violating Cuban airspace.

Feb. 25, 1996 - Blasts apparently set off by suicide bombers rip city bus in Jerusalem and soldiers' hitchhiking post in the coastal city of Ashkelon, killing 27 people and wounding more than 80 others; 12-mile tether connecting half-ton satellite to space shuttle Columbia breaks.

Feb. 28, 1996 - Princess Diana agrees to divorce with Prince Charles.

Feb. 29, 1996 - Fire sweeps through a Peruvian commercial jet airliner sending it crashing into remote Andean mountain canyon five miles from its destination.  The crash kills all 123 passengers and crew.

March 1, 1996 - International tribunal indicts Bosnian Serb Gen. Djordje Djukic for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including shelling of Sarajevo; Food and Drug Administration approves powerful new AIDS drug, saying ritonavir can prolong slightly the lives of severely ill patients.

March 3, 1996 - Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills bomber and at least 18 others and wounds 10 people; Israel declares all-out war on militant Islamic group Hamas and immediately suspends U.S.-brokered negotiations with Syria.

March 4, 1996 - Suicide bomber blows himself up outside Tel Aviv shopping center, killing at least 12 and wounding more than 100.

March 5, 1996 - Dole sweeps ``Junior Tuesday'' primaries; Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz, tangled in financial mess she blames on her estranged husband, announces she will not seek a second term.

March 6, 1996 - Federal appeals court strikes down Washington state's ban on doctor-assisted suicide; three U.S. servicemen are convicted in rape of  12-year-old Okinawan girl and are sentenced to 6-to-7 years in prison.

March 7, 1996 - Bob Dole wins New York Republican primary.

March 10, 1996 - Hezbollah guerrillas launch wave of bomb and rocket attacks on Israeli troops in south Lebanon.

March 12, 1996 - Bob Dole sweeps ``Super Tuesday'' primaries. 

March 13,  1996: In Dunblane, Scotland,  Thomas Hamilton burst into the Dunblane Primary School with 4 handguns and kills 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

March 14, 1996 - Steve Forbes drops his $30 million bid for Republican presidential nomination.

March 18, 1996 - Rejecting insanity plea, jury convicts John C. Salvi III of murder in Dec. 30, 1994, attacks on two Boston-area abortion clinics (in November, committed suicide in his cell).

March 19, 1996 - Sen. Bob Dole clinches Republican presidential nomination with Midwest primary sweep.

March 20, 1996 - Erik and Lyle Menendez are convicted of first-degree murder in slayings of parents.

March 25 - June 13, 1996:  Freemen 81 day standoff with the FBI in Montana.

March 27, 1996 - Yigal Amir is convicted of assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

March 28, 1996 - Congress passes line-item veto.

April 3, 1996 - Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and American business executives crashes near Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard; 

April 3, 1996:  Near Lincoln Montana, FBI agents arrest Theodore Kaczynski, prime suspect of the Unabomber bombings.

April 4, 1996 - The Freemen in Montana  meet with negotiators for the first time in standoff which began March  25 when agents arrested two Freemen leaders

April 5, 1996 - North Korea moves armed soldiers into Panmunjom and the South puts its military on its highest state of alert in 15 years.

April 8, 1996 - Shelling and gunfire continues in Monrovia, Liberia, sending at least 15,000 civilians fleeing to U.S. Embassy compound.

April 9, 1996 - Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski pleads guilty to two counts of mail fraud and is sentenced to 17 months in prison and fined $100,000.

April 10, 1996 - President Clinton vetoes bill that would outlaw rarely used technique to end pregnancies in their late stages.

April 11, 1996:  7 year old pilot, Jessica Dubroff is killed while trying to be the youngest person to fly cross country

April 23, 1996 - A Bronx civil-court jury orders Bernhard Goetz to pay $43 million to paralyzed Darrell Cabey, one of four young men he shot on a subway car in 1984; three-night auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' possessions begins with a bidding frenzy.

April 24, 1996 - Main assembly of the Palestine Libertation Organization votes to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel; negotiators for Congress and the White House agree on a permanent budget for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

April 28, 1996 - President Clinton gives 4 hours of videotaped testimony as defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners, denying he pressured an Arkansas businessman for illegal loan.

