British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes

The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces that Soviet troops will leave Afghanistan, handing victory to the mujaheddin

English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's first opera, Greek, is premiered in Munich

English conceptual artist Damien Hirst organizes the first exhibition of the 'Young British Artists', also known as the Britpack

A terrorist bomb brings down flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland

The USSR completes the phased withdrawal of its troops from Aghanistan

Rupert Murdoch launches Sky, a satellite television channel, in the UK

Slobodan Milosevic is elected president of Serbia

Elections in Poland bring Solidarnośc nation-wide success, and the party is soon at the head of a coalition government

At CERN, in Geneva, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau build ENQUIRE, a first step towards the future World Wide Web

Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany since 1971, is forced to resign after massive popular demonstrations

Citizens of East Berlin demolish the Berlin Wall, in what proves a symbolic end to the Cold War

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduces an extremely unpopluar poll tax, last used in the Middle Ages

The Communist party relinquishes power without bloodshed in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution

Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife are captured and executed in a Romanian uprising

Alexander Dubcek is Speaker of Parliament and Václav Havel is President in the new democratic government of Czechoslovakia

Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare

British primatologist Jane Goodall publishes Through a Window, exposing violence and brutality in chimpanzees

The Conservative government's poll tax is greeted with violent riots in London and a campaign of non-payment

Gérard Depardieu plays the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the play by Edmond Rostand

Three tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras) sing at a concert in Rome to celebrate the World Cup

Boris Yeltsin, impatient with the pace of reform under Gorbachev, resigns from the Communist party

UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, by now at odds with many in her cabinet, is challenged in a leadership contest and loses

Mary Robinson is elected president of the republic of Ireland, the first woman to hold the post

East and West Germany are united in a new Federal Republic of Germany