1986 AD

• The Bread machine was popular in the late 1980s.
• February 28 – Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme is shot to death on his way home from the cinema in Stockholm, Sweden.
• April 26 – Chernobyl disaster: A mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union “killed at least 4,056 people and damaged almost $7 billion of property”.Radioactive fallout from the accident is concentrated near Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 350,000 people are forcibly resettled away from these areas. After the accident, “traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere”.

1987 AD

• June 11 – The Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, led by Margaret Thatcher, is re-elected for a third term at the 1987 general election.

1988 AD

• August 8 – Iran–Iraq War ends

1989 AD

• June 4 – 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre: A violent military crackdown takes place on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
• November 9 – Cold War and Fall of the Berlin Wall: Günter Schabowski accidentally states in a live broadcast press conference that new rules for traveling from East Germany to West Germany will be put in effect “immediately”. Late this evening, East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany for the first time in decades. In the first week, travel visas will be issued to around 25% of the East German population.
• December 16- 25 – Romanian revolution

1990 AD

• January 19-20 – Black January
• April 7 – MS Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry, catches fire en route from Norway to Denmark, leaving 158 dead.
• April 24 – STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
• May 22 – Cold War: The leaders of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen announce the unification of their countries as the Republic of Yemen.
• June 8 – The 1990 FIFA World Cup begins in Italy. This was the first broadcast of digital HDTV in history; Europe would not begin HDTV broadcasting en masse until 2004.
• August 2 – Gulf War: Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
• September 4 – Traffic with X 2000 trains begins in Sweden.
• October 3 – Cold War: East Germany and West Germany reunify into a single Germany.
• November 12 – Pop duo Milli Vanilli, consisting of Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, are being revealed after it was revealed that they are not the real singers on the studio recording of their Grammy-nominated album, in fact it was others who sang the tunes on record.
• December 23 – In the Slovenian independence referendum, 88.5% of the overall electorate (94.8% of votes), with the turnout of 93.3%, support independence of the country.

1991 AD

• January 13 – January Events/Singing Revolution: Soviet forces storm Vilnius to stop Lithuanian independence, killing 14 civilians and injuring 702 more. In Latvia, a series of confrontations between the Latvian government and the Soviet government take place in Riga.
• May 21 – At Sriperumbudur, India, a suicide bomber from LTTE attacks a political meeting, killing former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and at least 14 others.
• June 25 – Breakup of Yugoslavia: Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence from Yugoslavia.
• August 25 – November 18 – Battle of Vukovar is War of 1991 with Yugoslavia Wars
• September 15 – The Swedish general election, Carl Bildt wins. the Moderates advance together with the Christian Democrats and New Democracy.
• September 24 – Nirvana breaks through, when they release the album Nevermind, which becomes one of the most famous and successful albums ever. The song Smells Like Teen Spirit is on the album and becomes the symbol of generation X. This is also the beginning of a great time for the grunge rock style.
• October 1 – Dissolution of Yugoslavia: Forces of the Yugoslav People’s Army surround Dubrovnik, beginning the Siege of Dubrovnik, which lasts until May 31, 1992.
• December 26 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Supreme Soviet meets for the last time, formally dissolves the Soviet Union, and adjourns sine die, ending the Cold War. All remaining Soviet institutions eventually cease operation on December 31.