1996 Archives - PopHistory.org

MLB owners approve interleague play

On January 18, 1996, Major League Baseball owners unanimously approve interleague play for the 1997 season. The owners’ vote, which called for each team to play 15 or 16 interleague games, breaks a 126-year tradition of teams only playing games within their league during the regular season.

In defending the move, acting MLB commissioner Bud Selig told reporters: “We have the greatest tradition in the world, but tradition shouldn’t be an albatross. This will be a tremendous success.” He added he wasn’t concerned if the World Series featured teams that had played each other during the regular season.

READ MORE: Who Invented Baseball?

“There’s nothing in the Constitution that forbids that,” he said. “I remember sitting at the Super Bowl last year and watching San Francisco play San Diego, and somebody said they played last November. There was no less interest.”

Some owners were initially skeptical of breaking tradition, but they all were swayed to make the big step. The MLB Players Association subsequently gave its approval. “[I]nterleague games deserve a hard look,” MLB Players Association leader Don Fehr said.

Interleague play was proposed as early as 1933, by Chicago Cubs owner Bill Veeck. It was proposed again in 1973, when the American League adopted the designated hitter, but the plan was rejected by the National League.

On June 12, 1997, the San Francisco Giants beat the Texas Rangers, 4-3, in the first interleague game.

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Greg Norman blows six-shot Masters lead in epic collapse

On April 14, 1996, third-round leader Greg Norman loses a six-shot lead in the final round of the Masters golf tournament and finishes second—one of the worst collapses in sports history. Nick Faldo wins the green jacket, finishing five strokes ahead of Norman. “I played like a bunch of [expletive],” the Australian tells reporters afterward. “I just didn’t get the job done.”

In shooting a 78 in the final round, Norman had four bogeys and five double-bogeys. The tournament marked the seventh time in eight major championships that he failed to hold a final-round lead.

Faldo, who shot a final-round 67, embraced Norman after completing his round. “I don’t know what to say to you,” he told him. “I just want to give you a hug.”

Norman’s collapse startled sports fans and sportswriters alike.

“For Greg Norman’s lifetime, for yours, for mine, for eternity, wherever golf is played and remembered, in pro shops, pawn shops, locker rooms, card rooms, bars, churches, in Augusta, Ankara, and Alaska, the 1996 Masters will be recalled simply as the one Greg Norman blew,” wrote Tampa Tribune columnist Tom McEwen.

Wrote David Casstevens of the Arizona Republic of Norman’s final round: “It was like watching a man drown. As Norman headed to Amen Corner, and the most famous stretch of holes in golf, you wanted to throw him a rope, a lifeline. Here, Greg, grab hold.”

Norman won 91 tournaments during his pro career, including two British Opens, but never won a major tournament in the United States.

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Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia kills 19 U.S. airmen

Year: 1996

Month Day: June 25

On June 25, 1996, a tanker truck loaded with 25,000 pounds of explosives rips through the U.S. Air Force military housing complex Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding nearly 500 others.

The terrorist attack that blew off much of the eight-story Building 131, leaving a crater 50 feet wide and 16 feet deep, was the deadliest attack against U.S. forces since the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 dead.

The bombers, later identified as members of the pro-Iran Islamic militant group Hezbollah, parked the truck near the towers that were home to 2,000 American military personnel who were assigned to the King Abdul Aziz Air Base to patrol southern Iraqi no-fly zones. They escaped before setting off the explosion.

Investigators found the attack had been planned for more than three years by members of the Saudi Hezbollah, with backing from Iran, as a way to force U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Hezbollah and Iran were found guilty by a U.S. federal court in 2006, and Iran was ordered to pay $254.5 million to survivors. That money has not been collected.

In 2001, 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man were indicted in the attack by the U.S., with Attorney General John Ashcroft stating “… the Iranian government inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah.” Charges included conspiracy to kill Americans and U.S. employees, to use weapons of mass destruction and to destroy U.S. property, plus murder and bombing.

Iran denied involvement in the attack, and Saudi Arabia said they would not extradite those charged who were in their custody. None of the indicted have been brought to court.

Nearly 20 years later, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil, a key Hezbollah operative implicated in the attack, was captured and arrested in Beirut in 2015 and moved to Saudi Arabia for interrogation. In 2018, Iran was ordered to pay victims $104.7 million by a U.S. federal judge.

