January
January 1
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is established to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Austria, Finland & Sweden act to join the European Union.
The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of rogue waves.
January 6–January 7 – A chemical fire occurs in an apartment complex in Manila, Philippines. Policemen led by watch commander Aida Fariscal and investigators find a bomb factory and a laptop computer and disks that contain plans for Project Bojinka, a mass-terrorist attack. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, is arrested one month later.
January 9 – Valeri Polyakov completes 366 days in space while aboard the Mir space station, breaking a duration record.
January 16
An avalanche hits the village Súðavík in Iceland, killing 14 people.
The fourth Star Trek TV series, Voyager, premieres on UPN.
January 17 – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake called the "Great Hanshin earthquake" occurs near Kobe, Japan, causing great property damage and killing 6,434 people.
Prodigy online service offers access to the World Wide Web.[4]
January 25 – Norwegian rocket incident: A rocket launched from the space exploration centre at Andøya, Norway is briefly interpreted by the Russians as an incoming attack.
January 30 – John Howard becomes leader of the Liberal Party of Australia to challenge Paul Keating for the 1996 Federal Election and the position of Prime Minister of Australia.
January 31 – U.S. President Bill Clinton invokes emergency powers, to extend a $20 billion loan to help Mexico avert financial collapse.
February
February 1 – Lyricist/guitarist Richey Edwards of the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers goes missing from a hotel in Bayswater, London on the eve of a planned tour of the United States. His car is found two weeks later at Severn View services in Aust.
February 9 – STS-63: Dr. Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale became the second African American and Briton, respectively, to walk in space.
February 13 – A United Nations tribunal on human rights violations in the Balkans charges 21 Bosnian Serb commanders with genocide and crimes against humanity.
February 15
Hacker Kevin Mitnick is arrested by the FBI and charged with penetrating some of the United States' most "secure" computer systems.
Taiwan's deadliest fire, at a karaoke restaurant in Taichung, kills 64.
February 17
Colin Ferguson is convicted of 6 counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 25-year sentence for each of the 6 murders.
February 21
Serkadji prison mutiny in Algeria: Four guards and 96 prisoners are killed in a day and a half.
Ibrahim Ali, a 17-year-old Comorian living in France, is murdered by 3 far-right National Front activists.
Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada, becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
February 23 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 30.28 to close at 4,003.33 – the Dow's first ever close above 4,000.
February 25 – Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) (Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica [OTCA]).
February 26 – The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking firm, Barings Bank, collapses after securities broker Nick Leeson loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
February 27 – In Denver, Colorado, Stapleton Airport closes and is replaced by the new Denver International Airport, the largest in the United States.
February 28 – Members of the group Patriot's Council are convicted in Minnesota of manufacturing ricin.
March
March 1
Julio María Sanguinetti is sworn in as President of Uruguay for his second term.
Polish Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak resigns from Parliament and is replaced by ex-communist Jozef Oleksy.
In Moscow, Russian anti-corruption journalist Vladislav Listyev is killed by a gunman.
The first search engine service Yahoo! is founded.
March 2 – Nick Leeson is arrested for his role in the collapse of Barings Bank.
March 3 – In Somalia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission ends.
March 6 – On an episode of The Jenny Jones Show ("Same-Sex Crushes"), Scott Amedure reveals a crush on his heterosexual friend Jonathan Schmitz. Schmitz kills Amedure several days after the show.
March 12 – The 1995 Gazi Quarter riots occur in Sultangazi (then Gaziosmanpaşa), Istanbul, Turkey. A few days later, riots broke out in Ümraniye, Istanbul and Kızılay, Ankara also.
March 13 – David Daliberti and William Barloon, 2 Americans working for a military contractor in Kuwait, are arrested after straying into Iraq.
March 14 – Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle (the Soyuz TM-21), lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
March 16 – Mississippi ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The amendment was nationally ratified in 1865.
March 20 – Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway: Members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult release sarin gas on 5 subway trains in Tokyo, killing 13 and injuring 5,510.
March 22 – Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in outer space.
March 24 – For the first time in 26 years, no British soldiers patrol the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
March 26 – The Schengen Agreement, easing cross-border travel, goes into effect in several European countries.
March 30 – A police officer tries to assassinate Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency of Japan.
March 31 – Mexican American Tejano pop singer Selena is murdered at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas by her former employee, Yolanda Saldívar.
April
April 19: A car bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and wounding 680 more
April 1 – Dialog Telekom launches Sri Lanka's first GSM mobile phone network.
April 2 – An explosion in Gaza kills 8, including a Hamas leader.
