Los Angeles police officers severely beat motorist Rodney King, the beating is famously captured on amateur video and later leads to riots when the police officers are acquitted.
The U.K. miners' strike ends. The year-long dispute was the country's longest-running industrial dispute and a defining issue of Margaret Thatcher's conservative government.
All 345 people on board a Turkish Airlines jet die as it plunges to the ground near Paris, France. The crash of the DC-10 aircraft has the 4th highest death toll of any aviation accident in history.
The last remnant of the Ottoman empire in Turkey is abolished. The end of the Islamic caliphate marked the demise of the 600-year old empire and gave way to the formation of a reformed Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.