April 29, 1996 - Former CIA Director William Colby is missing after an apparent boating accident; his body was later recovered.

May 2, 1996 - Arizona Gov. Fife Symington announces state of emergency, mobilizing 40 National Guard troops to assist federal firefighting crews battling blaze that had burned 57,000 acres of desert scrubland.

May 8, 1996 - Postal inspectors wrap up a two-year sting operation in 36 states against the nation's biggest child pornography ring, announcing arrests of 45 people, with as many as 70 more arrests expected.

May 9, 1996 - House sustains President Clinton's veto of a bill limiting damage awards in lawsuits over faulty products; United States agrees to pay $2 million to North Korea for the cost of recovering 162 sets of remains of U.S. servicemen lost during Korean War; military transport helicopter undergoing flight check before it was to be added to the White House fleet crashes and burns at Sikorsky Aircraft in Conn., killing all four crew members.

May 11, 1996:  Valuejet  flight 592 crashes in the Florida Everglades. May 11 - ValuJet Flight 592 reports smoke in the cockpit shortly after  takeoff for Atlanta and attempts to turn around but crashes into the Everglades, killing 104 passengers and five crew members.

May 14, 1996 - Tornado kills more than 440 people and injures more than 33,000 while flattening 80 villages in northern Bangladesh.

May 15, 1996 - Bob Dole announces resignation from the Senate to campaign for the presidency.

May 18, 1996 - Investigators recover heat-damaged parts of oxygen canisters from front cargo hold of ValuJet Flight 592, evidence that fire or explosion may have happened before crash.

May 21, 1996 - Some 500 passengers, many of them teen-agers, drown in Tanzania when a ferry hit a rock and capsized in Lake Victoria.

May 28, 1996 - President Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James and Susan McDougal, and Gov. Jim Guy Tucker are  convicted of fraud.

May 29, 1996 - State appeals court overturns pandering conviction of ``Hollywood Madam'' Heidi Fleiss, ruling that jurors made trial a farce by engaging in vote-swapping misconduct to avoid deadlock; Israel holds elections.

May 30, 1996 - Averting a contempt of Congress vote, the White House turns over 1,000 pages of travel office documents; the former Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew are granted divorce.

May 31, 1996 - Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Shimon Peres to become Israel's prime minister.

June 1, 1996 - An estimated 200,000 participants, most of them schoolchildren, gather at the Lincoln Memorial for rally to protest government cuts for social and educational programs.

June 2, 1996 - "Rent,'' "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk'' and `"he King and I'' dominate 1996 Tony Awards, each winning four.

June 3, 1996 - FBI turns off electricity at the Freemen ranch; during joint war games, Japanese vessel Yuugiri fires upon an American attack plane. Two U.S. navy aviators eject safely.

June 4, 1996 - The FBI finds fingerprints of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vincent Foster and four law firm aides on the first lady's billing records that were missing for two years, a Senate committee announces.

June 5, 1996 - Nearly 1,000 people are ordered from homes and a prison farm is evacuated as Alaskan forest fire triples in size; Joseph Waldholtz, ex-husband of Rep. Enid Greene, pleads guilty to providing his wife false information for her taxes and to falsifying spending reports from her congressional campaign.

June 6, 1996 - Family of four become the first to leave the Freemen ranch since April.

June 13, 1996 - The Supreme Court places greater limits on congressional districts intentionally drawn to get more minorities in Congress, declaring unconstitutional four districts in Texas and North Carolina; Arizona Gov. Fife Symington is indicted on federal charges he repeatedly lied about the value of his crumbling real estate empire to obtain credit and used his office to try to get out of a $10 million loan; all 16 remaining members of  the Freemen surrender to the FBI and leave ranch, ending the 81-day standoff.

June 15, 1996 - Explosives-laden truck blows up in a retail district in central Manchester, England, injuring more than 200. The Irish Republican Army claims responsibility.

June 16, 1996 - Russian voters go to the polls.

June 18, 1996 - Two Army transport  helicopters collide and crash during training exercises near Fort Campbell, Ky., killing six and injuring 30; Mexico announces it will pay back early $4.7 billion of the bailout package the Clinton administration extended to put the brakes on Mexico's financial tailspin; ValuJet halts flight operations.

