- Feb 1 Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 at perihelion
Event of Interest
Feb 1 Diana, Princess of Wales visits New York City
Diana Spencer
Event of Interest
Feb 2 F. W. de Klerk replaces P. W. Botha as South Africa's National Party leader
F. W. de Klerk
P. W. Botha
- Feb 3 Baseball's National League announces Yanks' broadcaster Bill White will its 1st African American President
- Feb 3 Military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay
- Feb 3 Start 1st Test Cricket, NZ v Pak, washed out
- Feb 4 Australian cricketer Dean Jones scores 216 v WI at the Adelaide Oval
- Feb 5 Kareem Abdul-Jabar becomes 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points
Event of Interest
Feb 6 Solidarity union leader Lech Wałęsa begins negotiating with Polish government
Lech Wałęsa
- Feb 7 40th NHL All-Star Game: Campbell beat Wales 9-5 at Edmonton
Event of Interest
Feb 7 Tennis superstar Björn Borg apparently attempts suicide in Milan
Björn Borg
- Feb 8 5 cm of snow falls in outskirts of Los Angeles
- Feb 8 American jockey Chris Antley begins record of 64 consecutive winning days
- Feb 8 US Boeing 707 crashes into Santa Maria mountain, 145 die
- Feb 9 Kevin Johnson (Phoenix) ends NBA free throw streak of 57 games
- Feb 9 Michael Manley's Socialist Party wins Jamaica parliamentary election
Hall of Fame
Feb 10 Celtic KC Jones & Cavalier Lenny Wilkens elected to NBA Hall of Fame
Lenny Wilkens
- Feb 10 Miami Vice's 100th episode seen on TV
- Feb 10 Minor League Football System opens organizational meeting, St Louis
- Feb 10 Ron Brown chosen 1st African American chairman of a major US party (Democrats)
- Feb 10 Test Cricket debut of Aaqib Javed, Pak v NZ age 16 years 189 days
- Feb 10 Tony Robinson of Jamaica becomes Nottingham's 1st black sheriff
- Feb 10 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- Feb 10 To gain deregulation WWF admits pro wrestling is an exhibition & not a sport, in a NJ court
- Feb 10 39th Berlin International Film Festival: "Rain Main" wins the Golden Bear
- Feb 11 Barbara Clementine Harris consecrated 1st female bishop (Episcopalian)
- Feb 11 US female Figure Skating championship won by Jill Trenary
- Feb 12 39th NBA All-Star Game: West beats East 143-134 at Houston
- Feb 12 5 Pakistani Muslim rioters killed protesting "Satanic Verses" novel
- Feb 12 50th PGA Seniors Golf Championship: Larry Mowry
- Feb 12 Barbara Harris becomes 1st female bishop of a US Episcopal church
- Feb 12 Gretzky sets 2 records, his 45th hat trick & 10th 40+ goal season
- Feb 12 Thursday's Child sets sailing record, NY-Cape Horn-SF, 80 d 20 h
- Feb 12 US male Figure Skating championship won by Christopher Bowman
- Feb 12 Loyalist paramilitary group kill Pat Finucane, a Belfast lawyer who represented republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, while he is having dinner with family
- Feb 13 Kidnapped Belgian Premier Vanden Boeynants freed
- Feb 13 Salvadoran army attacks Encuentros hospital, rapes, kills patients
- Feb 13 Oklahoma football player Charles Thompson is charged with selling cocaine; he is later sentenced to 2 years in prison
- Feb 14 African National Congress (ANC) opens office in Amsterdam
- Feb 14 Union Carbide agrees to pay $470 mill damages for Bhopol disaster
- Feb 14 World's 1st satellite Skyphone opens
Historic Publication
Feb 14 Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie and his publishers due to his novel "Satanic Verses". A bounty was also place on his head.
Ayatollah Khomeini
Soviets Leave Afghanistan
Feb 15 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ends
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Contract of Interest
Feb 16 Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens signs $7.5M-3 year contract
Roger Clemens
Event of Interest
Feb 17 Former baseball player/manager Leo Durocher injured in a car crash
Leo Durocher
- Feb 17 Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia & Libya form common market
- Feb 17 Orel Hershiser, Dodger pitcher signs record $7.9M-3 year contract
- Feb 17 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- Feb 18 Sherri Turner wins LPGA Orix Hawaiian Ladies Golf Open/Itoki Pro-Am
- Feb 18 "A Better Man" single released by Clint Black (Billboard Song of the Year 1989)
- Feb 19 "Legs Diamond" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 64 performances
- Feb 19 Edgar Bowers wins Bollingen Prize
- Feb 19 31st Daytona 500: Darrell Waltrip wins (148.466 MPH)
- Feb 20 Members of 1949 Oklahoma football team cancel an April reunion because of the deplorable conduct of Oklahoma players
- Feb 20 An IRA bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England
Meeting of Interest
Event of Interest
Feb 22 UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a "deliberate fraud"
Stephen Hawking
- Feb 22 US authors demonstrate against Iranian death threats against Salman Rushdee, author of "The Satanic Verses"
- Feb 22 31st Grammy Awards: Don't Worry Be Happy, Faith, Tracy Chapman
- Feb 22 1st Spanish commercial on network TV (Pepsi-Cola-CBS Grammy Award)
- Feb 24 150 million year old fossil egg found in Utah with a fossilized dinosaur embryo inside, the oldest dinosaur egg yet found in the Northern Hemisphere
- Feb 24 Harold E Ballard sells CFL Hamilton Tiger-Cats to David Braley
Event of Interest
Feb 24 Margaret Ray found in David Letterman's home, claims to be his wife
David Letterman
- Feb 24 US Boeing 747 loses parts of roof over Pacific, 9 die
- Feb 24 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- Feb 25 1st independent blue-collar labor union in Communist Hungary forms
- Feb 25 Javed Miandad scores 271 v NZ at Eden Park
- Feb 25 Lowest baramotric pressure in Netherlands (956.7 mbar at De Bilt)
Boxing Title Fight
Feb 25 Mike Tyson TKOs Frank Bruno in 5 for heavyweight boxing title
Mike Tyson
Frank Bruno
Event of Interest
Feb 26 Dallas Cowboys fire coach Tom Landry after a 29-year career
Tom Landry
- Feb 26 "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" opens at Imperial Theater NYC for 634 performances
- Feb 26 Lowest barometric pressure in Netherlands (95.5 hPa)
- Feb 26 NY Yankees announce that Tom Seaver is their new TV sportscaster
- Feb 26 California court throws out most of Margo Adams's $12 million breach-of- contract suit against Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs
- Feb 27 German war criminals Aus der Funten and Fischer freed in Holland
- Feb 27 Venezuela is rocked by the riots of Caracazo
- Feb 28 Gretchen Polhemus, 23, (Texas), crowned 38th Miss USA
- Feb 28 Memo by Brian Gumbel criticizing Today Show co-workers becomes public
- Feb 28 Red Schoendienst & Al Barlick elected to baseball's Hall of Fame