Timeline March 1996

Events in March 1996 8

• 1896 – 1996 George Burns (1896-1996) Died 9 March 1996, aged 100 George Burns was an American comedian and actor whose career in vaudeville, radio, television, and film spanned nearly a century. He won an Academy Award for "The Sunshine Boys" in 1976 and remained a beloved performer into his final years. He died just months after turning 100.
• 1912 – 1996 David Packard (1912-1996) Died 26 March 1996, aged 83 David Packard co-founded Hewlett-Packard with Bill Hewlett in a Palo Alto garage in 1939, building it into one of the world's largest technology companies. He also served as US Deputy Secretary of Defense in the late 1960s. Packard was a major philanthropist through the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
• 1941 – 1996 Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941-1996) Died 13 March 1996, aged 54 Krzysztof Kieślowski was a Polish film director acclaimed for the "Three Colors" trilogy and "The Decalogue," works noted for their moral seriousness and visual precision. He announced his retirement from filmmaking shortly before his death from a heart attack. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential European directors of his era.
• 1996 AMD K5 — first fully independent x86 CPU architecture AMD introduces the K5 processor in March 1996 — the first AMD processor designed entirely from scratch without any Intel architecture or microcode, just x86 compatibility at the instruction set level. The K5 is competitive with Intel's Pentium in integer performance but weaker in floating point. Its development is delayed and its performance disappointing relative to expectations. But the K5 proves AMD can design its own processor architectures — essential capability for the Athlon's breakthrough three years later.
• 1996 Iditarod 1996 Winner: Jeff King — 9 days 5h Jeff King won his second Iditarod in 1996.
• 1996 Leaves Genesis March 1996 Announced in March 1996 that he was leaving Genesis after 26 years, saying "Having been in Genesis for 25 years, I felt it time to change direction in my musical life" — ending one of rock's most enduring partnerships (Banks, Rutherford and Collins had been the constant core since 1970).
• 1996 UK Mad Cow Disease Crisis Government links BSE to fatal human brain disease, triggering global beef bans The British government announced a probable link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle and a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The European Union responded with a worldwide ban on British beef exports that lasted years. The crisis devastated the UK farming industry and prompted the mass slaughter of millions of cattle.
• 1996 – present Richard Rapport Hungarian-Romanian creative grandmaster Richard Rapport became famous for highly original opening choices and imaginative attacking chess.