April 5 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 246–188 to cut taxes for individuals and corporations.
April 7 – House Republicans celebrate passage of most of the Contract with America.
April 19 – Oklahoma City bombing: 168 people, including 8 Federal Marshals and 19 children, are killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Timothy McVeigh and one of his accomplices, Terry Nichols, set off the bomb.
April 24 – A Unabomber bomb kills lobbyist Gilbert Murray in Sacramento, California.
April 28 – In Daegu, South Korea, a gas explosion at a subway construction site kills 101 people, mostly teenage schoolboys.
The United States government stops funding the NSFNET, making the Internet a wholly privatised system.[5]
May
May 1
Jacques Chirac is elected president of France.
Croatian forces launch Operation Flash against rebel Serb forces in western Slavonia.
May 7 – Finland wins the ice hockey world championship.
May 10 – At Vaal Reefs gold mine in Orkney, a runaway locomotive falls into a lift shaft onto an ascending cage and causes it to plunge 1,500 feet (460 m) to the bottom of the 6,900 feet (2,100 m) deep shaft, killing 104.[6][7]
May 11 – More than 170 countries agree to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
May 13 – An earthquake hits the regions of Kozani and Grevena in Greece, with an intensity of 6.6 on the Richter scale.
May 14
The Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
Team New Zealand wins the America's Cup in San Diego, beating Stars and Stripes 5–0.
May 16 – Japanese police besiege the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo near Mount Fuji and arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara.
May 17 – Shawn Nelson, 35, goes on a tank rampage in San Diego.
May 20 – U.S. President Bill Clinton indefinitely closes part of the street in front of the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue, to vehicular traffic in response to the Oklahoma City bombing.
May 21 – Pope John Paul II canonizes John Sarkander during his visit to Olomouc, the Czech Republic.
May 23 – Oklahoma City bombing: In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building are imploded.
May 24 – AFC Ajax wins the UEFA Champions League in the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna by defeating AC Milan 0–1 by a goal of Patrick Kluivert. This was the third consecutive win of AFC Ajax over AC Milan that season, ranking AFC Ajax on the 4th place on the list of European Cup and UEFA Champions League winners.
May 25 – Egan v. Canada: The Supreme Court of Canada rules that discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
May 27 – In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.
May 28 – A 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Neftegorsk, Russia kills at least 2,000.
June
June 1 – The busiest hurricane season in 62 years begins.
June 2
Mrkonjić Grad incident: A United States Air Force F-16 piloted by Captain Scott O'Grady is shot down over Bosnia and Herzegovina while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone. O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines six days later.
Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy.
The Dimmitt, Texas Tornado strikes.
June 3 – Montreal Expos pitcher Pedro Martinez becomes the second major league baseball pitcher to pitch a "perfect game" leading into the 10th inning.
June 6
U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard breaks NASA's space endurance record of 14 days, 1 hour and 16 minutes, aboard the Russian space station Mir.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa abolishes capital punishment in South Africa in the case of S v Makwanyane and Another.
June 13 – French President Jacques Chirac announces the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
June 15 – A powerful earthquake, registering a moment magnitude of 6.2, hits the city of Aigio, Greece, resulting in several deaths and significant damage to many buildings.
June 16 – The IOC selects Salt Lake City to host the 2002 Winter Olympics.
June 20 – Oil multinational Royal Dutch Shell caves in to international pressure and abandons plans to dump the Brent Spar oil rig at sea.
June 22 – Japanese police rescue 365 hostages from a hijacked All Nippon Airways Flight 857 (Boeing 747-200) at Hakodate airport. The hijacker was armed with a knife and demanded the release of Shoko Asahara.
June 24
The New Jersey Devils sweep the heavily favored Detroit Red Wings to win their first Stanley Cup in the lock-out shortened season.
South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup.
June 29
Lisa Clayton completes her 10-month solo circumnavigation from the Northern Hemisphere.
STS-71: Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.
The Sampoong Department Store collapses in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937.
Iraq disarmament crisis: According to UNSCOM, the unity of the U.N. Security Council begins to fray, as a few countries, particularly France and Russia, become more interested in making financial deals with Iraq than in disarming the country.
July
Exhumed grave of victims of the July Srebrenica massacre.
July – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to end all cooperation with UNSCOM and IAEA, if sanctions against the country are not lifted by August 31. Following the defection of his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam Hussein makes new revelations about the full extent of Iraq's biological and nuclear weapons programs. Iraq also withdraws its last U.N. declaration of prohibited biological weapons and turns over a large amount of new documents on its WMD programs.
July 1 – Iraq disarmament crisis: In response to UNSCOM's evidence, Iraq admits for first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program, but denies weaponization.
