December 20 - Albert Van Vlierberghe, Belgian cyclist (b. 1942)
December 28 - Cassandra Harris, Australian actress (b. 1952)
Events
January 7 - Beginning of the operation Desert Storm, during the Gulf War.
January 9 - The Soviets storm Vilnius to stop Lithuanian independence.
January 12 - Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
January 13 - Soviet Union military troops attack Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius.
January 15 - The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.
January 16 - The United States goes to war with Iraq, beginning the Gulf War (U.S. Time).
January 17 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
January 17 - Harald V becomes King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V.
January 18 - Eastern Air Lines goes out of business after 62 years, citing financial problems.
January 20 - Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.
January 22 - Gulf War. Three SCUDs and one Patriot missile hit Ramat Gan in Israel, injuring 96 people. Three elderly people die of heart attacks.
January 26 - Mohamed Siad Barre is removed in Somalia, ending centralized government
February 3 - The Italian Communist Party dissolves and splits into the Democratic Party of the Left and the Communist Refoundation Party.
February 7 - Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in.
February 7 - The IRA launches a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting.
February 9 - Voters in Lithuania vote for independence.
February 11 - UNPO, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, forms in The Hague, Netherlands.
February 13 - Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy a bunker in Baghdad. The bunker was being used as a military communications outpost and unknown to allied forces, as a shelter for Iraqi civilians.
February 15 - The Visegrád Agreement, establishing cooperation to move toward free-market systems, is signed by the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.
February 18 - The IRA explodes bombs in the early morning at both Paddington station and Victoria station in London.
February 20 - A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.
February 23 - Gulf War: Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabia border and enter Iraq, thus starting the ground-phase of the war.
February 23 - In Thailand, General Sunthorn Kongsompong leads a bloodless coup d'état, deposing Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan.
February 25 - Gulf War: An Iraqi Scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.
February 26 - Gulf War: On Baghdad Radio Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein announces the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
February 27 - Gulf War: U.S. President George H. W. Bush announces that "Kuwait is liberated".
March 8 - The first U.S. troops arrive home from the Gulf War; Iraq hands over 40 foreign journalists and two American soldiers it had captured.
March 9 - Massive demonstrations are held against Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade. Two people are killed and tanks are in the streets.
March 11 - A curfew is imposed on black townships in South Africa after fighting between rival political gangs kills 49.
March 13 - The United States Justice Department announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
March 31 - The Establishment of Islamic Constitutional Movement
March 31 - Georgian independence referendum, 1991: nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
April 2 - The first female Premier of a Canadian province takes office. Rita Johnston succeeds William Vander Zalm, who resigned, as Premier of British Columbia.
April 4 - Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their plane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania.
April 5 - An ASA EMB 120 crashes in Brunswick, Georgia, killing all 23 aboard.
April 9 - Georgia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
April 10 - Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
April 10 - A rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
April 17 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 3,000 for the first time ever gaining 17.58 to 3,004.46.
April 22 - The Social Democratic Party of Albania is founded.
April 24 - Freddie Stowers is awarded the posthumous Medal of Honor for which he had been recommended in 1918.
April 26 - Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado (see Andover, Kansas Tornado Outbreak).
April 29 - 1991 Bangladesh cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 mph, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless.
May 1 - Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics steals his 939th base, making him the all-time leader in this category. However, his accomplishment is overshadowed later that evening by Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers, when he pitches his seventh career no-hitter (breaking his own record).
May 5 - A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after a Salvadoran man is shot by police.
May 15 - Edith Cresson becomes France's first female prime minister.
May 18 - Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is unrecognised by the international community.
May 19 - Croatian's vote for independence at their independence referendum.
May 21 - Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras.
May 21 - Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, flees Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end.
May 24 - Israel conducts Operation Solomon, evacuating Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
May 26 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes the first democratically elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era.
May 26 - Lauda Air Flight 004 explodes over rural Thailand, killing 223.
May 28 - The capital city of Addis Ababa, falls to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War.
June 3 - Mount Unzen erupts in Japan in Kyūshū killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists.
June 4 - The United Kingdom's Conservative government announces that some British regiments would disappear or be merged into others — the largest armed forces cuts in almost twenty years.
June 7 - Mount Pinatubo explodes generating an ash column 7 km (4.5 miles) high.
