Fax machines emerge as an integral business tool around the world. The advent of a cheap machine that transmits documents over telephone lines begins to change the way the business world communicates.

Also that year:

• Vice President George Bush is elected 41st president of the United States.

• The Palestinian Liberation Organization votes to recognize the existence of Israel and proclaims an independent state of Palestine. The United States then begins dialogue with the PLO.

• Toni Morrison wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel Beloved about a runaway slave who kills her daughter rather than let her be captured and raised as a slave.

• A New York Times study reports that despite new awareness of nutrition, most Americans still love junk food. And while 46 percent of women say they pay close attention to their health, only 31 percent of men do.

• “No Smoking” signs go up on Northwest Airlines flights, the first such ban by a U.S. carrier.

• “Hypermarkets” become the rage — mega-sized retail stores as big as 5 football fields that sell everything from bananas to bedroom sets. K-Mart and Walmart set up dozens of these “malls without walls.”