1990

Queen Elizabeth called 1992 her annus horribilis . Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush and ended the Reagan era. Pope John Paul II lifted the Edict of Inquisition against Galileo, and the Toronto Blue Jays became the first non-American team to win the World Series. In April, a Simi Valley jury found four LAPD officers not guilty in the beating of Rodney King and Los Angeles exploded. In August, Pat Buchanan rocked the Republican convention with his infamous "God's country" speech ("better in the original German," observed columnist Molly Ivins)

E. Donnall Thomas, a physician who pioneered the use of bone marrow transplants in leukemia patients and won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine, died Saturday in Seattle of heart disease. He was 92. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which Thomas joined in 1974, announced his death. Thomas' work is among the greatest success stories in the treatment of cancer. Bone marrow transplantation and its sister therapy, blood stem cell transplantation, have improved the survival rates for patients with some blood cancers to around 90% from almost zero.

It's hard for museums to predict exactly when and where public controversy will strike. But in deciding to exhibit Robert Mapplethorpe's X, Y, Z portfolios, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was well aware that the X series contains some of the most controversial images in the history of American photography. These carefully composed shots of S&M role-playing or hard-core sex acts among gay New York men became a flash point in the culture wars of the early 1990s, leading to the indictment of a Cincinnati museum director on obscenity charges and triggering larger debates about the proper role of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Eugene D. Genovese became one of the most notorious radical intellectuals in the country in 1965 when he addressed an all-night teach-in at Rutgers University on the Vietnam War. "I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory. I welcome it," the self-described Marxist historian declared, setting off a furor that had politicians such as Richard Nixon demanding his dismissal. An academic witch hunt ensued, but the onetime Communist Party member held to his political beliefs for decades.

PARIS -- Although Morrissey played on the soundtrack, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine played in my mind when I saw the spring-summer 2013 Paris Fashion Week collection from Balmain's 27-year-old creative director Olivier Rousteing, who presented a love letter to 1990s style: leather bras, high-rise trousers, oversize hoop earrings and all. The inspiration: 1990s Latin cool; Miami street rappers. The look: Cropped jackets with big shoulders, midriff-baring tops and full cut, peg leg pants.

Mitt Romney paid $1.9 million in federal taxes in 2011 on income of $13.7 million, an effective rate of 14.1% that reflects the Republican presidential candidate's dividends, capital gains and other returns that are assessed at some of the lowest tax rates. Romney's tax return, which he released Friday, showed that he boosted his effective tax rate by not declaring all of the $4 million in charitable contributions that he made during 2011, instead only reporting $2.3 million. By doing so he stayed consistent with an earlier public statement that his tax rate for the year would not drop below 13%. The return does little to fundamentally change the perception of Romney's finances.

RuPaul became famous for his over-the-top drag performances and later, his VH1 show, "RuPaul's Drag Race. " But recently, the 51-year-old performer has turned his focus inward, embarking on a hiking regimen in his hometown of Los Angeles that, he says, has changed his life physically, emotionally and spiritually. We talked to him about what making that change was like, and the impact it's had on his life. How did you get into hiking? It started when I quit smoking. I was around 40, and I knew that I needed to get out of the house and occupy myself.

A retired Roman Catholic priest in Orange County was sentenced to a year in jail, probation and community service and will be required to register as a sex offender for molesting a grade-school student in the parish rectory and the church more than a decade ago, Orange County prosecutors said. Denis Lyons, 78, pleaded guilty in March to four felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14 on four occasions in which, prosecutors said, he sexually assaulted the student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Costa Mesa.

In the early 1990s, the mini-backpack was a fashion "must-have. " Most coveted was French designer Agnès B.'s black cotton "Lolita" sack (reimagined briefly during a limited-edition 2010 collaboration with Opening Ceremony) and Prada's more structured black nylon bag with outside pockets and silver buckles (which also reemerged briefly in December 2010). For about 20 years since, backpacks have gone the way of every other oversaturated fad, disappearing into the backs of closets and clustering on EBay, rejected in favor of oversized hobos, clutches and small cross-body purses.

Check off another milestone for Apple Inc. — it's now the most valuable company of all time. The technology behemoth achieved that distinction with the latest jump in its seemingly irrepressible stock price. Apple shares have been on a steady uptick for years, and investors now value the company at $623.5 billion. That surpassed the previous high of $616.3 billion, not adjusted for inflation, notched by rival Microsoft Corp. at the end of the late-1990s dot-com boom. To put that in perspective, Apple is now worth 17 times as much as Ford Motor Co., seven times as much as McDonald's Corp.