Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

Four weeks after relations began, Deng Xiaoping stood on the South Lawn for a full arrival ceremony — the first visit to Washington by a leader of Communist China. He went on to charm Congress and the press, and to be photographed in a ten-gallon hat at a Texas rodeo.

Three months after breaking relations with Taipei, Congress wrote the substitute into law: an unofficial relationship run through the American Institute in Taiwan, arms 'of a defensive character', and a declared US capacity to resist any resort to force against Taiwan. It has governed the question ever since.

The World Health Assembly certified that smallpox had been wiped from the earth - the only human disease ever eradicated. The last natural case had been in Somalia in 1977, and the campaign that found it had traced and vaccinated outwards from every case for a decade.

An earthquake at 8:32 a.m. local time dropped the volcano's weakened north face away in the largest subaerial landslide on record, uncorking a lateral blast toward Spirit Lake. Fifty-seven people were killed.

Tokyo Movie Shinsha's Tomorrow's Joe 2 continues the boxing manga adaptation, following a downhearted Joe Yabuki as he wanders away from the gym before an old rival helps pull him back into the ring.

Launched as the William J. DeLancey and later renamed Paul R. Tregurtha, the Great Lakes' longest ship began hauling cargo with its maiden voyage on 10 May 1981.

The CDC's weekly report carried five cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia in previously healthy young men in Los Angeles, two of them already dead. It is the first published account of what became AIDS, four years before the virus behind it was agreed on.

The Daicon III Opening Animation screens at the Nihon SF Taikai convention in Osaka, the first of two self-funded fan short films that a young Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Takami Akai made under the amateur group Daicon Film before founding Gainax.

In September 1982, Volvo Trucks built the first Volvo-branded truck ever assembled in North America, a Volvo F7, at its newly acquired New River Valley plant in Dublin, Virginia. The factory has produced every Volvo truck sold in North America ever since.

The Antonov An-124 Ruslan, still one of the largest cargo aircraft ever built, first flew over Kyiv on 26 December 1982, years before it entered airline service.

The first Spago opened in 1982 on the Sunset Strip and made Wolfgang Puck a name outside kitchens, largely by putting the wood-fired pizza oven where the dining room could see it and topping the pizzas with smoked salmon rather than tomato. The restaurant later moved to Beverly Hills, where it still trades, and the brand grew into a group.

Topcraft's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind releases in Japanese theaters, Hayao Miyazaki's post-apocalyptic adventure adapting his own manga about Princess Nausicaä's struggle to bridge humanity and a poisoned, insect-guarded wilderness.

Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky opens in Japanese theaters, Hayao Miyazaki's adventure following orphaned engineer's apprentice Pazu and a girl named Sheeta as they search for the legendary floating city of Laputa.

A limnic eruption released 100,000-300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from a crater lake in northwestern Cameroon. Heavier than air, the cloud rolled downhill and suffocated everyone and everything within 25 km.

A biker-gang OVA following Eguchi Yousuke, leader of a high-school motorcycle gang who moonlights in the school's handicrafts club, and the misfits who ride with him.

Alain Passard bought the rue de Varenne dining room where he had once cooked as a young chef from its owner Alain Senderens in 1986, and reopened it under his own sign as Arpège - a musical name, from a family of musicians. He later did something close to unthinkable for a three-star French kitchen and took red meat off the menu, rebuilding the cooking around vegetables from his own gardens.

The driverless Docklands Light Railway opens to passengers, giving London's redeveloping docklands a low-cost automated metro built largely on disused rail viaducts.

The direct-to-video Legend of the Galactic Heroes begins release, an epic space-opera OVA chronicling the war between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance through rival commanders Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wenli.

Grave of the Fireflies opens in Japanese theaters, a Studio Ghibli war drama following two orphaned siblings, Seita and his young sister Setsuko, struggling to survive in the final months of World War II.

My Neighbor Totoro follows sisters Satsuki and Mei as they settle into a new countryside home and discover Totoro, a gentle forest spirit only children can see.

TMS Entertainment's Soreike! Anpanman, based on Takashi Yanase's picture books, began its decades-long run on Nippon TV, making the bean-bun superhero Japan's defining preschool anime.

Gainax's Gunbuster (Top wo Nerae!), the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, follows aspiring pilot Noriko Takaya as she trains to crew a giant robot defending Earth from an advancing alien species.

The six-episode OVA Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket begins release, following a boy on the neutral space colony Side 6 whose fascination with the One Year War turns serious once Zeon commandos infiltrate his home searching for a hidden Federation mobile suit program.

Toei Animation begins broadcasting Dragon Ball Z, the sequel series to Dragon Ball following an adult Goku, his son Gohan, and the Z Fighters against escalating threats like Frieza, Cell, and Majin Buu.

Kiki's Delivery Service follows a young witch, Kiki, as she leaves home at thirteen to complete her training year in a new city, opening a flying delivery service with her talking cat Jiji.

The 34-meter, five-loop Olympia Looping premiered at Munich's Oktoberfest on 17 September 1989, becoming the largest portable roller coaster ever built and the only one with five inversions.

In 1990, Orange County opened the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in the hills above Irvine, California, which grew into the ninth-largest landfill in the United States.

The Rocky Mountaineer's first scheduled luxury rail journey left Vancouver for the Canadian Rockies with 200 guests aboard, launching what became one of the world's most iconic train trips.

The Exorcist III is a 1990 American supernatural psychological horror film written for the screen and directed by William Peter Blatty, based on his 1983 novel Legion. It is the third installment in The Exorcist film series and the final installment in Blatty's "Trilogy of Faith" after The Ninth Configuration (1980), serving as a follow-up and direct sequel of The Exorcist (1973).

Hours after announcing allied air attacks on Iraq, President Bush ordered the first emergency sale in the reserve's history. The Energy Department released its sales notice on 17 January 1991 and eventually sold 17.3 million barrels to 13 companies, half of what it offered: bids for sour crude came in too low to accept.

Crayon Shin-chan begins its television run on TV Asahi, an irreverent slice-of-life comedy following five-year-old Shinnosuke "Shin-chan" Nohara and his family in Kasukabe, Saitama.

Munich Airport opened at its current site on 17 May 1992, replacing Munich-Riem, and is one of only two European airports to hold Skytrax's 5-Star rating.

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.