The Flash: Trial Of The Trickster

The FlashThe 22nd episode of the superhero series The Flash, based on the DC Comics character, airs on CBS, starring John Wesley Shipp and Amanda Pays. Mark Hamill (Star Wars, Batman: The Animated Series) guest stars in what is intended to merely be a lead-in to a second season, though CBS does not pick The Flash up for a second year, making this the final episode. John Wesley Shipp will return as both this series’ version of the Flash and as Barry Allen’s father in the much longer-lived 21st century series based on the character.

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Soyuz TM-12: the first British astronaut

Soyuz TM-12Helen Sharman becomes the first British national in space, flying aboard Soyuz TM-12 to the Soviet space station Mir. Making her flight in a seat bought and paid for by a consortium of British commercial interests, Sharman tags along with cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalev, and she spends just a week in orbit before returning with Soyuz TM-13 cosmonaut Toktar Aubakirov. Artsebarsky and Krikalev remain aboard Mir for what is initially planned to be a five-month stay, though a shake-up in the flight schedule forces mission planners to ask Krikalev to stay aboard Mir even after Artsebarsky returns to Earth, resulting in Krikalev remaining on Mir for 10 months, not returning home until 1992 – at which point the Soviet Union will have ceased to exist.

Quantum Leap: Shock Theater

Quantum LeapNBC airs the 52nd episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. This is the third season finale, and is nearly the end of the series, but a fan letter-writing campaign helps convince NBC to renew the series.

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Nintendo, Sony part ways over peripheral

Mike vs PS1After three years of joint development on a CD-ROM peripheral for Nintendo’s new video game system, Sony and Nintendo part ways, leaving the public and the press confused over what will happen next. Hours after Nintendo unveils the specs and price point for its Super Nintendo Entertainment System to the press, Sony announces that it will release a new system called the Play Station in 1992, which will play both SNES cartridges and disc-based systems made by Sony. Of course, Sony’s development curve isn’t that simple, and the first Sony video game system won’t arrive until a few years – and a whole generation of computer game hardware – later.

STS-40

Space ShuttleSpace Shuttle Columbia lifts off on a nine-day mission with – for the first time in the shuttle program – a crew that’s nearly 50% female. Columbia carries the Spacelab module into orbit for a series of life sciences and biology experiments, the first flight devoted to such experiments since the Skylab era. Aboard Columbia for this flight are Commander Bryan O’Connor, Pilot Sidney Gutierrez, and mission specialists James Bagian, Tamara Jernigan, Rhea Seddon, Drew Gaffney and Millie Hughes-Fulford.

Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine / Amok Time (soundtrack)

Star TrekGNP Crescendo releases a CD of music from the original Star Trek television series, presenting selections from the episodes The Doomsday Machine by Sol Kaplan and Amok Time by Gerald Fried. Read more

Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Timewyrm: Genesys

Doctor WhoWith no new series in sight on TV, Virgin Publishing begins its long-awaited line of original print fiction with the first Doctor Who New Adventures novel, “Timewyrm: Genesys” by John Peel. The first book in a four-book cycle of linked stories, the novel picks up where the television series left off, featuring the seventh Doctor and Ace. Three further books are already in the works in the Timewyrm series, with other authors lining up for a chance to write later books in 1992 and beyond. Read more

STS-43

Space ShuttleNASA launches Space Shuttle Atlantis on a satellite deployment and science mission lasting nearly nine days. The fourth TDRS (Tracking & Data Relay Satellite) is launched, and several experiments are performed on board, including materials processing experiments. Atlantis’ crew consists of Commander John Blaha, Pilot Michael Baker, and mission specialists Shannon Lucid, James Adamson and David Low.

The World Wide Web

Tim Berners-LeeThe World Wide Web is born as Tim Berners-Lee shows off his concept for implementing hypertext, consisting of cross-linked documents, on the internet. At the time of his demonstration, the net’s primary functions are Gopher, Telnet and Usenet, but as those services do not provide a simple, user-friendly experience for providing amusingly captioned cat pictures to the public, “the web”, also known as “the WWW”, quickly gains traction and prominence. While the internet’s infrastructure can trace its origins to the 1960s and ARPAnet, this marks the dawn of the public-facing internet (which now, of course, includes the site you are reading right now).

Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Timewyrm: Exodus

Doctor WhoVirgin Publishing releases the second novel in the Doctor Who New Adventures series, “Timewyrm: Exodus” by early ’70s Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks. This book continues the four-part Timewyrm cycle and revisits the War Lord last seen in the 1969 TV story The War Games, and long before the TV episode Let’s Kill Hitler, places the Doctor in the company of Hitler. This is Dicks’ first Doctor Who prose which is not a direct adaptation of a television story. Read more

STS-48

Space ShuttleSpace Shuttle Discovery lifts off on a five-day mission to deliver the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) into a low Earth orbit, where the satellite spends over a year studying the outer layers of Earth’s atmosphere. UARS also focuses on study of Earth’s ozone layer. Other experiments are carried out aboard the orbiter by Commander John Creighton, Pilot Kenneth Reightler, , and mission specialists Mark Brown, Charles Gemar and James Buchli.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Redemption, Part II

Star Trek: The Next GenerationThe week-long national syndication window opens for the 100th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Todd and Denise Crosby guest star. This episode is the beginning of the show’s fifth season. Read more

Quantum Leap: Play Ball

Quantum LeapNBC airs the 54th episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. Neal McDonough (Star Trek: First Contact, Arrow, Legends Of Tomorrow) guest stars.

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Soyuz TM-13: the last Soviet space mission

Soyuz TM-13The Soviet Union launches its last space mission, Soyuz TM-13, carrying cosmonauts Alexander Volkov, Toktar Aubakirov and the first Austrian in space, Franz Viehböck, to space station Mir. After a week in space, Aubakirov and Viehböck return to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-12 with incumbent station crewmember Anatoly Artsebarksky, while Volkov stays for 175 days (alongside Krikalev, who will have been in space for 10 months by the time he returns to Earth in 1992). During Volkov and Krikalev’s stay aboard Mir, the Soviet Union collapses; they instead return to Earth as Russian citizens.