On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: The Walt Disney Company said today that it would open a second park, which will have a movie studio theme, at its Euro Disneyland complex near Paris.
LEAD: THE televisions are stacked floor-to-ceiling across the museum wall. A skeletal character who resembles Max Headroom appears on some of the more than 200 sets. The rest show transient images of the rock star David Bowie, a man and woman dancing, piano keys and dozens of other barely perceptible but nonetheless eye-catching stimuli, all accompanied by a blaring soundtrack.
LEAD: In the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, which is known as Little Poland, the ties to the old country remain strong.
LEAD: Two Lebanese-born West Germans and an American woman who were said to have been abducted Wednesday in Beirut apparently were never detained, the West German Ambassador in Beirut said today.
LEAD: More than one million public-school students and their parents across the state are receiving ''report cards'' this week that for the first time give a measure of the quality of schools and how well they have succeeded in helping children learn.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of November 15, 1989, covering November 17, 1989.
Janet Jackson
Milli Vanilli
The Rolling Stones
Paula Abdul
Aerosmith
1989Ryan Griffin, American football player[†]
Ryan Walsh Griffin is a retired American professional football quarterback. He played college football for the Tulane Green Wave. He was signed by the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2013. Griffin earned a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the 2020 season. He was signed by the Skorpions Varese of the Italian Football League (IFL) as quarterback/Offensive Coordinator in the spring of 2024. After the season Griffin joined the Chicago Bears coaching staff as an Offensive Assistant QB/WR Coach.
1989Seth Lugo, American baseball player[†]
Jacob Seth Lugo is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the New York Mets and San Diego Padres. He made his MLB debut in 2016. Lugo played for the Puerto Rican national baseball team in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, winning a silver medal.
1989Roman Zozulya, Ukrainian footballer[†]
Roman Vyacheslavovych Zozulya is a Ukrainian professional footballer who plays as a striker.
1989Costabile Farace, American criminal (born 1960)[†]
Costabile "Gus" Farace, Jr. was an Italian American criminal and mobster, an associate of the Bonanno crime family. Born in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Farace is known for murdering a teenage male prostitute and a federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in New York City. He was shot and killed by an unknown assailant in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in 1989.
1989Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins: In Czechoslovakia, a student demonstration in Prague is quelled by riot police. This sparks an uprising aimed at overthrowing the communist government (it succeeds on December 29).[†]
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia included students and older dissidents. The result was the end of 41 years of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent dismantling of the command economy and conversion to a parliamentary republic.
In 1989, the world population was approximately 5,234,431,732 people[†]