February 22 – Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged with spying for the Soviet Union by the United States Department of Justice. Ames is later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment; his wife receives five years in prison.
April 8 – Kurt Cobain, songwriter and frontman for the band Nirvana, is found dead at his Lake Washington home. It would be later be confirmed that Cobain had committed suicide three days prior.[9]
April 14 – The heads of the major tobacco industries testify before a House subcommittee where they infamously state that tobacco is not addictive.
April 16 – 1994 Popeyes shooting: Two robbers shoot and kill three employees at a Popeyes restaurant in Gadsden, Alabama. The gunman is arrested and executed in 2017.
April 19 – Rapper Nas releases classic album Illmatic.
May 24 – In a critical House of Representatives special election in the state of Kentucky, Republican Ron Lewis flips a Democrat-controlled seat that had never held by the GOP in its history. The election result was viewed as an early sign of trouble for President Clinton and his party in the midterm elections.[12]
June 15 – Walt Disney Pictures' 32nd feature film, The Lion King, is released in theaters to critical acclaim, making $422,783,777 in the United States ($951,583,777 worldwide). It is the highest-grossing film of the year and the highest grossing traditionally-animated film of all time.
June 18 – The USMNT debuted as a local against Switzerland at the Pontiac Silverdome, being the first game played in a stadium with a roof, the game ended tied 1-1.
June 22 – In the second match of the USMNT, they would face Colombia in Pasadena, California, and the Americans would win 2-1, breaking a 44-year streak of not winning a match in a World Cup.
June 26 – The USMNT lost their last group match against Romania 0-1, but qualified for the second round as one of the four best third-place teams.
June 30–July 10 – Tropical Storm Alberto causes heavy flooding, intense winds and extensive problems directly over the Southeastern United States and the Caribbean Islands. Thirty two individuals are directly killed by the storm, and property damage is assessed at $1 billion (1994 USD).
July 4 – While celebrating the 218th anniversary of Independence, the USMNT faced Brazil in the Round of 16 of the World Cup played in Stanford, where they were defeated 1-0 and were eliminated.
July 19 – Four 26-pound ceiling tiles fall from the roof of the Kingdome in Seattle, Washington, just hours before a scheduled Seattle Mariners baseball game.
August 3 – Stephen Breyer is sworn in as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.
August 12
Major League Baseball players go on strike. The strike eventually results in the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904. The strike lasts until April 1995, making it the longest labor dispute in MLB history.
august 18 – Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants: a 12-person jury reaches its verdict to award Stella Liebeck $2,860,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, later reduced to $640,000, for burns she received from a spilled hot coffee. McDonald's and Liebeck will later settle out of court.
August 20 – In Honolulu, Hawaii, during a circus international performance, an elephant named Tyke crushes her trainer Allen Campbell to death before hundreds of horrified spectators at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center. She then escapes the arena, and runs amok in the streets for half an hour, before police officers shoot her 86 times. She eventually collapses from her wounds and dies.
August 23 – Eugene Bullard is posthumously commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, 33 years after his death, and 77 years to the day after his rejection for U.S. military service in 1917.
President Bill Clinton signs the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which bans the manufacture of new firearms with certain features for a period of 10 years.
President Bill Clinton signs the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA). The Act provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose not to prosecute. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice.
September 19 – American troops stage a bloodless invasion of Haiti in order to restore the legitimate elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power.
September–October – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to stop cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors and begins to once again deploy troops near its border with Kuwait. In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops to Kuwait.
October 13 (UTC) – NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus and is presumed to burn up in the atmosphere.
October 14 – Pulp Fiction, a movie by Quentin Tarantino, premieres. It soon after becomes the highest grossing independent film ever made.
October 15
Iraq disarmament crisis: Following threats by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S., Iraq withdraws troops from its border with Kuwait.
After three years of U.S. exile, Haiti's president Aristide returns to his country.
November 8: Republicans gain control of Congress (Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich pictured)
November 4 – The first conference devoted entirely to the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web opens in San Francisco. Featured speakers include Marc Andreessen of Netscape, Mark Graham of Pandora Systems and Ken McCarthy of E-Media.
c. November – Online serviceAmerica Online purchases Booklink as a browser to offer its users a gateway to the World Wide Web for the first time. This marks the beginning of easy accessibility of the Web to the average person in the U.S.[18] In 1996, AOL replaces Booklink with a browser based on Internet Explorer, allegedly in exchange for inclusion of AOL in Windows.[19]
A Learjet piloted by Richard Anderson and Brad Sexton misses an elementary school and crashes into an apartment complex in Fresno, California, killing both pilots and injuring several apartment residents.
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Media related to 1994 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons