On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: Boyd L. Jefferies, a crucial Government witness in several securities fraud cases, made his courtroom debut yesterday by accusing the GAF Corporation and one of its senior executives of asking him to manipulate the price of Union Carbide stock in the fall of 1986.
LEAD: The Connecticut General Assembly will begin its 1989 session today, confronting not the opportunities of recent years but rather the limitations presented by a huge expected gap in the state budget.
LEAD: Despite a state budget gap that he estimates at more than $2 billion, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is expected to propose an increase in state welfare benefits in his State of the State address on Wednesday.
LEAD: Traders who were hoping that the stock market would get off on the right foot for 1989 were disappointed yesterday as the Dow Jones industrial average fell 23.93 points to close at 2,144.64.
LEAD: ''French perfumes, French wines, the French striving for comfort have been well known to you for a long time,'' read the notice on page 5 of tonight's issue of Izvestia, the Soviet Government daily newspaper. ''Now you have the opportunity to get better acquainted with industrial France.''
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of January 4, 1989, covering January 4, 1989.
Anita Baker
Soundtrack
U2
Bon Jovi
Traveling Wilburys
1989Kevin Pillar, American baseball player[†]
Kevin Andrew Pillar is an American professional baseball outfielder who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Toronto Blue Jays, San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox, Colorado Rockies, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, and Texas Rangers.
1989Graham Rahal, American race car driver[†]
Graham Robert Rahal is an American race car driver and small business owner. He currently races in the IndyCar Series with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, a team partially owned by his father Bobby Rahal, the winner of the 1986 Indianapolis 500.
1989Second Gulf of Sidra incident: A pair of Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.[†]
On 4 January 1989, two Grumman F-14A Tomcats of the United States Navy shot down two Libyan-operated Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23ML Flogger-G which the American aircrews believed were attempting to engage and attack them, as had happened eight years prior during the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident. The engagement took place over the Mediterranean Sea, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Tobruk, Libya.
In 1989, the world population was approximately 5,234,431,732 people[†]