3 dicembre

Often called the first album they made as an album, not a set of singles. Harrison played a sitar on “Norwegian Wood”, one of the first on a Western pop record, after finding one on the set of Help!.

George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met aboard the Soviet liner Maxim Gorkiy in a storm that kept the ships apart. Gorbachev told the press: “I assured the President of the United States that the Soviet Union would never start a hot war against the United States of America.”

Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, typed it on a computer and sent it to Vodafone’s Richard Jarvis, who was at the office Christmas party. Phones could not yet send texts, so Jarvis could not reply.

PlayStation launched in JapanPlayStation

Sony had been building a CD drive for Nintendo’s Super Famicom until Nintendo, the day after Sony unveiled it in 1991, announced it would work with Philips instead. Ken Kutaragi turned the project into Sony’s own console; cheap CDs lured publishers away from Nintendo’s costly cartridges, and it…

About 58 billion dollars, the largest IMF-led package yet. Koreans queued to donate their gold jewellery to help pay the country’s debts.

Japan’s second asteroid sampler. At Ryugu it dropped small hopping rovers, blasted a crater with a copper projectile and touched down twice. It is now on an extended trip to a second, smaller asteroid.