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Stampede kills 84 at World Cup match

Year: 1996

Month Day: October 16

A stampede of soccer fans before a World Cup qualifying match in Guatemala City kills 84 people and seriously injures more than 100 on October 16, 1996.

The Guatemala national team was set to face off against Costa Rica on a Wednesday night in Guatemala City. Approximately 60,000 fans, most dressed in blue and white, the country’s traditional colors, came to the stadium, which has a capacity of only 45,000. Apparently, counterfeiters had sold thousands of fake tickets to the event.

Although the stadium was already full to capacity about an hour before the match was scheduled to begin, fans continued to push their way into the venue through a narrow passage. As those in front of them had nowhere to go, people began to be crushed and suffocated. Fist fights that broke out in the crowd exacerbated the situation, which ended in a panicked stampede.

Guatemala’s President Alvara Arzu witnessed the chaos from a box seat and called off the match. However, it was too late for 83 people, including many children. The bodies of the victims, some with their clothes torn off, lined the grounds of the stadium afterward as scores of injured received medical treatment.

Pope John Paul II sent a message of condolence to the relatives of the victims. President Arzu declared three days of national mourning. “What does football matter now?” said Guatemala’s head coach, Horacio Cordero.

The Guatemala City stampede was not unique; there were at least four stampedes at soccer matches that killed more than 40 people in the 1980s and 1990s.

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“Curious George” co-creator Margret Rey dies

Updated:: Dec 17, 2019
Original:: Oct 17, 2011

Year: 1996

Month Day: December 21

On December 21, 1996, Margret Rey, who with her husband Hans created the popular “Curious George” children’s books about a mischievous monkey, dies at age 90 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Reys, both German Jews, escaped wartime Europe in 1940 and fled to America. The following year, the first “Curious George” book was published in the United States.

Margret Rey was born Margarete Waldstein in Hamburg, Germany, in May 1906. She studied art in her homeland then later moved to Rio de Janeiro and worked as a photographer. In Brazil, she became re-acquainted with Hans Rey (born Hans Reyersbach), a fellow Hamburg native who she had met as a child. The couple married in 1935 then relocated to Paris, France, where Hans was a newspaper cartoonist and Margret wrote advertising copy. In 1939, “Raffy and the Nine Monkeys,” a children’s book written and illustrated by Hans, was published in France (an English-language version of the book was titled “Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys”). One of the monkeys in the book, who was always getting in trouble, served as the model for Curious George.

As the Reys worked on the manuscript for what would become the first Curious George book, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party continued their rise to power in Europe. In June 1940, shortly before the Nazis entered Paris, Hans and Margret escaped the city on homemade bicycles, taking with them little more than a collection of their manuscripts. After traveling to Spain, Portugal and Brazil, the Reys sailed to New York late that same year. “Curious George” was published in 1941, and the Reys collaborated on six sequels, including “Curious George Takes a Job” (1947), “Curious George Flies a Kite” (1958) and “Curious George Goes to the Hospital” (1966). Hans illustrated the books while Margret did the writing. (Despite their partnership, Hans initially received sole credit on covers, as H.A. Rey, because the couple’s publisher thought it would distinguish their books from the glut of female children’s book authors at the time.) According to The Los Angeles Times: “Barely 5 feet tall and red-haired, Rey said she occasionally served as her artist husband’s human model for their impish little monkey. She would scrunch up her face, move her limbs about or even leap from one piece of furniture to another.”

After Hans died in 1977, Margret went on to collaborate with Alan Shalleck on more than two dozen Curious George books as well as an animated TV show. When Margret died in December 1996, following complications from a heart attack, a new team continued to produce additional books in the series. Today, the Reys’ creation remains a beloved character in children’s literature. Curious George books have been translated into multiple languages, sold millions of copies and spawned a variety of merchandising deals.

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George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” debuts

Year: 1996

Month Day: August 01

On August 1, 1996, “A Game of Thrones,” an epic fantasy novel by George R.R. Martin, is released. The book was the first in Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, about feuding medieval noble families on an imaginary continent called Westeros. Although not initially a best-seller, “A Game of Thrones” gained a loyal following, and the “Song of Ice and Fire” series eventually became a huge hit, selling millions of books and spawning a blockbuster HBO series.