June 20, 1996 - Clinton Administration announces it will veto re-election of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali; Westinghouse Electric agrees to buy Infinity Broadcasting for $3.9 billion and combine the two biggest players in radio.

June 21, 1996 - European leaders agree to gradually lift global ban on British beef exports imposed nearly three months ago following consumer scare  over mad cow disease.

June 25, 1996 - Truck bomb kills 19 Americans and injures hundreds in Saudi Arabia; U.S. Supreme Court orders Virginia Military Academy to admit women or forgo state support.

June 27, 1996 - Police officer charged with trying to hire hit man to kill football star Michael Irvin.

June 28, 1996 - Citadel votes to admit women.

July 2, 1996 - Lyle and Erik Menendez are sentenced to life in prison without parole for shotgun deaths of their parents; power outage hits customers from Canada to the Southwest.

July 3, 1996 - Blaze destroys fireworks store in Scottown, Ohio, full of Fourth of July shoppers, killing eight and injuring 12.

July 4, 1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin sweeps to victory.

July 6, 1996 - A jet engine of Delta Flight 1288 blows apart and rips into cabin, killing mother and son and forcing pilot to abort takeoff from Pensacola, Fla.

July 7, 1996 - President Clinton delivers more Whitewater trial testimony before video cameras, this time testifying in case of two Arkansas bankers accused of making political contributions with bank funds.

July 8, 1996 - Hurricane Bertha slams into the Virgin Islands with torrential rains and winds that gusted to 103 mph.

July 9, 1996 - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms announces it has agreed to $5.9 million settlement in a discrimination lawsuit brought by black agents; Ross Perot announces candidacy for Reform Party's  presidential nomination.

July 11, 1996 - Air Force jet trying to make an emergency landing slams into a house in Pensacola, Fla., setting home on fire, killing a 4-year-old boy and badly burning his mother.

July 14, 1996 - Fire crews battle blazes covering more than 16,000 acres in California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.

July 17. 1996: TWA Flight 800 explodes over Long Island, NY, killing 230 passangers.

July 18, 1996 - Shaquille O'Neal abandons the Orlando Magic to sign seven-year, $120 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers.

July 27, 1996 - A pipebomb explodes at the public Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring more than 100. July 27, 1996 at 1:20 a.m:  A pipe bomb explodes at the Olympics in Atlanta.  The bomb kills one person and injures 111.

July 31, 1996 - After Clinton announcement that he would sign it, 98 Democrats join House's Republican majority to pass historic welfare overhaul bill.

 Aug. 1, 1996 - In Whitewater trial, U.S. District Court jury clears Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert M. Hill on four charges of misusing bank funds to help political candidates and conspiring to lie to federal regulators;  Italian court clears former Nazi SS Capt. Erich Priebke of most serious charge in World War II massacre of 335 civilians.

Aug. 4, 1996 - After 16 days and 271 events, the Olympic games end; state drug enforcement agents in San Francisco raid club that openly sold marijuana to AIDS and cancer patients.

Aug. 5, 1996 - Richard Allen Davis, murderer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, is sentenced to death; Bob Dole proposes $548 billion, six-year tax cut plan.

Aug. 7, 1996 - NASA-backed team formally presents what it considered to be evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.

Aug. 10, 1996 - Bob Dole completes Republican ticket by annoucing former HUD secretary Jack F. Kemp as his running mate; power outage hits parts of nine Western states.

Aug. 14, 1996 - Republican National Convention nominates Kemp for vice president and Dole for president; as festival-goers pack a bridge in  Arequipa, Peru, for riverside fireworks show, stray rocket sends high-tension line crashing into the crowd, unleashing 10,000 volts that electrocute 35 people and causing many of their bodies to burst into flames.

Aug. 17, 1996 - Military cargo plane carrying gear for President Clinton crashes and explodes in flames shortly after taking off from Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming. Eight crew members and Secret Service employee are killed.

Aug. 19, 1996 - Ralph Nader is nominated as Green Party's first presidential candidate.