July 4 – Prime Minister of the United Kingdom John Major wins his battle to remain leader of the Conservative Party.
July 5 – The United States Congress passes the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, requiring that producers of pornography keep records of all models who are filmed or photographed, and that all models be at least 18 years of age.
July 9 – Sri Lankan Civil War: 125 civilians are killed in Navaly as result of bombing by the Sri Lanka Air Force.
July 10 – Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is freed from house arrest.
July 11 –
Srebrenica massacre: Units of the Army of the Republika Srpska, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, enter Srebrenica with little resistance from Dutch peacekeepers of the United Nations Protection Force, going on to kill of thousands of Bosniak men and boys and rape many women.
President Clinton announces the restoration of United States–Vietnam relations twenty years after the Vietnam War.
A Cubana de Aviación Antonov An-24 crashes into the Caribbean off southeast Cuba killing 44 people.
The Taiwan Strait
July 17 – The Nasdaq Composite index closes above the 1,000 mark for the first time.
July 18 – A series of huge eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano sends lava flows and ash falls across a wide area of southern Montserrat.
July 21–July 26 – Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Chinese People's Liberation Army fires missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.
July 23 – David Daliberti and William Barloon, 2 Americans held as spies by Iraq, are released by Saddam Hussein after negotiations with U.S. Congressman Bill Richardson.
August
August 2 – The first cold front of the White Earthquake strikes Chile; during the rest of August several communities becomes isolated due to heavy snowfall and livestock is decimated.
August 3 – An Il-76TD piloted by a Russian crew is forced down by Taliban fighter planes. The crew escape with the aircraft on August 16, 1996.
August 4 – Croatian forces, with the cooperation of the ARBiH, launch Operation Storm against rebel Croatian Serb forces in the Krajina, which subsequently ceases to exist as a political entity.
August 5 – Croatian forces take the Croatian Serb capital, Knin, and continue their advance into the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
August 6 – Hundreds in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo mark the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb.
August 7 – Operation Storm ends with a UN-brokered ceasefire; remaining Croatian Serb forces start surrendering.
August 11 – The Russell Hill subway accident results in 3 deaths and 30 injuries in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
August 14 – An avalanche buries Alison Hargreaves, the first woman to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen; she is reported dead.
August 16 – Bermudans reject independence in a referendum.
August 24 – Microsoft releases Windows 95.
August 28 – A Bosnian Serb mortar bomb near a Sarajevo market square kills 37 civilians.
August 29 – Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian head of state, survives an assassination attempt in Tbilisi.
August 30 – The NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb artillery positions begins in Bosnia and Herzegovina, continuing into September. At the same time, ARBiH forces begin an offensive against the Bosnian Serb Army around Sarajevo, central Bosnia, and Bosnian Krajina.
September
September
The DVD, an optical disc computer storage media format, is announced.
The European Parliament elects the first European Ombudsman, Jacob Söderman, who takes up office in September 1995.
September 4
eBay is founded.
The Fourth World Conference on Women opens in Beijing with over 4,750 delegates from 181 countries in attendance.
September 6 – NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces continue, after repeated attempts at a solution to the Bosnian War fail.
September 19 – The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
September 22 – American millionaire Steve Forbes announces his candidacy for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination.
September 23 – Argentine national Guillermo "Bill" Gaede is arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on charges of industrial espionage. His sales to Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran are believed to have involved Intel and AMD trade secrets worth US$10–20 million.
September 26 – The trial against former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who is accused of Mafia connections, begins.
September 27–September 28 – Bob Denard's mercenaries capture President Said Mohammed Djohor of the Comoros; the local army does not resist.
September 28 – Croatian forces massacre 9 elderly Croatian Serbs in the village of Varivode, Croatia.
October
October 3 – O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
October 4
France launches a counter-coup in the Comoros with 600 soldiers. They arrest Bob Denard and his mercenaries and take Denard to France; Caabi el-Yachroutu becomes the interim president.
Hurricane Opal makes landfall at Pensacola Beach, Florida as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph (185 km/h) winds.
October 5 – Tansu Çiller of DYP forms the new government of Turkey (51st government, a minority government which failed to receive the vote of confidence).
October 6 – Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz announce the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first confirmed extrasolar planet orbiting an ordinary main-sequence star.
October 9 – 1995 Palo Verde derailment: An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.
October 15 – The Carolina Panthers win their first-ever regular season game by defeating the New York Jets at Clemson Memorial Stadium in South Carolina.
