On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: Federal regulators and banking experts say they are increasingly concerned that mounting losses from troubled real estate loans could lead to a series of bank failures, straining the Federal insurance program that protects depositors' funds.
LEAD: Alexander Dubcek, the Communist who led the ill-fated Prague Spring liberalization movement of 1968 only to be ousted by Soviet troops, was unanimously elected chairman of the national Parliament today.
LEAD: Monday is New Year's Day. Sunday night, starting at 7 P.M., Times Square will be closed to traffic. Here are holiday schedules. NEW YORK Government offices: Federal and state offices closed. Post office: Express Mail and special delivery only. Only main office, at 33d Street and Eighth Avenue, will be open.
LEAD: The public is pouring cash into stock mutual funds at the heaviest rate since stock prices peaked in the summer of 1987. But the managers who run those mutual funds have turned very cautious and are sitting on much of the cash.
LEAD: Since April, when John T. Dorrance Jr., the head of the family that owns almost 59 percent of the Campbell Soup Company, died, Wall Street has buzzed with speculation that the Dorrances would sell the company. For eight months, the family issued unanimous denials.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of December 27, 1989, covering December 29, 1989.
Phil Collins
Milli Vanilli
Billy Joel
Janet Jackson
Paula Abdul
1989Jane Levy, American actress[†]
Jane Colburn Levy is an American actress. After attending the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, she debuted as the original Mandy Milkovich on the Showtime comedy-drama Shameless (2011). Levy left Shameless following its first season to portray the lead of the ABC sitcom Suburgatory from 2011 to 2014. Transitioning to film, Levy collaborated with director Fede Álvarez as the lead of the horror films Evil Dead (2013) and Don't Breathe (2016). She returned to television with series regular roles on the Hulu comedy-drama There's... Johnny! (2017) and horror fantasy Castle Rock (2018), in addition to headlining the Netflix thriller miniseries What/If (2019). From 2020 to 2021, Levy portrayed the title character of the NBC musical comedy-drama Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
1989Kei Nishikori, Japanese tennis player[†]
Kei Nishikori is a Japanese professional tennis player. He is the only Japanese man in the Open Era to have been ranked in the top five in singles, reaching his career-high ranking of world No. 4 in March 2015, and the second man in history to do so after Jiro Sato. Nishikori has won twelve titles on the ATP Tour and was runner-up at the 2014 US Open, making him the only man representing an Asian country to contest a major singles final. He also became the first man from Asia to qualify for the ATP Finals, reaching the semifinals in 2014 and 2016. He is currently the No. 1 Japanese player.
1989Harri Säteri, Finnish ice hockey player[†]
Harri Säteri is a Finnish professional ice hockey goaltender, currently playing with EHC Biel in the National League (NL). Although drafted in 2008 by the San Jose Sharks, he did not play in an NHL game until nearly a decade later as a member of the Florida Panthers.
1989Süreyya Ağaoğlu, Azerbaijani-Turkish lawyer and jurist (born 1903)[†]
Süreyya Ağaoğlu was a Turkish-Azerbaijani writer, jurist, and the first female lawyer in Turkish history.
1989Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.[†]
Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
1989The Nikkei 225 for the Tokyo Stock Exchange hits its all-time intra-day high of 38,957.44 and closing high at 38,915.87, serving as the apex of the Japanese asset price bubble.[†]
The Nikkei 225, or the Nikkei Stock Average , more commonly called the Nikkei or the Nikkei index, is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It is a price-weighted index, operating in the Japanese Yen (JP¥), and its components are reviewed twice a year. The Nikkei 225 measures the performance of 225 highly capitalised and liquid publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. Since 2017, the index is calculated every five seconds. It was originally launched by the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1950, and was taken over by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper in 1970, when the Tokyo Exchange switched to the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX), which is weighed by market capitalisation rather than stock prices.
In 1989, the world population was approximately 5,234,431,732 people[†]