On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
In 1996, the world population was approximately 5,842,055,734 people[†]
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of February 14, 1996, covering February 17, 1996.
Soundtrack
Alanis Morissette
Eazy-E
Mariah Carey
Oasis
Shania Twain
Bush
Hootie & The Blowfish
Tori Amos
Enya
1996Sebastian Aho, Swedish ice hockey player[†]
Sebastian Johannes Aho is a Swedish professional ice hockey defenceman for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the American Hockey League (AHL) while under contract to the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL). Aho was drafted by the New York Islanders, 139th overall, in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft.
1996Sasha Pieterse, South African-American actress and singer-songwriter[†]
Sasha Pieterse Sheaffer is a South African and American actress and singer. She is known for portraying Alison DiLaurentis in the Freeform series Pretty Little Liars (2010–2017), and its spin-off Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists (2019), for which she received global stardom and critical acclaim.
1996In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.[†]
Philadelphia, colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area and ninth-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.379 million residents, respectively.
1996NASA's Discovery Program begins as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifts off on the first mission ever to orbit and land on an asteroid, 433 Eros.[†]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Commercial Crew Program and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the lunar Artemis program.
1996The 8.2 Mw Biak earthquake shakes the Papua province of eastern Indonesia with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). A large tsunami followed, leaving 166 people dead or missing and 423 injured.[†]
The 1996 Biak earthquake, or the Irian Jaya earthquake, occurred on 17 February at 14:59:30 local time near Biak Island, Indonesia. The earthquake, which occurred on the New Guinea Trench, had a moment magnitude of 8.2 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The run-up height of the generated tsunami reached 7.7 m (25 ft). The disaster left at least 108 people dead, 423 injured, and 58 missing. It damaged or destroyed 5,043 houses which subsequently made another 10,000 homeless. At Korim, 187 houses were destroyed. Various countries and organizations provided aid and relief in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Portrait 1080 × 1920 PNG · created on your device
A Federal advisory panel appointed by the Clinton Administration plans to recommend a radical change in policy for Social Security: investing billions of dollars of payroll contributions in the stock market. The panel, whose proposed recommendations appear in a confidential draft of a report to be issued this spring, is also discussing whether payroll tax revenue for Social Security should be kept in one big pool, as it is now, or whether some should be diverted to individual accounts, so workers could invest it in stocks and bonds of their choosing.
A Chicago-bound Amtrak train creeping through a snowstorm smashed into a local train just outside Washington yesterday afternoon in a fiery crash that left commuter coaches crumpled like accordians. Twelve people were killed and more than 20 were injured, officials said. Mortimer Downey, a Deputy Secretary of Transportation, said the crash "appears to be a head-on collision." He said that investigators were checking the signals, switches, tracks and equipment, as well as the orders given by the dispatcher supervising that stretch of track, who was in a control center hundreds of miles away, in Jacksonville, Fla.
Before the debate started, Bill Cote defined the stakes. For Bob Dole, he said, "it's on the line tonight because he did so badly in Iowa, and he looked so old answering the State of the Union." A few minutes later, as the eight Republican Presidential candidates began calling one another names in their final joint appearance before New Hampshire's primary on Tuesday, Mr. Cote shook his head disapprovingly and told them (or, rather, told their televised images): "Come on, children, cut it out."
Angry NATO officers said today that a building near Sarajevo that they raided on Thursday had been a terrorist training center, run with the connivance of the Bosnian Government. The NATO forces, who were from from France, arrested 10 men, including 3 Iranians, in the raid.
Patrick J. Buchanan's toughest opponent in the Republican Presidential campaign here in New Hampshire may well be himself. Columns, comments and acquaintanceships, past and present, seem to be rising against him. Even in his own element, talk radio, Mr. Buchanan today found himself fighting off longstanding accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and fascism.
Wearing a small tape recorder-transmitter under his tweed jacket, the Michigan college teacher slipped through the crowds at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, the showcase of historic aircraft, rockets and flight memorabilia here that the Smithsonian says is the most visited museum in the world. With F.B.I. agents listening from a car parked outside the museum on that March day in 1994, John A. Hall, an American history professor at Albion College, met with Karl S. Schneide, the museum curator responsible for the World War I aviation collection, which experts regard as the finest in the United States.
A single mother with two children getting by on a $577 monthly welfare check in New York City would, under Gov. George E. Pataki's new welfare plan, have her cash benefits reduced to $424 and be forced off the rolls within five years. A woman in the same situation in New Jersey would continue to collect $424 a month, and her benefits would end in five years as well, under Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's new plan. And a single mother in Connecticut, which under Gov. John G. Rowland has already enacted the most stringent time limit on welfare benefits in the nation, has 21 months to find a job before her benefits of $533 a month expire.
It's a real mess in there." ED BICKHAM, a fire official describing the damaged cars in the Maryland train crash. [1:4.]
An obituary on Wednesday about the actor Martin Balsam omitted a survivor. She is Mr. Balsam's companion, Renee Landau.
An article on Thursday about discussions by the four broadcast television networks on a rating system for the violence and sexual content of programs misstated the date of a meeting to which network chief executives had been invited by President Clinton. It is Feb. 29, not Feb. 28.