October 16 – The Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C. The event was conceived by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
October 17 – French woman Jeanne Calment reaches the confirmed age of 120 years and 238 days, making her the oldest person ever recorded.
October 23 – In Houston, Texas, Yolanda Saldívar is convicted of first degree murder in the shooting death of Selena Quintanilla Perez, and 3 days later is sentenced to life in prison.
October 24 – A total solar eclipse is visible from Iran, India, Thailand, and Southeast Asia.[8]
October 25 – A Metra commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
October 26 – An avalanche hits the village Flateyri in Iceland, killing 20 people.
October 28 – A fire in Baku Metro, Azerbaijan, kills 289 passengers (the world's worst subway disaster).
October 30
Quebec independentists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada.
Tansu Çiller of DYP forms the new government of Turkey.
November
November 1
NASA loses contact with the Pioneer 11 probe.
Participants in the Yugoslav Wars begin negotiations at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The U.S. House of Representatives votes to ban partial birth abortions by a vote of 288–139.
November 2 – The Supreme Court of Argentina orders the extradition of Erich Priebke, ex-S.S. captain.
November 3 – At Arlington National Cemetery, U.S. President Bill Clinton dedicates a memorial to the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
November 4 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
November 7 – Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and damage of P 10,829,000,000. The typhoon was the strongest ever to strike the Philippines in 25 years, with wind speeds of 130 mph (210 km/h) and gusts of 180 mph (290 km/h).
November 10
Iraq disarmament crisis: With help from Israel and Jordan, UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter intercepts 240 Russian gyroscopes and accelerometers on their way to Iraq from Russia.
In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with 8 others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, are hanged by government forces.
November 12 – The Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, a programme to implement the Harare Declaration, is announced by the Commonwealth Heads of Government.
November 14 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress of the United States, forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums, and run most government offices with skeleton staff.
November 16 – A United Nations tribunal charges Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladic with genocide during the Bosnian War.
November 21
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 40.46 to close at 5,023.55, its first close above 5,000. This makes 1995 the first year where the Dow surpasses two millennium marks in a single year.
The Dayton Agreement to end the Bosnian War is reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio (signed December 14).
November 22
Rosemary West is sentenced to life for killing 10 women and girls, including her daughter and stepdaughter, after the jury returns a guilty verdict at Winchester Crown Court. The trial judge recommends that she should never be released from prison, making her only the second woman in British legal history to be subjected to a whole life tariff (the other is Myra Hindley).
Six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo's child abuse-related death at the hands of her mother makes headlines, and instigates major reform in New York City's child welfare system.
Egypt, Eilat, Israel, and much of the North African Mediterranean is struck by the strongest earthquake (7.2 M_\mathrm{w}) along the Dead Sea Transform in a century; 8 are killed.
The first ever full length computer animated feature film, Toy Story is released by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures.
November 28
The Barcelona Treaty is signed by 27 attending nations.
U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the National Highway Designation Act, which ends the federal 55 mph (89 km/h) speed limit.
November 30 – Javier Solana becomes the new NATO General Secretary; Operation Desert Storm officially ends.
December
December 3 – Strikes paralyze France's public sector.
December 7 – NASA's Galileo probe enters Jupiter's atmosphere.
December 8
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffers a massive stroke and lapses into a coma.
6-year-old Gyaincain Norbu is enthroned as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama at Tashilhunpo Monastery.
December 14 – The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris.
December 15
The European Court of Justice rules that all EU football players have the right to a free transfer among member states at the end of their contracts.
Because of the "quadruple-witching" option expiration, volume on the New York Stock Exchange hits 638 million shares, the highest single-day volume since October 20, 1987, when the Dow staged a stunning recovery a day after Black Monday.
December 16 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi scuba divers, under the direction of the United Nations Special Commission, dredge the Tigris near Baghdad. The divers find over 200 prohibited Russian-made missile instruments and components.
December 20
American Airlines Flight 965 (Boeing 757) crashes into a mountain near Buga, Valle del Cauca, Colombia after veering off its course en route to Cali, Colombia. Of the 164 people on board, 4 passengers and a dog are the only survivors.
HM The Queen advises "an early divorce" to Lady Diana Spencer and Charles, Prince of Wales. The divorce is finalized on 28 August 1996.
December 30
The lowest ever United Kingdom temperature of −27.2 °C (−17.0 °F) is recorded at Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands. This equals the record set at Braemar, Aberdeenshire in 1895 and 1982.
The Republic of Texas group claims to have formed a provisional government in Texas.
December 31 – The final original Calvin and Hobbes comic strip is published.
January 1
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is established to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Austria, Finland & Sweden act to join the European Union.
