On this day
Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
In 1995, the world population was approximately 5,758,878,982 people[†]
1995Noah Vonleh, American basketball player[†]
Noah Vonleh is an American professional basketball player who last played in 2024 for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). He played college basketball for the Indiana Hoosiers.
1995Lady Amelia Windsor, member of the British royal family[†]
Lady Amelia Sophia Theodora Mary Margaret Windsor is a British fashion model and relative of the British royal family. As of 2025, she is 44th in the line of succession to the British throne. She is a granddaughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, so she is consequently a great-great-granddaughter of George V and Queen Mary; she is a second cousin once removed of Charles III.
1995Microsoft Windows 95 was released to the public in North America.[†]
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows products into a single product and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. There were also major changes made to the core components of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly cooperatively multitasked 16-bit architecture of its predecessor Windows 3.1 to a 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture.
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Just before 8 P.M. on Aug. 3, Sandy Brawer stared with bloodshot eyes at his audience, pointed to a thick packet of white papers and said, "I want to clearly say we have a big problem here." Then Mr. Brawer, director of operations for Community School District 27 in south Queens, patted the pack of Parliaments in his shirt pocket and revealed he had started smoking again. Thirty hours before, a messenger had arrived with the latest bad-news bulletin from the Board of Education: District 27, the third largest in New York City, with 33,000 students jammed into 36 schools, would have to reduce its budget by $1 million more than expected, bringing the total city-mandated cuts to a seemingly impossible $4.3 million. Mr. Brawer had spent most of those 30 hours locked in his office in Ozone Park, poring over the grim, 250-page memorandum and listing the unpleasant options.
Marin Pesa, a 24-year-old plumber, had not planned to spend last night's witching hour in a jostling scrum of technophiles surrounding a waist-high pile of Windows 95 software boxes at the CompUSA store in midtown Manhattan. But "The hype got me here," he acknowledged.
Two weeks after the defection of two top aides of President Saddam Hussein, Washington's hope of seizing the opportunity to weaken or topple the Iraqi Government is rapidly receding. For one thing, Iraqi and Arab officials say, President Hussein has moved ruthlessly to consolidate his remaining power, arresting hundreds and shuffling his personal security apparatus.
STANDING in the high grass of the wild meadow at Gravetye Manor on a misty cool evening early this summer as tendrils of smoke curled out of the chimneys of a 16th-century manor house, I half expected to see Mr. Rochester embracing Jane Eyre in one of the lighted windows. And as night settled over the old hawthorne tree by the lake, it was hard to remember that this place, now an elegant hotel, was once the seat of revolution. It had been bought in 1885 by a cantankerous Irish-born gardener named William Robinson. He had come to England in his early 20's and had proceeded, by force of his personality and his prolific, opinionated writings, to turn English gardeners from their infatuation with carpet bedding -- mosaiclike patterns of blue, yellow and red annuals -- to the use of hardy plants almost forgotten in the stampede for the tender exotics that were flooding England.
China announced early today that a court in the central city of Wuhan had found Harry Wu, the Chinese-American human rights activist, guilty of spying and sentenced him to 15 years, but added that he would be expelled "as punishment" for his crimes. If Mr. Wu is able to leave China soon, the move could clear the way for a significant improvement in Chinese-American relations.
ELIA KAZAN is a study in contradictions. His achievements on stage and screen have helped define the American experience for a generation, yet for the last 30 years his abiding interest has been in his own Mediterranean heritage. The director has received two Academy Awards, a Tony Award and a Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award but still considers himself an outsider. He guards his privacy zealously yet has written a scathingly revealing autobiography. Mr. Kazan's New York home (he has another house in Connecticut) is a four-story town house on the Upper East Side, indistinguishable from the multifamily dwellings that surround it.
Pete Taylor began his day off as he often does: He sat down at a small table in the Elbow Room bar here just before noon today, slowly sipping a Molson Light and keeping his eyes fixed on the color video monitor on a shelf above the jukebox. Some like casinos or the horses, but Mr. Taylor is a fan of Keno, the fast-action video lottery game that has been booming in Massachusetts for a year and a half even though many people here -- including the lottery director himself -- eye it with worry.
"You have to see it from the air," Ross Perot Jr. said, striding toward his Bell Long Ranger 206L, a seven-seat helicopter like the one he flew around the world. And so, with crisp military efficiency, he lifted off from the roof of a parking garage here to survey his real estate domain. In a patter as constant as the beating of the propeller blades, Mr. Perot spent an hour pointing at swaths of homes and golf courses here; warehouses, rail yards, factories and an airport there; and, up on the horizon, buffalo and longhorn herds on his ranch.
IT would be a challenging assignment for any designer: into a space a fraction of the size of a small bathroom, cram a bunch of gauges, a network of ducts for hot or cold air, a pair of air bags, a set of sophisticated audio components, a digital clock, several miles of electrical wire and the knobs, buttons and switches to turn it all on and off or move it up and down. And don't forget the big "easys" -- everything has to be easy to reach and easy to read.
A Paterson man and woman and a Port Authority police officer were injured early yesterday morning after a police chase. The man and woman, riding a stolen motorcycle, were being pursued by Paterson housing police when their vehicle rammed a patrol car at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge, the authorities said. The man, Christopher Williams, 24, and the woman, Rasheeda Williams, 18, were hospitalized in stable condition last night. Officer Gary Griffith, who was in the patrol car, was treated and released. Officials said that Mr. Williams was charged with theft of movable property and eluding the police after he refused to pull over. They said the couple would also be charged with aggravated assault of a police officer. TERRY PRISTIN
It is still and silent and unbearably hot here in the heart of raisin country. Migrant farm workers who have gathered from around the state and from Mexico sit motionless in the shade as the hard yellow grapes, in thousands of acres of vineyards, grow sweeter and heavier on the vine, almost ready for the clamor of the harvest. The grape harvest is an autumn ritual as old as California, but there is a change. Most of the migrant workers here in Madera do not speak Spanish. They are Mixtec Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, who, along with an influx of indigenous groups from Central and South America, are changing the face of America's farm labor force.
The voice-mail message from Senator Frank H. Murkowski's aide was polite but firm. The Senator wanted some answers from the Environmental Protection Agency about its case against the Alaska Pulp Corporation, a case the Alaska Republican thought was baseless. "We would prefer not to have to do anything with an appropriations rider on this," said the aide, Maureen Koetz.