Martin, who was born in 1948 and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, graduated from Northwestern University in 1970 and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the school the following year. He went on to teach journalism, direct chess tournaments and publish fantasy and science-fiction short stories and novels, although none achieved the success of his “Song of Ice and Fire” series. From the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, Martin worked as a writer-producer in Hollywood, contributing to such TV series as “The Twilight Zone” and “Beauty and the Beast.” He penned scripts that were often deemed too complicated and expensive to produce, an experience that influenced how he developed the “Song of Ice and Fire” saga.

As Martin told the New York Times: “When I returned to prose, which had been my first love, in the 90s, I said I’m going to do something that is just as big as I want to do. I can have all the special effects I want. I can have a cast of characters that numbers in the hundreds. I can have giant battle scenes. Everything you can’t do in television and film, of course you can do in prose because you’re everything there. You’re the director, you’re the special effects coordinator, you’re the costume department, and you don’t have to worry about a budget.”

Martin originally intended “A Game of Thrones” as the first title in a trilogy; however, his plan expanded into a series that so far also includes “A Clash of Kings” (1999, in the U.S.),“A Storm of Swords” (2000), “A Feast for Crows” (2005) and “A Dance with Dragons” (2011). Two more books are forthcoming. The novels are known for their elaborate plots and large casts of morally complex characters. The HBO series ran from 2011 to 2019.

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Oprah launches influential book club

Year: 1996

Month Day: September 17

On September 17, 1996, daytime talk show host Oprah Winfrey launches a television book club and announces “The Deep End of the Ocean” by Jacquelyn Mitchard as her first selection. Oprah’s Book Club quickly became a hugely influential force in the publishing world, with the popular TV host’s endorsement capable of catapulting a previously little-known book onto best-seller lists.

When Oprah’s Book Club first launched, some in the publishing world were skeptical about its chances for success. As The New York Times noted: “Winfrey’s project—recommending books, even challenging literary novels, for viewers to read in advance of discussions on her talk show—initially provoked considerable skepticism in the literary world, where many associated daytime television with lowbrow entertainments like soap operas and game shows.” However, the club proved to be a hit with Winfrey’s legions of fans, and many of her picks sold over 1 million copies. (She earned no money from book sales.) Winfrey’s ability to turn not just books but almost any product or person she recommended into a phenomenon came to be known as the “Oprah Effect.”

Winfrey gave her stamp of approval to books by first-time novelists, including Mitchard, Wally Lamb (“She’s Come Undone”) and David Wroblewski (“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle”), as well as established authors, such as Maeve Binchy (“Tara Road”), Cormac McCarthy (“The Road”) and Jeffrey Eugenides (“Middlesex”). Toni Morrison had four works selected for the club—”The Bluest Eye,” “Paradise,” “The Song of Solomon, and “Sula”—more than any other author.

In 2001, after Winfrey chose novelist Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” he famously offended her by publicly suggesting that some of her selections were “schmaltzy” and that being picked for the club might alienate a book’s potential male readership. Franzen’s invitation to appear on Winfrey’s TV show to discuss his work was rescinded; however, he got a second chance nine years later, when his best-selling novel “Freedom” was selected for Oprah’s Book Club. In December 2010, he went on her show to talk about his novel, which Winfrey called “a masterpiece.”

In 2003, Winfrey switched her recommendations from contemporary titles to classic tomes, including “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck, “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers. In 2004, when Winfrey chose “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy, the novel’s publisher printed an additional 800,000 copies.

In 2005, Winfrey reversed her nothing-but-the-classics policy, in part so she could have in-person discussions with the authors whose work she endorsed. Her first contemporary title was James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” a 2003 memoir about addiction and recovery. After appearing on Winfrey’s show to promote the book, Frey was later forced to admit that parts of the story were fiction. He appeared on the show again in early 2006 and faced tough questioning from Winfrey. Frey’s fabrications sparked a national debate over the definition of memoir.

By the final season of Winfrey’s TV show,” in 2011, more than 60 titles had been chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.