The Draupner wave in the North Sea in Norway is detected, confirming the existence of rogue waves.
January 6–January 7 – A chemical fire occurs in an apartment complex in Manila, Philippines. Policemen led by watch commander Aida Fariscal and investigators find a bomb factory and a laptop computer and disks that contain plans for Project Bojinka, a mass-terrorist attack. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, is arrested one month later.
January 9 – Valeri Polyakov completes 366 days in space while aboard the Mir space station, breaking a duration record.
January 16
An avalanche hits the village Súðavík in Iceland, killing 14 people.
The fourth Star Trek TV series, Voyager, premieres on UPN.
January 17 – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake called the "Great Hanshin earthquake" occurs near Kobe, Japan, causing great property damage and killing 6,434 people.
Prodigy online service offers access to the World Wide Web.[4]
January 25 – Norwegian rocket incident: A rocket launched from the space exploration centre at Andøya, Norway is briefly interpreted by the Russians as an incoming attack.
January 30 – John Howard becomes leader of the Liberal Party of Australia to challenge Paul Keating for the 1996 Federal Election and the position of Prime Minister of Australia.
January 31 – U.S. President Bill Clinton invokes emergency powers, to extend a $20 billion loan to help Mexico avert financial collapse.
February
February 1 – Lyricist/guitarist Richey Edwards of the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers goes missing from a hotel in Bayswater, London on the eve of a planned tour of the United States. His car is found two weeks later at Severn View services in Aust.
February 9 – STS-63: Dr. Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale became the second African American and Briton, respectively, to walk in space.
February 13 – A United Nations tribunal on human rights violations in the Balkans charges 21 Bosnian Serb commanders with genocide and crimes against humanity.
February 15
Hacker Kevin Mitnick is arrested by the FBI and charged with penetrating some of the United States' most "secure" computer systems.
Taiwan's deadliest fire, at a karaoke restaurant in Taichung, kills 64.
February 17
Colin Ferguson is convicted of 6 counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 25-year sentence for each of the 6 murders.
February 21
Serkadji prison mutiny in Algeria: Four guards and 96 prisoners are killed in a day and a half.
Ibrahim Ali, a 17-year-old Comorian living in France, is murdered by 3 far-right National Front activists.
Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada, becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
February 23 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 30.28 to close at 4,003.33 – the Dow's first ever close above 4,000.
February 25 – Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) (Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica [OTCA]).
February 26 – The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking firm, Barings Bank, collapses after securities broker Nick Leeson loses $1.4 billion by speculating on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
February 27 – In Denver, Colorado, Stapleton Airport closes and is replaced by the new Denver International Airport, the largest in the United States.
February 28 – Members of the group Patriot's Council are convicted in Minnesota of manufacturing ricin.
March
March 1
Julio María Sanguinetti is sworn in as President of Uruguay for his second term.
Polish Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak resigns from Parliament and is replaced by ex-communist Jozef Oleksy.
In Moscow, Russian anti-corruption journalist Vladislav Listyev is killed by a gunman.
The first search engine service Yahoo! is founded.
March 2 – Nick Leeson is arrested for his role in the collapse of Barings Bank.
March 3 – In Somalia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission ends.
March 6 – On an episode of The Jenny Jones Show ("Same-Sex Crushes"), Scott Amedure reveals a crush on his heterosexual friend Jonathan Schmitz. Schmitz kills Amedure several days after the show.
March 12 – The 1995 Gazi Quarter riots occur in Sultangazi (then Gaziosmanpaşa), Istanbul, Turkey. A few days later, riots broke out in Ümraniye, Istanbul and Kızılay, Ankara also.
March 13 – David Daliberti and William Barloon, 2 Americans working for a military contractor in Kuwait, are arrested after straying into Iraq.
March 14 – Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle (the Soyuz TM-21), lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
March 16 – Mississippi ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The amendment was nationally ratified in 1865.
March 20 – Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway: Members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult release sarin gas on 5 subway trains in Tokyo, killing 13 and injuring 5,510.
March 22 – Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in outer space.
March 24 – For the first time in 26 years, no British soldiers patrol the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
March 26 – The Schengen Agreement, easing cross-border travel, goes into effect in several European countries.
March 30 – A police officer tries to assassinate Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency of Japan.
March 31 – Mexican American Tejano pop singer Selena is murdered at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas by her former employee, Yolanda Saldívar.
April
April 19: A car bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and wounding 680 more
April 1 – Dialog Telekom launches Sri Lanka's first GSM mobile phone network.
April 2 – An explosion in Gaza kills 8, including a Hamas leader.
