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1988 The French government approves use of RU 486, the so-called abortion pill
1989 The tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gal. of crude oil. It is the worst oil spill in U.S. history
1990
1990 Formal start of the Human Genome Project, an international effort to map and sequence all human DNA
1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. It fails to operate properly, but is repaired three years later by space-walking astronauts
1990 Jack Kevorkian, also known as "Dr. Death," performs his first assisted suicide
1991 Tourists hiking in the Tyrolean Alps discover, protruding from a glacier, the freeze-dried remains of a man who died about 3300 B.C.
1993 Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles reveals his proof for Fermat's Last Theorem, which was proposed in the 17th century
1993 Researchers at George Washington University clone human embryos and nurture them in vitro for several days
1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashes into the planet Jupiter
1994 Near France's Ardeche River, explorers discover the Chauvet cave, whose paintings are believed to be more than 30,000 years old
1996 A British government report on "mad-cow disease" raises questions about the safety of British beef
1996 NASA reports that a Martian meteorite may contain the remains of ancient microbes. The evidence is later challenged
1997 Scottish researchers clone a sheep named Dolly from cells of an adult ewe
1997 A computer called Deep Blue beats world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match
1997 NASA's Sojourner spacecraft roams the surface of Mars and sends pictures back to Earth
1998 The impotence drug Viagra goes on sale in the U.S.
2000
On Jan. 1 a coding error could cause computers around the world to malfunction