1990s News Quiz | Turning Points in Society, Science, the Environment and Sport

The Hubble Space Telescope launched aboard Discovery on the STS-31 mission on April 24, 1990. The Webb telescope launched in 2021, Voyager 1 in 1977 and Zarya, the first ISS module, in 1998, so each belongs to a different date and program.

The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, is known as the Earth Summit. The Kyoto Conference followed in 1997, the Johannesburg Summit in 2002 and the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.

The Maastricht Treaty entered into force on November 1, 1993 and formally established the European Union. Euro cash arrived in 2002, while the removal of border checks in the Schengen area arose from a separate agreement. The Council of Europe is also separate from the EU and was founded in 1949.

Making the Web software freely available allowed people outside CERN to use and improve servers and browsers, helping the Web spread. The decision neither gave CERN an operating monopoly nor replaced all existing Internet technologies.

The ANC won South Africa's first nationwide non-racial election in 1994, and Nelson Mandela became the first president of a democratic, non-racial South Africa. The election marked a decisive shift from institutionalized apartheid to democracy.

This describes the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake occurred in 2004, the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake in 2018; each differs in both date and affected region.

The Kyoto Protocol operationalized the Framework Convention by requiring industrialized countries and economies in transition to limit or reduce greenhouse gases under agreed individual targets. It did not assign the same target to every country, and although adopted in 1997, it entered into force after ratification in 2005.

According to the Japanese Olympic Committee's records, Nagano hosted the 18th Olympic Winter Games from February 7 to 22, 1998, with 68 events in seven sports. It was a multisport Winter Olympics, not a Summer Games or a world championship in one family of sports.

The euro was introduced on January 1, 1999, but for its first three years it was a cashless currency used mainly for accounting and electronic payments. Euro banknotes and coins began circulating and replacing national cash on January 1, 2002.

Zarya was the first element of the International Space Station and launched on November 20, 1998. A space shuttle then delivered Unity and joined the two modules. Mir was a different space station whose operation began under the Soviet Union in 1986.