April 5 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 246–188 to cut taxes for individuals and corporations.
April 7 – House Republicans celebrate passage of most of the Contract with America.
April 19 – Oklahoma City bombing: 168 people, including 8 Federal Marshals and 19 children, are killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Timothy McVeigh and one of his accomplices, Terry Nichols, set off the bomb.
April 24 – A Unabomber bomb kills lobbyist Gilbert Murray in Sacramento, California.
April 28 – In Daegu, South Korea, a gas explosion at a subway construction site kills 101 people, mostly teenage schoolboys.
The United States government stops funding the NSFNET, making the Internet a wholly privatised system.[5]
May
May 1
Jacques Chirac is elected president of France.
Croatian forces launch Operation Flash against rebel Serb forces in western Slavonia.
May 7 – Finland wins the ice hockey world championship.
May 10 – At Vaal Reefs gold mine in Orkney, a runaway locomotive falls into a lift shaft onto an ascending cage and causes it to plunge 1,500 feet (460 m) to the bottom of the 6,900 feet (2,100 m) deep shaft, killing 104.[6][7]
May 11 – More than 170 countries agree to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
May 13 – An earthquake hits the regions of Kozani and Grevena in Greece, with an intensity of 6.6 on the Richter scale.
May 14
The Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
Team New Zealand wins the America's Cup in San Diego, beating Stars and Stripes 5–0.
May 16 – Japanese police besiege the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo near Mount Fuji and arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara.
May 17 – Shawn Nelson, 35, goes on a tank rampage in San Diego.
May 20 – U.S. President Bill Clinton indefinitely closes part of the street in front of the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue, to vehicular traffic in response to the Oklahoma City bombing.
May 21 – Pope John Paul II canonizes John Sarkander during his visit to Olomouc, the Czech Republic.
May 23 – Oklahoma City bombing: In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building are imploded.
May 24 – AFC Ajax wins the UEFA Champions League in the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna by defeating AC Milan 0–1 by a goal of Patrick Kluivert. This was the third consecutive win of AFC Ajax over AC Milan that season, ranking AFC Ajax on the 4th place on the list of European Cup and UEFA Champions League winners.
May 25 – Egan v. Canada: The Supreme Court of Canada rules that discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
May 27 – In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.
May 28 – A 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Neftegorsk, Russia kills at least 2,000.
June
June 1 – The busiest hurricane season in 62 years begins.
June 2
Mrkonjić Grad incident: A United States Air Force F-16 piloted by Captain Scott O'Grady is shot down over Bosnia and Herzegovina while patrolling the NATO no-fly zone. O'Grady is rescued by U.S. Marines six days later.
Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy.
The Dimmitt, Texas Tornado strikes.
June 3 – Montreal Expos pitcher Pedro Martinez becomes the second major league baseball pitcher to pitch a "perfect game" leading into the 10th inning.
June 6
U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard breaks NASA's space endurance record of 14 days, 1 hour and 16 minutes, aboard the Russian space station Mir.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa abolishes capital punishment in South Africa in the case of S v Makwanyane and Another.
June 13 – French President Jacques Chirac announces the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
June 15 – A powerful earthquake, registering a moment magnitude of 6.2, hits the city of Aigio, Greece, resulting in several deaths and significant damage to many buildings.
June 16 – The IOC selects Salt Lake City to host the 2002 Winter Olympics.
June 20 – Oil multinational Royal Dutch Shell caves in to international pressure and abandons plans to dump the Brent Spar oil rig at sea.
June 22 – Japanese police rescue 365 hostages from a hijacked All Nippon Airways Flight 857 (Boeing 747-200) at Hakodate airport. The hijacker was armed with a knife and demanded the release of Shoko Asahara.
June 24
The New Jersey Devils sweep the heavily favored Detroit Red Wings to win their first Stanley Cup in the lock-out shortened season.
South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup.
June 29
Lisa Clayton completes her 10-month solo circumnavigation from the Northern Hemisphere.
STS-71: Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.
The Sampoong Department Store collapses in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, killing 501 and injuring 937.
Iraq disarmament crisis: According to UNSCOM, the unity of the U.N. Security Council begins to fray, as a few countries, particularly France and Russia, become more interested in making financial deals with Iraq than in disarming the country.
July
Exhumed grave of victims of the July Srebrenica massacre.
July – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to end all cooperation with UNSCOM and IAEA, if sanctions against the country are not lifted by August 31. Following the defection of his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam Hussein makes new revelations about the full extent of Iraq's biological and nuclear weapons programs. Iraq also withdraws its last U.N. declaration of prohibited biological weapons and turns over a large amount of new documents on its WMD programs.