Aug. 20, 1996 - President Clinton approves first minimum-wage increase in five years, raising the hourly minimum by 90 cents to $5.15 per hour over 13 months; Susan McDougal is sentenced to two years in prison in fraud case.

Aug. 21, 1996 - Clinton signs bill making insurance easier to obtain and keep.

Aug. 22, 1996 - Clinton signs welfare bill.

Aug. 24, 1996 - Destruction of the nation's largest stockpile of chemical weapons is halted after three days when traces of nerve gas leak in sealed area of the incinerator at remote western Utah desert site.

Aug. 26, 1996 - Democrats open 42nd national convention in Chicago; Cuban court convicts fugitive American financier Robert Vesco of economic crimes and sentences him to 13 years in prison; Russian troops suspend withdrawal from the Chechen capital of Grozny, threatening fragile truce just as Russia's national security adviser Alexander Lebed hands government a pact to end war; former military ruler of South Korea, Chun Doo-hwan is sentenced to death and fined $270 million for mutiny, treason and embezzlement. His successor, Roh Tae-woo, is sentenced to 22 years in prison and fined $350 million; four become the first women in the school's 153-year history to take the oath of a Citadel cadet.

Aug. 28, 1996 - Democrats nominate President Clinton for second term; 15-year marriage of the Prince Charles and Princess Diana ends in divorce.

Aug. 29, 1996 - Clinton appeals for second term by offering himself as a champion of working families ready to lead America ``into a new century of new challenge and new promise''; Clinton political strategist, Dick Morris, resigns after tabloid reports he had disclosed sensitive White House matters to a prostitute; after 84 years, 21-ton section of the hull of  the Titanic is raised part of the way to surface by salvagers using giant balloons filled with diesel fuel (operation fails, and hull returns to bottom).

Sept. 2, 1996 - Muslim rebels and Philippine government sign pact formally ending insurgency that killed more than 120,000 people in 26 years.

Sept. 3, 1996 - The United States launches 27 cruise missiles at "selected air defense targets'' in Iraq as punishment for Iraqi invasion of Kurdish safe havens.

Sept. 4, 1996 - Anti-aircraft fire lights the skies of Baghdad, hours after the United States fires a new round of cruise missiles into southern Iraq and destroys an Iraqi radar site; Benjamin Netanyahu shakes the hand of Yasser Arafat, a man he once condemned as a murderer, in meeting at the Israel-Gaza border; Whitewater prosecutors have Susan McDougal held in contempt for refusing to tell grand jury whether President Clinton lied at her trial.

Sept. 5, 1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin acknowledges he needs heart surgery; Hurricane Fran slams the Carolinas.

Sept. 6, 1996 - Death count from Hurricane Fran rises to 17 in Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas.

Sept. 8, 1996 - Rapper Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records Chairman Marion "Suge'' Knight are shot in car cruising in Las Vegas (Shakur later dies).

Sept. 10, 1996 - Ross Perot picks economist Pat Choate to share Reform Party presidential ticket.

Sept. 14, 1996 - Bosnians go to polls; King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia grants amnesty to Ieng Sary, Khmer Rouge rebel leader widely blamed for involvement in deaths of up to 2 million people in 1970s.

September 17, 1996:  O.J. Simpson's civil trial begins.

Sept. 18, 1996 - Bob Dole falls off stage at campaign rally in Chico, Calif., after railing gives way; O.J. Simpson civil trial opens; Food and Drug  Administration declares French abortion pill RU-486 safe and effective.

Sept. 21, 1996 - John F. Kennedy Jr. marries Carolyn Bessette in secret ceremony in Cumberland Island, Ga.; Clinton signs Defense of Marriage  Act.

Sept. 22, 1996 - VMI's Board of Visitors votes 9-8 to end its 157-year-old male-only admission policy.

Sept. 25, 1996 - Stone-throwing protests by thousands of Palestinians angered by Israel's decision to open an archaeological tunnel near Jerusalem's Al
 Aqsa Mosque compound lead to Palestinian police battling with Israeli troops. Seven people die and more than 350 are wounded.

