Fifteen-year-old American swimmer, and Harrisburg, PA native, Anita Nall breaks the 200m breaststroke world record twice in the SAME day at the US Swimming championships in Indianapolis; Once in the preliminary “heats” to the finals, and then again, when she won the finals in 2:25.35. Nall would go on to win gold at the 1992 summer Olympics in Barcelona as the “breaststroke” leg swimmer in the women’s 4 X 100 Medley relay team, and becoming (at that time) the youngest American gold-medalist in swimming since 1976.
The #1 movie a the box office this week in 1992 was the drama-thriller “Basic Instinct” starring Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas. The movie hit #1 on 22nd of March for one week, only to return to #1 three weeks later, and remain in the top spot for 5 consecutive weeks.
Model, actress, and former Miss America, Vanessa Williams, topped the Billboard charts with her single “Save the Best for Last” this week back in 1992, where it stayed for five consecutive weeks!
Moldova joins the United Nations. The small country nestled between the much-larger Ukraine and Romania, declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 27, 1991, and was a co-founder of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. Moldova became fully independent from the Soviet Union that December 1991, and joined the United Nations three months later, in March 1992.
Mining accidents are common in Turkey, where poor safety conditions have cost 3,000 lives since 1941. The nation’s worst mining disaster was a 1992 gas explosion that killed 263 workers near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak. Minister Taner Yildiz said 787 people were inside the coal mine in Soma, some 250 kilometers south of Istanbul, at the time of the explosion. About 300 were rescued but unfortunately 263 confirmed miners died in the mines.
The Erzincan earthquake struck eastern Turkey with a moment magnitude of 7.8 Mw and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme). This was one of the largest in a sequence of violent shocks to affect Turkey along the North Anatolian Fault between 1939 and 1999. Surface rupturing, with an horizontal displacement of up to 3.7 meters, occurred in a 360 km long segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone. The earthquake was the most severe natural loss of life in Turkey in the 20th century, with 32,968 dead, and some 100,000 injured.
The International Atomic Energy Agency orders Iraq to destroy an industrial complex at Al Atheer that is being used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Miners Pub 