What happened 1996 AD in United States of America

On 23 January 1996, Sun Microsystems released the first public implementation as Java 1.0, which promised Write Once, Run Anywhere (WORA) functionality, providing no-cost run-times on popular platforms.

Under his real name, Johnson defeated The Brooklyn Brawler at a house show on March 10, 1996. and lost matches to Chris Candido and Owen Hart.

The Lakers were looking to trade their starting center Vlade Divac for a player's draft rights to free up salary-cap space to make an offer to free-agent center Shaquille O'Neal. Bill Branch, the Hornets' head scout at the time, said that the Hornets agreed to trade their draft selection at #13 to the Lakers the day before the draft. Before the trade agreement, the Hornets never considered drafting Bryant. During the draft, the Lakers told the Hornets whom to select minutes before the pick was made.

Bryant was the first guard ever drafted directly out of high school.

on June 30, Divac relented on his threat and the trade was made final on July 9, 1996, when the league's off-season moratorium ended.

On the team's first full day at the Olympics in Atlanta, the media announced that O'Neal would join the Los Angeles Lakers on a seven-year, $121 million contract.

Centennial Olympic Park was designed as the "town square" of the Olympics, and thousands of spectators had gathered for a late concert and merrymaking. Sometime after midnight, July 27, 1996, Eric Robert Rudolph, a terrorist who would later bomb a lesbian nightclub and two abortion clinics, planted a green backpack containing a fragmentation-laden pipe bomb underneath a bench. Jewell was working as a security guard for the event.

On July 27, 1996, He discovered the bag and alerted Georgia Bureau of Investigation officers. This discovery was nine minutes before Rudolph called 9-1-1 to deliver a warning.

On July 27, 1996, Jewell and other security guards began clearing the immediate area so that a bomb squad could investigate the suspicious package.

On July 27, 1996, The bomb exploded 13 minutes later, killing Alice Hawthorne and injuring over one hundred others. A cameraman also died of a heart attack while running to cover the incident.

On September 23, 1996, Carrey married his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly.

On October 26, 1996, the investigating US Attorney, Kent Alexander, in an extremely unusual act, sent Jewell a letter formally clearing him, stating "based on the evidence developed to date ... Richard Jewell is not considered a target of the federal criminal investigation into the bombing on July 27, 1996, at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta".

As a rookie in 1996–97, Bryant mostly came off the bench behind guards Eddie Jones and Nick Van Exel. At the time he became the youngest player ever to play in an NBA game (18 years, 72 days; a record since broken by Jermaine O'Neal and former teammate Andrew Bynum), and also became the youngest NBA starter ever (18 years, 158 days). Initially, Bryant played limited minutes, but as the season continued, he began to see some more playing time.

Johnson debuted on Monday Night Raw as a member of Marc Mero's entourage on November 4, 1996.

Eminem was soon signed to Jeff and Mark Bass's FBT Productions, and recorded his debut album Infinite for their independent Web Entertainment label. The album was a commercial failure upon its release in 1996.

His first match came at Survivor Series, on November 17,1996, in an eight-man elimination tag match; he was the sole survivor and eliminated the final two members of the opposing team, Crush and Goldust.

On December 17, 1996, O'Neal shoved Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls; Rodman's teammates Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan restrained Rodman and prevented further conflict. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that O'Neal was willing to be suspended for fighting Rodman, and O'Neal said: "It's one thing to talk tough and one thing to be tough."