The Sun (United Kingdom) a free special issue of "The Sun" was distributed by the Royal Mail to 22 million homes in England. The promotion, which did not include a Page 3 topless model, was announced in mid-May and was believed to be the first such freesheet issued by a UK national newspaper. The boycott in Merseyside following the newspaper's coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 meant that copies were not dispatched to areas with a Liverpool postcode. Royal Mail employees in Merseyside and surrounding areas were given special dispensation by their managers to allow them not to handle the publication "on a
Hillsborough disaster in the largest English football grounds, notably the elimination of fenced standing terraces in favour of all-seater stadiums in the top two tiers of English football. The first coroner's inquests into the Hillsborough disaster, completed in 1991, ruled all deaths that occurred that day to be accidental. Families strongly rejected the original coroner's findings, and their fight to have the matter re-opened persisted, despite Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concluding in 1997 there was no justification for a new inquiry. Private prosecutions brought by the Hillsborough Families Support Group against Duckenfield and his deputy Bernard Murray failed in 2000. In 2009, a