The nation watches on television as Anita Hill, a law professor and former colleague, charges U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment. Thomas wins confirmation despite the allegations. Also that year, a Los Angeles grand jury indicts four white policemen in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King. The brutal beating, captured on video by an amateur, is televised on national news.

Elsewhere that year:

• Economic and political crises trigger the breakup of the Soviet Union, which separates into republics. Most of the 15 new nations ally in a loose confederation called the Commonwealth of Independent States. Soviet President Gorbachev survives a coup d’etat, but his power is weakened and he is eventually forced to resign.

• Nelson Mandela is elected president of the African National Congress in its first national conference permitted by South Africa in 32 years. President Bush lifts U.S. sanctions against South Africa.

• Both Pan Am and Eastern Airlines go out of business.

• Scientists find the site of an asteroid crash 65 million years ago that they suspect caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroid blasted a crater more than 100 miles in diameter on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It raised so much dust that sunlight was blocked, plant life withered and plant-eating dinosaurs died.

• After his arrest in Milwaukee, mass murderer Jeffery Dahmer confesses to killing at least 11 people. Human heads and other body parts are found in his apartment.

• Oceanographers discover a new species of whale in the Pacific Ocean near South America.