Elephants in the Alps - Don't Know Much About Geography - page 128

1989 In Czechoslovakia, the parliament ends the Communist Party's dominant role.
1990 The Yugoslavian Communist Party ends its monopoly on power.
1990 Nelson Mandela is released from a South African prison; South African president F. W. de
Klerk calls for an end to the apartheid system.
1990 Iraqi troops invade Kuwait; the United States dispatches troops to defend Saudi Arabia from
attack.
1990 East and West Germany are reunited.
1990 Labor leader Lech Walesa is elected president of Poland.
1991 The United States and its allies attack Iraq; Iraqi forces are expelled from Kuwait.
1991 The Warsaw Pact ends, dissolving the military alliance among the Eastern European nations.
1991 The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia win their independence from the
Soviet Union.
1991 The remaining twelve Soviet Republics all declare their independence, bringing an end to the
USSR.
1992 A Homo erectus jawbone found in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia is tentatively dated
to 1.6 million years. Its existence suggests that human ancestors may have left Africa several hun-
dred thousand years earlier than previously thought. If the early date is confirmed, this would be the
first solid evidence that human ancestors spread out of Africa earlier than one million years ago.
1992 Riddled by civil war after the demise of Communist rule, Yugoslavia is split up into the new
republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. The regions of Serbia and
Montenegro retain the name of Yugoslavia.
1992 A skull fragment found twenty-five years earlier near Lake Baringo, Kenya, is dated by Dr.
Andrew Hill to 2.4 million years. This date extends by half a million years the age of the genus that
led to and includes modern humans.
What Can You Build with BRICS?
When leaders of five recently emerging world economic powers convened in New Delhi in March 2012,
the focus was mostly business—mutual trade and reforms of the global financial system as the global eco-
nomy suffered through another year of fits and starts. But they also called for diplomacy in addressing the
violence in Syria and Iran's disputed nuclear ambitions.