Milestones

Ten years ago: After a chaotic meeting that had begun the night before, the Chicago City Council elected Eugene Sawyer acting mayor, succeeding the late Harold Washington.

Five years ago: Germany’s lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Maastricht Treaty on European unity. The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with five astronauts and a spy satellite aboard.

One year ago: Financier Charles Keating Jr., a central figure in the most notorious savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s, won a new federal trial because jurors had learned of his prior fraud conviction in state court before convicting him of fraud and racketeering.