Sept. 26, 1996 - Astronaut Shannon Lucid returns to Earth in shuttle Atlantis after six months of weightlessness; Clinton signs bill ensuring two-day hospital stays for new mothers and their babies; ValuJet gets federal permission to fly again three months after budget carrier was grounded after a deadly crash.

Oct. 1, 1996 - Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss is ordered back into drug treatment after testing positive for speed; federal grand jury indicts Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in 1994 mail bomb slaying of ad executive.

Oct. 2, 1996 - Mark Fuhrman is given three years' probation and fined $200 after pleading no contest to perjury for denying at O.J. Simpson's trial that he had used the N word  in the past decade; Peruvian plane slams into Pacific, and all 70 passengers and crew are believed killed.

Oct. 6, 1996 - President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole meet in Hartford, Conn., for first presidential debate.

Oct. 7, 1996 - Effects of a Canadian Auto Workers strike against General Motors spread as 1,850 workers are laid off at two U.S. parts plants.

Oct. 9, 1996 - Gore and Kemp debate in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Oct. 11, 1996 - A Roman Catholic bishop and an exiled activist win the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to end the conflict in East Timor; William Vickrey, who won a Nobel Prize in economics this week, dies at 82.

Oct. 14, 1996 - Madonna gives birth to Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon; Archer Daniels Midland Co. says it will plead guilty to two charges and pay $100  million to settle federal price-fixing case; Dow Jones industrial average closes above the 6,000 mark for the first time, less than a year after it  cleared the 5,000 barrier.

Oct. 16, 1996 - Bob Dole challenges President Clinton's ethics and honesty in final debate

Oct. 17, 1996 - Boris Yeltsin fires security chief Alexander Lebed, one day after former general was accused by rival of building his own rogue army.

Oct. 22, 1996 - General Motors settles a three-week strike with its workers in Canada, resolving a power struggle over job security that had idled more than 46,000 workers across North America; E. Michael Kahoe, former FBI headquarters manager, is charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying internal critique of bureau's actions at deadly 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; 30 people are killed and 80 injured when flaming Boeing 707 jet slices through dozens of homes minutes after taking off from Ecuador's Manta airport.

Oct. 23, 1996 - Bob Dole unsuccesfully urges Ross Perot to quit the presidental race and endorse GOP ticket.

Oct. 26, 1996 - New York Yankees beat defending champion Atlanta Braves to win World Series; prosecutors clear guard Richard Jewell as suspect in Olympic Park bombing.

Oct. 29, 1996 - Workers at two key General Motors plants, in Indianapolis and Janesville, Wis., strike.

Oct. 31, 1996 - Brazilian jetliner Flight 402 crashes into a residential neighborhood in Sao Paulo shortly after takeoff, igniting a fire that engulfs apartments, homes and cars and killing all 95 people on board.

Nov. 4, 1996 - Zairian Tutsi rebels declare a cease-fire in eastern Zaire and agree to allow aid agencies to try to get Hutu refugees home to Burundi and Rwanda; Pakistan's president dismisses government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Nov. 8, 1996:  Bill Clinton defeats Bob Dole to be re-elected as president - first 2 term Democrat president since FDR.

Nov. 6, 1996 - Final results show that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's alliance won Yugoslavia's parliamentary elections, but failed to gain the  majority that would give him the Yugoslav presidency.

Nov. 9, 1996 - Evander Holyfield upsets Tyson to win heavyweight boxing title.

Nov. 11, 1996 - Twenty-three Latin heads of state denounce U.S. moves to isolate Cuba, but also press Fidel Castro to institute democratic changes.

Nov. 13, 1996 - Hours after a white policeman is cleared in a shooting that sparked a race riot last month in St. Petersburg, Fla., angry mobs return to the same streets;

Nov. 14, 1996 - Federal police and army troops score 1996's largest cocaine seizure, intercepting a plane carrying more than 1 tons of the drug near La Trinidad, 750 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Nov. 15, 1996 - Michael Jackson marries the woman carrying his baby - his plastic surgeon's nurse, Debbie Rowe, in an Australian wedding ceremony.

Nov. 17, 1996 - A Russian space probe fired toward Mars hurtles back to Earth.

Nov. 18, 1996 - One-time CIA station chief Harold J. Nicholson is charged with selling top secrets to the Russians for more than $120,000.