June 9 - The congress of the Italian party Proletarian Democracy decides to merge with the Communist Refoundation Party.
June 12 - Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic.
June 15 - Birth of the first federal political party in Canada that supports Quebec nationalism, le Bloc Québécois.
June 17 - Apartheid: the South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act, which had required all racial classification of all South Africans at birth.
June 20 - The German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.
June 25 - Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence from Yugoslavia.
June 26 - Ten-Day War- the Yugoslav people's army begins the Ten-Day War in Slovenia.
June 27 - Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before, is invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft, starting the Ten-Day War.
July 1 - The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
July 7 - Yugoslav Wars: the Brioni Agreement ends the ten-day independence war in Slovenia against the rest of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
July 9 - South Africa is readmitted into the Olympic movement after 30 years of exclusion.
July 10 - Boris Yeltsin begins his 5-year term as the first elected President of Russia.
July 10 - The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council (ICC) following the end of Apartheid.
July 11 - A Nationair DC-8 crashes during an emergency landing at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing 261. The Canadian charter flight was ferrying Hajj pilgrims on behalf of Nigeria Airways.
July 31 - The Medininkai Massacre in Lithuania. Soviet OMON attacks Lithuanian customs post in Medininkai, killing 7 officers and severely wounding one other.
August 4 - The Greek cruise ship Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa.
August 6 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
August 6 - Doi Takako, chair of the Social Democratic Party (Japan), becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives.
August 8 - The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.
August 8 - John McCarthy, British journalist held hostage in Lebanon for more than five years by Islamic Jihad, is released.
August 19 - Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea.
August 20 - Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
August 20 - Estonia secedes from the Soviet Union.
August 21 - Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.
August 21 - Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.
August 24 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
August 24 - Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.
August 25 - Belarus declares its independence from the Soviet Union
August 25 - The Battle of Vukovar has begun. An 87-day siege of an Croatian city by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August-November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence.
August 27 - The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
August 27 - Moldova declares independence from the USSR.
August 28 - Collapse of the Soviet Union: Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
September 30 - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is forced from office.
October 1 - New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 commences.
October 4 - The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature.
October 5 - An Indonesian military transport crashes after takeoff from Jakarta killing 137.
October 5 - The first official version of the Linux kernel, version 0.02, is released.
October 8 - The Croatian Parliament cuts all remaining ties with Yugoslavia
October 9 - Ecuador becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
October 12 - Askar Akayev, previously chosen President of Kyrgyzstan by republic's Supreme Soviet, is confirmed president in an uncontested poll.
October 16 - Luby's massacre: George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20 in Luby's Cafeteria.
October 16 - Jharkhand Chhatra Yuva Morcha is founded at a conference in Ranchi, India.
October 18 - Azerbaijan declares independence from USSR.
October 20 - The Oakland Hills firestorm kills 25 and destroys 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
October 25 - History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
October 27 - Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet Union.
October 29 - The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
October 30 - The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens.
November 1 - Three faculty, and one staff member of the department of physics and astronomy, were killed, along with one administrator, when physics graduate student Gang Lu went on a shooting rampage at the University of Iowa.
November 7 - Magic Johnson announces that he is infected with HIV and retires from the NBA.
November 12 - Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
November 14 - American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
November 14 - Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
November 14 - In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.
November 18 - Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon set Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland free.
November 18 - After the siege of Vukovar, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
November 27 - The United Nations Security Council adopts UN Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.
November 28 - South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.
December 1 - Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.
December 4 - Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut. He was the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.
December 4 - Captain Mark Pyle pilots Clipper Goodwill, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 727-221ADV, to Miami International Airport ending 64 years of Pan Am operations.
December 6 - In Croatia, forces of the Yugoslav People's Army bombard Dubrovnik after laying siege to the city since May.
December 8 - The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
December 8 - The Romanian Constitution is adopted in a referendum.
December 12 - Russian Federation gains independence from the USSR.
December 16 - United Nations General Assembly: UN General Assembly Resolution 4686 revokes UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 after Israel makes revocation of resolution 3379 a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.
December 16 - Independence of The Republic of Kazakhstan.
December 20 - A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.
December 21 - Charilaos Florakis is elected honorary president of the Communist Party of Greece.
December 25 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.
December 26 - The Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolves the USSR.
December 31 - All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.