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Flight 800 explodes over Long Island

Year: 1996

Month Day: July 17

Shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Flight 800 had just received clearance to initiate a climb to cruise altitude when it exploded without warning. Because the plane was loaded with fuel for the long transatlantic journey, it vaporized within moments, creating a fireball seen almost all along the coastline of Long Island.

The tragedy came just two days before the opening of the XXVI Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and many suspected terrorism. Suspicions of foul play seemed to be confirmed when a number of eyewitnesses reported that they had seen what appeared to be a missile shoot up toward the airline an instant before the explosion. The U.S. Navy and the FBI, in conjunction with the National Safety Transportation Board, launched an extensive investigation of the incident, collecting the scattered wreckage of the aircraft out of the Atlantic and reconstructing the plane in a closely guarded hangar. Despite continuing eyewitness reports, authorities did not come forward with any evidence of a missile or a bomb, and the investigation stretched on.

When it was revealed that several U.S. Navy vessels were training in the Long Island area on the night of the blast, some began to suspect that Flight 800 had been accidentally downed by a navy test missile. U.S. authorities ruled out the possibility of an errant missile strike by the navy, but a number of conspiracists, including former White House press secretary Pierre Salinger, supported the theory. The much-criticized Flight 800 investigation ended in late 1998, with investigators concluding that the explosion resulted from mechanical failure, not from a bomb or a missile.

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Supreme Court defends rights of gays and lesbians in Romer v. Evans

Year: 1996

Month Day: May 20

In a victory for the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court votes six to three to strike down an amendment to Colorado’s state constitution that would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

Colorado’s Amendment Two was passed in 1992 with a majority of the state’s citizens approving it in a special referendum. Four years later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Romer v. Evans, a case that allowed the nation’s highest court to scrutinize the constitutionality of the amendment. On May 20, 1996, in a ruling authored by Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court struck down Amendment Two, arguing that the law violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Although the ruling, authored by a Republican appointee, was cautious in its language, it was applauded as a major civil rights victory that gave gay and lesbian activists their first major constitutional precedence for fighting anti-gay legislation.

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“The Macarena” begins its reign atop the U.S. pop charts

Year: 1996

Month Day: August 03

If pop songs, like hurricanes, were rated on an objective scale according to their ability to devastate the pop-cultural landscape, then the song that reached the top of the American pop charts on August 3, 1996 was a Category 5 monster. It first made landfall in Florida as a seemingly harmless Spanish-language rumba, but in the hands of a pair of Miami record producers, it soon morphed and strengthened into something called “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix),” a song that laid waste to all competition during a record-setting run at #1 that began on this day.

The group that gets credit for the song that spent more time on the Billboard Hot 100 (60 weeks) than any other in history was Los Del Rio, but their smash-hit record received some critical assistance on its way to the top of the charts. Los Del Rio was the name under which two middle-aged Spaniards named Antonia Romero and Rafael Ruiz had been performing together since 1962.

In 1992, while attending a private party of political and cultural heavyweights in Caracas, Venezuala, Romero was inspired to ad lib a spoken verse in honor of a flamenco dancer named Diana Patricia following a spectacular live performance. Addressing her by the name “Magdalena”—a reference to Mary Magdalene that connotes sultriness—Romero said “Dale a tu cuerpo alegría, Ma’dalena, que tu cuerpo e’ pa’ darle alegría y cosa’ buena.” When they later recorded a song based on this line, Los Del Rio changed the name Magdalena to “Macarena,” the name of a neighborhood in their native Seville, but the chorus otherwise remained unchanged: “Give joy to your body, Macarena, for your body is for giving joy and good things.”

The original Los Del Rio recording of “Macarena” was a hit in Latin America and gained some measure of popularity in pockets of North America, but when a DJ named Jammin’ John Caride at Miami’s Power 96-FM asked to add the song to his rotation, station managers told him that their policy was not to play songs sung exclusively in Spanish. Enter producers Carols De Yarza and Mike Triay, who wrote and recorded English-language verses for the female voice of Macarena and remixed the tune to make it more dance club-friendly. Within days, their version of the single, now called “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)” was a local smash.

Thirty-three weeks later, helped along by New York radio station WKTU as well as by a popular music video and a dance so easy that anyone could do it, “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)” reached the #1 spot on the Billboard pop chart on August 3, 1996.

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