Year in Review-1991
December 1
France w o n its first Davis C u p title in 59 years by upsetting the U.S., the defending champions, at the finals in Lyons, France.
2 U.S. hostages in Lebanon, Joseph J. Cicippio and Alann Steen, were freed. Federal officials confiscated nearly 12 tons of cocaine at a warehouse in Miami, the secondlargest seizure of illegal drugs in U.S. history. 4 Hostage Terry Anderson freed. Pan American World Airways ceased operations after it ran out of cash. They became the third major carrier after Eastern Airlines and M i d w a y Airlines to shut d o w n in 1991.
Hostages Freed
EJ President Bush named Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner to replace John H. Sununu as White House chief of staff.
Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon, was freed by the Shiite Moslems after 2,454 days in captivity. The three released m e n , including Joseph Cicippio, and Alan Steen, were the last of 17 Americans held captive in Lebanon between March 1984 and December 1991.
/: The Labor Department reported that the number of payroll jobs in the U.S. decreased by 241,000 in November, while the nation's unemployment rate w a s unchanged at 6.8 percent. H Evangeline celebrated her 23rd birthday.
William Kennedy Smith, 31, the nephew of Sen. Edward M . Kennedy, was found not guilty of charges that he had raped a w o m a n at his family's Palm Beach, Fla., vacation estate on Easter weekend.
rj U.S. military veterans observedthe 50th anniversary of the surprise Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii in 1941. President 17 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held a Bush m a d e a speech urging U.S. veterans of the private discussion with Russian republic Presiattack to forget their rancor toward Japan. dent Boris N. Yeltsin in the Kremlin. After the talks, Yeltsin announced that Gorbechev had The turmoil in the Soviet Union took a stunning accepted as imminent the demise of the U.S.S.R. turn, w h e n the leaders of the three Slavic repubH e also told reporters that all Soviet federal lics signed an agreement forming a " C o m m o n functions would either be dissolved or formally wealth of Independent States" to replace the old transferred to the newly created Commonwealth U.S.S.R. of Independent States in 1992. 1 Q The Supreme Court, in a unanimous 8-0 decision, declared unconstitutional the "Son of Sam" law, a lg General Motors announced that it would reduce its payrolls by 74,000 employees, or 18 percent, N e w York State law that limited the ability of close 21 of its 125 North American factories and criminals to profit from selling stories of their pare capital spending during the next four years crimes for books or movies. in an effort to return to profitability.
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New York Stock Exchange The N.Y. Stock Exchange continued to hit n e w highs. Not long after school began in 1991, the market was closing over 3,00 on a regular basis. The United States was still in a recession, but the U.S. stock market continued to m o v e to n e w heights.
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