July 1 – Iraq disarmament crisis: In response to UNSCOM's evidence, Iraq admits for first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program, but denies weaponization.
July 4 – Prime Minister of the United Kingdom John Major wins his battle to remain leader of the Conservative Party.
July 5 – The United States Congress passes the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, requiring that producers of pornography keep records of all models who are filmed or photographed, and that all models be at least 18 years of age.
July 9 – Sri Lankan Civil War: 125 civilians are killed in Navaly as result of bombing by the Sri Lanka Air Force.
July 10 – Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is freed from house arrest.
July 11 –
Srebrenica massacre: Units of the Army of the Republika Srpska, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, enter Srebrenica with little resistance from Dutch peacekeepers of the United Nations Protection Force, going on to kill of thousands of Bosniak men and boys and rape many women.
President Clinton announces the restoration of United States–Vietnam relations twenty years after the Vietnam War.
A Cubana de Aviación Antonov An-24 crashes into the Caribbean off southeast Cuba killing 44 people.
The Taiwan Strait
July 17 – The Nasdaq Composite index closes above the 1,000 mark for the first time.
July 18 – A series of huge eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano sends lava flows and ash falls across a wide area of southern Montserrat.
July 21–July 26 – Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Chinese People's Liberation Army fires missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.
July 23 – David Daliberti and William Barloon, 2 Americans held as spies by Iraq, are released by Saddam Hussein after negotiations with U.S. Congressman Bill Richardson.
August
August 2 – The first cold front of the White Earthquake strikes Chile; during the rest of August several communities becomes isolated due to heavy snowfall and livestock is decimated.
August 3 – An Il-76TD piloted by a Russian crew is forced down by Taliban fighter planes. The crew escape with the aircraft on August 16, 1996.
August 4 – Croatian forces, with the cooperation of the ARBiH, launch Operation Storm against rebel Croatian Serb forces in the Krajina, which subsequently ceases to exist as a political entity.
August 5 – Croatian forces take the Croatian Serb capital, Knin, and continue their advance into the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
August 6 – Hundreds in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo mark the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb.
August 7 – Operation Storm ends with a UN-brokered ceasefire; remaining Croatian Serb forces start surrendering.
August 11 – The Russell Hill subway accident results in 3 deaths and 30 injuries in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
August 14 – An avalanche buries Alison Hargreaves, the first woman to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen; she is reported dead.
August 16 – Bermudans reject independence in a referendum.
August 24 – Microsoft releases Windows 95.
August 28 – A Bosnian Serb mortar bomb near a Sarajevo market square kills 37 civilians.
August 29 – Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian head of state, survives an assassination attempt in Tbilisi.
August 30 – The NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb artillery positions begins in Bosnia and Herzegovina, continuing into September. At the same time, ARBiH forces begin an offensive against the Bosnian Serb Army around Sarajevo, central Bosnia, and Bosnian Krajina.
September
September
The DVD, an optical disc computer storage media format, is announced.
The European Parliament elects the first European Ombudsman, Jacob Söderman, who takes up office in September 1995.
September 4
eBay is founded.
The Fourth World Conference on Women opens in Beijing with over 4,750 delegates from 181 countries in attendance.
September 6 – NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces continue, after repeated attempts at a solution to the Bosnian War fail.
September 19 – The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
September 22 – American millionaire Steve Forbes announces his candidacy for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination.
September 23 – Argentine national Guillermo "Bill" Gaede is arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on charges of industrial espionage. His sales to Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran are believed to have involved Intel and AMD trade secrets worth US$10–20 million.
September 26 – The trial against former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who is accused of Mafia connections, begins.
September 27–September 28 – Bob Denard's mercenaries capture President Said Mohammed Djohor of the Comoros; the local army does not resist.
September 28 – Croatian forces massacre 9 elderly Croatian Serbs in the village of Varivode, Croatia.
October
October 3 – O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
October 4
France launches a counter-coup in the Comoros with 600 soldiers. They arrest Bob Denard and his mercenaries and take Denard to France; Caabi el-Yachroutu becomes the interim president.
Hurricane Opal makes landfall at Pensacola Beach, Florida as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph (185 km/h) winds.
October 5 – Tansu Çiller of DYP forms the new government of Turkey (51st government, a minority government which failed to receive the vote of confidence).
October 6 – Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz announce the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first confirmed extrasolar planet orbiting an ordinary main-sequence star.
October 9 – 1995 Palo Verde derailment: An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona.
October 15 – The Carolina Panthers win their first-ever regular season game by defeating the New York Jets at Clemson Memorial Stadium in South Carolina.