Nov. 19, 1996 - A commuter plane landing at Baldwin Municipal Airport in Quincy, Ill., collides at runway intersection with a small private plane  approaching take off, igniting a fireball that kills all 14 people aboard both aircraft; the United States vetoes Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for a second term and appeals to African states to offer other candidates to avoid a diplomatic deadlock; Richard Lundwall,  former Texaco executive whose tape-recording showed colleagues using
 racial insults and plotting to destroy documents, is charged with obstruction of justice.

Nov. 22, 1996 - Martin Bryant, who gunned down 35 people at Port Arthur, Australia, is sentenced to life behind bars with no chance for parole.

Nov. 23, 1996 - An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 cartwheels into the waves off Comoros Islands, killing 123, after hijackers struggle for controls even as one engine and then the other run dry and stop; Amtrak passenger train derails, jackknifes and plows into a swamp, injuring 34 people, about six miles west of New York City; Yeltsin orders last Russian troops out of breakaway republic Chechnya.

Nov. 26, 1996 - Major-league baseball owners reverse course and approve same collective bargaining agreement they rejected just three weeks ago.

Nov. 30, 1996 - 150,000 people fill the streets of Belgrade to protest Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

December, 1996:  Tickle Me Elmo becomes the hottest selling toy for Christmas.

Dec. 2, 1996 - Financier Charles Keating Jr.'s federal conviction is overturned because jurors learned about his earlier state conviction before they found
 him guilty of fraud and racketeering.

Dec. 4, 1996 - The Mars Pathfinder lifts off and speeds toward Mars on a 310-million-mile odyssey to explore the planet's surface.

Dec. 5, 1996 - Clinton announces foreign policy team for second term, including Madeleine Albright as first female secretary of state; William Cohen as defense secretary; and Anthony Lake to head CIA.

Dec. 9, 1996 - The United Nations gives Iraq go-ahead to resume oil exports for first time since 1990 to buy food and medicine;  Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and three competitors agree to pay $94 million to settle accusations they fixed price of citric acid.

Dec. 10, 1996 - Shipping tycoon Tung Chee-hwa takes 80 percent of votes of China-organized committee of 400 Hong Kong notables to become Hong Kong's first post-colonial leader.

Dec. 11, 1996 - Rep. Wes Cooley, GOP freshman who dropped his re-election bid earlier this year after being accused of lying about his background, is indicted on charges he falsely claimed in official state voter guides that he had served in Korea.

Dec. 12, 1996 - European Union agrees to join United States in landmark global pact aimed at making computers and related products less expensive; Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz quits as Walt Disney Co.'s No. 2 executive.

Dec. 13, 1996 - Clinton announces more appointments, including Chicagoan William Daley as commerce secretary.

Dec. 14, 1996 - Freighter crashes into shopping mall on Mississippi River, injuring scores.

Dec. 15, 1996 - Boeing Co. announces it plans to pay $13.3 million to acquire aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Dec. 16, 1996 - Death penalty of former Korean President Chun Doo-hwan for treason is reduced to life imprisonment.

Dec. 17 - Peruvian guerrillas take hundreds of hostages at Japanese embassy in Lima; Kofi Annan of Ghana is appointed United Nations secretary general.

Dec. 20, 1996 - Clinton selects Federico Pena as energy secretary, Rodney Slater as transportation secretary, Andrew Cuomo as housing secretary  and Alexis Herman as labor secretary; O.J. Simpson given custody of his young children.

Dec. 21, 1996 - House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledges ethical lapses in face of charges by House subcommittee.

Dec. 22, 1996 - Peruvian guerrillas release all but 140 of their hostages.

Dec. 23, 1996 - Boris Yeltsin returns to his office after six-month bout with heart ailment.

Dec. 26, 1996 - James Earl Ray, convicted of assassinating Martin Luther King, comes out of coma.

Dec. 28, 1996 - Peruvian guerrillas release 20 more hostages.
 

 Time Magazine's Man of the Year:  Dr. David Ho - devising strategies in the war against AIDS

CNN's 1996 Year in Review
Boston Globe's 1996 Year in Review
Washington Post's Year in Review 1996