Timeline Saturday 31 December 1994

Events on Saturday 31 December 1994 9

• 1914 – 1994 Woody Strode (1914-1994) American football player and actor, one of the players who reintegrated the NFL, later a John Ford regular.
• 1994 1994: Michael Schumacher Benetton German Schumacher won the first of his seven titles in a season marred by the death of Ayrton Senna and a controversial collision with Damon Hill at the final race in Adelaide.
• 1994 Exile to California Left Iran for the United States, settling in California as a political refugee. She would never return to her homeland. Received the Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett Award for writers persecuted for their work.
• 1994 Knighted Knighted for services to football, becoming Sir Bobby Charlton. Later served as a director of Manchester United and as an ambassador for English football.
• 1994 Stones from the River Published Stones from the River, the novel that would define her career. Set in Burgdorf during the Nazi era, it told the story of Trudi Montag, a dwarf and keeper of secrets who witnesses her town's complicity in the horrors of the Third Reich. It became a bestseller and an Oprah's Book Club selection.
• 1994 Switched to Neuroscience Made the audacious decision to leave immunology entirely and pivot to neuroscience, studying the molecular and cellular basis of memory. Many colleagues were astonished that a Nobel laureate would abandon his winning field.
• 1994 Universal Mother Released Universal Mother, an album exploring electronic-based meditations on motherhood and identity.
• 1994 Yellow Pumpkin on Naoshima A giant yellow pumpkin sculpture covered in black polka dots was installed on a pier on Naoshima Island in Japan's Inland Sea. The 2.5-metre-wide fibreglass work became one of the most photographed artworks in Japan and an icon of Kusama's pumpkin obsession.
• 1994 Woody Strode dies in Glendora Woody Strode dies aged 80.