Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

The direct-to-video Giant Robo the Animation: The Day the Earth Stood Still begins release, a seven-episode OVA reviving Mitsuteru Yokoyama's 1960s manga/tokusatsu property with a retro-futurist mecha story about the secret organization Big Fire's plot for world domination.

Developer Triple Five Group opened the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, debuting 330 stores and an indoor amusement park inside the largest shopping mall in the United States.

Shin-Ei Animation's feature-length Crayon Shin-chan TV specials, extended event episodes built around the mischievous five-year-old Shinnosuke Nohara, began airing at the end of 1992.

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, a Japanese-Indian animated adaptation of the Hindu epic, releases in Japanese theaters, retelling the exile of Prince Rama and his quest to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana.

The TV special Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks tells the tragedy of an alternate future where the androids have all but wiped out humanity, following a grown Trunks as he trains under a dying Gohan before traveling back in time.

The direct-to-video Kyou kara Ore wa!! begins release, a delinquent-school comedy OVA adapting Hiroyuki Nishimori's manga about two transfer students, Itou and Takashi, who reinvent themselves as tough guys at a new school.

One of the longest-running anime in the medium’s history, Nintama Rantarou has aired on NHK continuously since April 10, 1993, adapting Sōbē Amako's manga about Rantarou, Shinbei, and Kirimaru — first-year students at a Sengoku-era ninja academy who are more interested in food, money, and mischief than in mastering ninjutsu. Produced by Ajia-do, it packages short comic vignettes into each half-hour episode and has grown into a multi-generational institution in Japan, with an episode count now well past 2,000.

Slam Dunk begins its TV run, a basketball comedy-drama following delinquent freshman Hanamichi Sakuragi as he falls for a classmate and, through her, discovers the sport.

Tezuka Productions begins releasing the Black Jack OVA, adapting Osamu Tezuka's manga about an unlicensed surgeon of legendary skill who charges enormous fees to save lives others have given up on.

Cafe Batavia opened in 1993 in the second-oldest building on Jakarta's old town square, a Dutch colonial house restored as a restaurant, with teak floors, ceiling fans and walls papered in old portraits. It faces the former city hall across the cobbles of Fatahillah Square.

The $15BN Channel Tunnel opened, linking Britain to mainland Europe by rail for the first time since the last Ice Age, after six years of construction under the English Channel.

Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) moved into its purpose-built Vauxhall Cross headquarters, ending decades of hiding in increasingly compromised office buildings.

The 1995 relaunch of Chibi Maruko-chan, Momoko Sakura's slice-of-life comedy about a scatterbrained third-grader navigating school, family and small everyday embarrassments in a quiet Japanese town. Produced by Nippon Animation, this version replaced the original 1990-1992 series and has stayed in weekly production ever since, making it one of the longest continuously running anime on air.

Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart releases in Japanese theaters, a coming-of-age story following bookish schoolgirl Shizuku as she chases a mysterious cat and discovers her own ambitions as a writer.

Amazon.com went live from a rented house in Bellevue, Washington, selling books out of a garage-scale operation with a catalogue it did not stock. Within a month it had shipped to all fifty states and forty-five countries.

Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion begins airing, a mecha series following teenage pilot Shinji Ikari as NERV's Evangelion units battle mysterious beings called Angels threatening Tokyo-3.

APPP's Golden Boy premieres on home video, a comedic OVA following Kintarou Oe, a law-school graduate who bikes from town to town taking odd jobs and chasing life lessons (and misadventures with women) instead of a career.

Production I.G's Ghost in the Shell opens in Japanese theaters, Mamoru Oshii's cyberpunk thriller adapting Masamune Shirow's manga, following cybernetic Section 9 agent Major Motoko Kusanagi as she hunts a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master.

TMS Entertainment's Detective Conan begins its television broadcast, adapting Gosho Aoyama's manga about a teenage detective shrunk into a child's body who solves cases under a false identity while investigating the organization responsible.

Sunrise begins releasing Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, a One Year War-era OVA following Ensign Shiro Amada as he leads a Ground Type Gundam unit while falling for an enemy Zeon pilot.

Oshkosh Truck Corporation bought fire apparatus builder Pierce Manufacturing outright, a deal that kicked off Oshkosh's diversification and set up Pierce to become the world's largest fire truck maker.

The Roslin Institute reveals that a Finn-Dorset lamb born the previous July was cloned from an adult mammary-gland cell by somatic cell nuclear transfer - the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell.

Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke opens in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki's epic about a cursed prince caught between the spirits of an ancient forest and the humans of Iron Town.

Gainax's The End of Evangelion opens in Japan, a theatrical film providing an alternate, more conclusive ending to the TV series as NERV comes under full assault from SEELE while Shinji, Asuka, and the rest confront the Human Instrumentality Project.

The 1997 TV adaptation of Kentaro Miura's dark fantasy manga Berserk begins airing, following mercenary swordsman Guts on a revenge-driven hunt for the corrupt king of Midland and the demonic Band of the Falcon that betrayed him.