1998

From left to right, top to bottom:

the 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan;
U.S. President Bill Clinton is impeached over the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal;
a poster advocates for a "yes" vote on the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which eventually prevails and ends most of the violence associated with The Troubles;
the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed by Al-Qaeda;
Google is launched;
SwissAir Flight 111 crashes off the coast of Nova Scotia after an in-flight fire;
the 1998 FIFA World Cup is held in France;
protests erupt in Indonesia over the Fall of Suharto, which lead to 1,000 fatalities;
China Airlines Flight 676 crashes upon attempted landing at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, killing 203, the second-deadliest air crash in Taiwan;
Hurricane Mitch at peak intensity as a powerful Category 5 before making landfall on Honduras as a weakening category 1, becoming one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, killing over 11,000 people in Central America;
Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo, triggering the Second Congo War;
the severe destruction of Eschede train disaster, which killed 101 people.

1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1998th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 998th year of the 2nd millennium, the 98th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1990s decade.

1998 was designated as the International Year of the Ocean.

Events

January

January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.
January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria.
January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.
January 17 – The Drudge Report breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him.

February

February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car.
February 4 – The 5.9 M_w Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong). With up to 4,000 killed, and 818 injured, damage is considered extreme.
February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
February 16 – China Airlines Flight 676 crashes upon attempted landing at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, killing 203, the second-deadliest air crash in Taiwan.
February 20 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein negotiates a deal with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, allowing weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad, preventing military action by the United States and Britain.
February 28
- A massacre in Likoshane, FR Yugoslavia starts the Kosovo War.
- A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement. Although subsequent large epidemiological research found no link between vaccines and autism, the study contributed – in the following years and decades – to a sharp drop in vaccination rates and the resurgence of measles in several countries. The study, fully retracted in 2010, was later characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the 20th Century".

March

March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
March 11 – 1998 Danish general election: Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is re-elected.
March 13 – The High-Z Supernova Search Team becomes the first team to publish evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
March 23 – The 70th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted for the 6th time by Billy Crystal, is held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Titanic wins 11 Oscars including Best Picture.
March 24 – Westside Middle School shooting: Five people are killed in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
March 26 – Oued Bouaicha massacre in Algeria: 52 people are killed with axes and knives; 32 of the killed are babies under the age of two.

April

April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū and costing about US$3.6 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.
April 10 – Good Friday Agreement: An hour after the end of the talks deadline, the Belfast Agreement is signed between the Irish and British governments and most Northern Ireland political parties, with the notable exception of the Democratic Unionist Party. This would mostly put an end to the conflict known as The Troubles.
April 20 – The alleged date the German Red Army Faction (created 1970) is dissolved.
April 23 – The Yugoslav Army ambushes a group of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters attempting to smuggle weapons from Albania into Kosovo, killing 19.

May

May 6 – A large Eritrean mechanized force entered Badme in Tigray Region, Ethiopia, resulting in the Eritrean–Ethiopian War.
May 11
- Pokhran-II (Operation Shakti): India conducts three underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, including one thermonuclear device.
- The first euro coins are minted in Pessac, France. Because the final specifications for the coins were not finished in 1998, they will have to be melted and minted again in 1999.
May 13–14 – Riots directed against Chinese Indonesians break out in Indonesia, killing around 1,000 people. Maria Catarina Sumarsih held Prabowo Subianto responsibilities for involved in a series of human rights abuses during the riot.
May 15 – The Windows 98 operating system is released to manufacturing.
May 19
- The Galaxy IV communications satellite fails, leaving 80–90% of the US's pagers without service.
- The wreck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, sunk during the Battle of Midway in 1942, is found near Midway Atoll by a team led by former US Navy officer Robert D. Ballard.
May 21 – Suharto (elected 1967) resigns after 31 years as President of Indonesia, effectively ending the New Order period. It is his 7th consecutive re-election by the Indonesian Parliament (MPR). Suharto's hand-picked Vice President, B. J. Habibie, becomes Indonesia's third president.
May 28 – Nuclear testing: In response to a series of Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan explodes five nuclear devices of its own in the Chagai hills of Baluchistan, codenamed Chagai-I, prompting the United States, Japan and other nations to impose economic sanctions. Pakistan celebrates Youm-e-Takbir annually.
May 30
- A 6.5 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan, killing up to 5,000.
- A second nuclear test, codenamed Chagai-II, is conducted and supervised by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC).

