February 24 - A United AirlinesBoeing 747 bound to New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii rips open during flight, sucking 9 passenger and crew out of the first class section. Luckily most passengers and crew were still belted to their seats at the time
June 4 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland spark off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
June 4 - Train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia kills 645 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
August 23 - Baltic Way, uninterrupted 600 kilometre human chain, in which two million indigenous people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then still occupied by the Soviet Union, joined hands to demand freedom and independence
September 10 - The Hungarian government opens the country's western borders to refugees from the German Democratic Republic.
