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Portal:1990s

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The 1990s Portal

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The 1990s (pronounced "nineteen-nineties"; shortened to "the '90s") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on 1 January 1990, and ended on 31 December 1999.

Culturally, the 1990s are characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media, which continues into the present day. Movements such as hip hop, the rave scene and grunge spread around the world to young people during that decade, aided by then-new technology such as cable television and the World Wide Web.

In the absence of world communism, which collapsed in the first two years of the decade, the 1990s was politically defined by a movement towards the right-wing, including increase in support for far-right parties in Europe[1] as well as the advent of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party[2] and cuts in social spending in the United States,[3] Canada,[4] New Zealand,[5] and the UK.[6] The United States also saw a massive revival in the use of the death penalty in the 1990s, which reversed in the early 21st century.[7] During the 1990s the character of the European Union and Euro were formed and codified in treaties.

A combination of factors, including the continued mass mobilization of capital markets through neo-liberalism, the thawing of the decades-long Cold War, the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet from the middle of the decade onwards, increasing skepticism towards government, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world and within countries. The dot-com bubble of 1997–2000 brought wealth to some entrepreneurs before its crash between 2000 and 2001.

The 1990s saw extreme advances in technology, with the World Wide Web, the first gene therapy trial, and the first designer babies[8] all emerging in 1990 and being improved and built upon throughout the decade.

New ethnic conflicts emerged in Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, the former two which led to the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, respectively. Signs of any resolution of tensions between Israel and the Arab world remained elusive despite the progress of the Oslo Accords, though The Troubles in Northern Ireland came to a standstill in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of violence.[9]

Windows 3.1 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft, released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992. Unlike its predecessors, which ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS, its 386 Enhanced Mode functioned as a virtual machine monitor virtualizing DOS as a guest. It was the last Windows 16-bit operating system, after which future versions of Windows moved to 32-bit.

Windows 3.1 introduced the TrueType font system as a competitor to Adobe Type Manager. Its multimedia was also expanded, and screensavers were introduced, alongside new software such as Media Player (also known as "Windows Media Player") and Sound Recorder. File Manager and Control Panel received tweaks, while Windows 3.1 also saw the introduction of the Windows Registry and add-ons, and it could utilize more memory than its predecessors. (Full article...)

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Tanks near the Red Square in Moscow during the failed coup attempt. The USSR fell just 4 months later.

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Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), known professionally as the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper and songwriter. Rooted in the East Coast hip-hop and gangsta rap traditions, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his distinctive, laidback lyrical delivery, offsetting his lyrics' often grim content. His music was semi-autobiographical, telling of hardship and criminality but also of debauchery and celebration.

Wallace was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. In 1993, he became the first artist to sign with Sean Combs's Bad Boy Records and gained recognition for his guest appearances on other artists' singles. His debut studio album, Ready to Die (1994), received acclaim and included the successful singles "Juicy", "Big Poppa", and "One More Chance". Ready to Die made Wallace the central figure of East Coast hip-hop and helped restore its prominence at a time when the West Coast was dominating the genre. In 1995, Wallace was named Rapper of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards, and with his protégé group, Junior M.A.F.I.A.—which included longtime friends like Lil' Kim—released the album Conspiracy. (Full article...)

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Sources

  1. Merkl, Peter; Leonard, Weinberg (2 August 2004). Right-wing Extremism in the Twenty-first Century. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-76421-0.
  2. "India – The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism".
  3. ROSEN, RUTH (27 December 1994). "Which of Us Isn't Taking 'Welfare'? : Poor children rank low in government largess; why is the comfortable class so mean?". Los Angeles Times.
  4. Séguin, Gilles. "Provincial Welfare Reforms in the 1990s – Canadian Social Research Links".
  5. Maloney, Tim (1 May 2002). "Welfare Reform and Unemployment in New Zealand". Economica. 69 (274): 273–293. doi:10.1111/1468-0335.00283.
  6. "Policy Exchange – Shaping the Policy Agenda" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2014.
  7. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/19/report-us-executions-dipped-in-2013
  8. Handyside, AH; Kontogianni, EH; Hardy, K; Winston, RM (1990). "Pregnancies from biopsied human preimplantation embryos sexed by Y-specific DNA amplification". Nature. 344 (6268): 768–70. Bibcode:1990Natur.344..768H. doi:10.1038/344768a0. PMID 2330030.
  9. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2004). The Roaring Nineties. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32618-5.
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