October 16 – The Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C. The event was conceived by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
October 17 – French woman Jeanne Calment reaches the confirmed age of 120 years and 238 days, making her the oldest person ever recorded.
October 23 – In Houston, Texas, Yolanda Saldívar is convicted of first degree murder in the shooting death of Selena Quintanilla Perez, and 3 days later is sentenced to life in prison.
October 24 – A total solar eclipse is visible from Iran, India, Thailand, and Southeast Asia.[8]
October 25 – A Metra commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
October 26 – An avalanche hits the village Flateyri in Iceland, killing 20 people.
October 28 – A fire in Baku Metro, Azerbaijan, kills 289 passengers (the world's worst subway disaster).
October 30
Quebec independentists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada.
Tansu Çiller of DYP forms the new government of Turkey.
November
November 1
NASA loses contact with the Pioneer 11 probe.
Participants in the Yugoslav Wars begin negotiations at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The U.S. House of Representatives votes to ban partial birth abortions by a vote of 288–139.
November 2 – The Supreme Court of Argentina orders the extradition of Erich Priebke, ex-S.S. captain.
November 3 – At Arlington National Cemetery, U.S. President Bill Clinton dedicates a memorial to the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
November 4 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
November 7 – Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and damage of P 10,829,000,000. The typhoon was the strongest ever to strike the Philippines in 25 years, with wind speeds of 130 mph (210 km/h) and gusts of 180 mph (290 km/h).
November 10
Iraq disarmament crisis: With help from Israel and Jordan, UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter intercepts 240 Russian gyroscopes and accelerometers on their way to Iraq from Russia.
In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with 8 others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, are hanged by government forces.
November 12 – The Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, a programme to implement the Harare Declaration, is announced by the Commonwealth Heads of Government.
November 14 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress of the United States, forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums, and run most government offices with skeleton staff.
November 16 – A United Nations tribunal charges Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladic with genocide during the Bosnian War.
November 21
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 40.46 to close at 5,023.55, its first close above 5,000. This makes 1995 the first year where the Dow surpasses two millennium marks in a single year.
The Dayton Agreement to end the Bosnian War is reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio (signed December 14).
November 22
Rosemary West is sentenced to life for killing 10 women and girls, including her daughter and stepdaughter, after the jury returns a guilty verdict at Winchester Crown Court. The trial judge recommends that she should never be released from prison, making her only the second woman in British legal history to be subjected to a whole life tariff (the other is Myra Hindley).
Six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo's child abuse-related death at the hands of her mother makes headlines, and instigates major reform in New York City's child welfare system.
Egypt, Eilat, Israel, and much of the North African Mediterranean is struck by the strongest earthquake (7.2 M_\mathrm{w}) along the Dead Sea Transform in a century; 8 are killed.
The first ever full length computer animated feature film, Toy Story is released by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures.
November 28
The Barcelona Treaty is signed by 27 attending nations.
U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the National Highway Designation Act, which ends the federal 55 mph (89 km/h) speed limit.
November 30 – Javier Solana becomes the new NATO General Secretary; Operation Desert Storm officially ends.
December
December 3 – Strikes paralyze France's public sector.
December 7 – NASA's Galileo probe enters Jupiter's atmosphere.
December 8
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffers a massive stroke and lapses into a coma.
6-year-old Gyaincain Norbu is enthroned as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama at Tashilhunpo Monastery.
December 14 – The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris.
December 15
The European Court of Justice rules that all EU football players have the right to a free transfer among member states at the end of their contracts.
Because of the "quadruple-witching" option expiration, volume on the New York Stock Exchange hits 638 million shares, the highest single-day volume since October 20, 1987, when the Dow staged a stunning recovery a day after Black Monday.
December 16 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi scuba divers, under the direction of the United Nations Special Commission, dredge the Tigris near Baghdad. The divers find over 200 prohibited Russian-made missile instruments and components.
December 20
American Airlines Flight 965 (Boeing 757) crashes into a mountain near Buga, Valle del Cauca, Colombia after veering off its course en route to Cali, Colombia. Of the 164 people on board, 4 passengers and a dog are the only survivors.
HM The Queen advises "an early divorce" to Lady Diana Spencer and Charles, Prince of Wales. The divorce is finalized on 28 August 1996.
December 30
The lowest ever United Kingdom temperature of −27.2 °C (−17.0 °F) is recorded at Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands. This equals the record set at Braemar, Aberdeenshire in 1895 and 1982.
The Republic of Texas group claims to have formed a provisional government in Texas.
December 31 – The final original Calvin and Hobbes comic strip is published.