June

June 1 – European Central Bank established, replacing the European Monetary Institute.
June 3 – Eschede train disaster: an Intercity-Express high-speed train derails between Hanover and Hamburg, Germany, causing 101 deaths.
June 7 – Former Brigadier-General Ansumane Mané seizes control over military barracks in Bissau, marking the beginning of the Guinea-Bissau Civil War (1998–99).
June 10–July 12 – The 1998 FIFA World Cup in France: France beats Brazil 3–0 in the FIFA World Cup Final.
June 10 – The Organisation of African Unity passes a resolution which states that its members will no longer comply with punitive sanctions applied by the UN Security Council against Libya.
June 27 – Kuala Lumpur International Airport officially opens, becoming the new international gateway into Malaysia.
June 30 – Philippine Vice President Joseph Estrada is sworn in as the 13th President of the Philippines.

July

July 5 – Japan launches the probe Nozomi to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as an outer space-exploring nation.
July 17
- Rome Statute: at a conference in Rome, 120 countries vote to create a permanent International Criminal Court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
- In Saint Petersburg, Nicholas II of Russia and his family are buried in St. Catherine Chapel, 80 years after he and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
- The 7.0 M_w Papua New Guinea earthquake shakes the region near Aitape with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). This submarine earthquake triggered a landslide that caused a destructive tsunami, leaving more than 2,100 dead and thousands injured.
July 21–September 5 – The 1998 Sydney water crisis involved the suspected contamination by the microscopic pathogens cryptosporidium and giardia of the water supply system of Greater Metropolitan Sydney.
July 24 – Russell Eugene Weston Jr. enters the United States Capitol Building and opens fire, killing two members of the United States Capitol Police, Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson.

August

August 1 – Puntland State leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998 and the capital city is the city of Garoowe in the Nugal region.
August 4 – The Second Congo War begins; 5.4 million people die before it ends in 2003, making it the bloodiest war, to date, since World War II.
August 7
- Yangtze River Floods: in China the Yangtze river breaks through the main bank; before this, from August 1–5, peripheral levees collapsed consecutively in Jiayu County Baizhou Bay. The death toll exceeds 12,000, with many thousands more injured.
- 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: the bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, kill 224 people and injure over 4,500; they are linked to terrorist Osama bin Laden, an exile of Saudi Arabia.
August 15 – The Troubles: The Omagh bombing is carried out in Northern Ireland by the Real Irish Republican Army. Shortly after these events, the group would call a ceasefire in response, signaling an end to the 30+ year conflict.
August 17 – Russia's government devalues the ruble, defaulted on domestic debt, and declared a moratorium on repayment of foreign debt. This marks the beginning of 1998 Russian financial crisis.

September

September 2
- A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 airliner (Swissair Flight 111) crashes near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, after taking off from New York City en route to Geneva; all 229 people on board are killed.
- A United Nations court finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide, marking the first time that the 1948 law banning genocide is enforced.
September 4 – Google, Inc. is founded in Menlo Park, California, by Stanford University PhD candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
September 5 – The Government of North Korea adopts a military dictatorship on its 50th anniversary. Constitution is amended, Kim Il Sung is enshrined as the eternal President.
September 10 – At midnight, a shooting occurs aboard an Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Russian Navy docked in the northern Russian port city of Severomorsk.
September 12 – The Cuban Five intelligence agents are arrested in Miami, and later convicted of espionage. The agents claim they were not spying against the United States Government but against the Cuban exile community in Miami.
September 24 – Iranian President Mohammad Khatami retracts a fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie that was in force since 1989 stating that the Iranian government will "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie".

October

October 1 – Europol is established when the Europol Convention signed by all of its member states comes into force.
October 3 – 1998 Australian federal election: John Howard's Liberal/National Coalition government is re-elected with a substantially reduced majority, defeating the Labor Party led by Kim Beazley.
October 10 – Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet: General Augusto Pinochet, Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990, is indicted for human rights violations he committed in Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón. 6 days later British police place him under house arrest during his medical treatment in the UK. This is a leading case in the law of universal jurisdiction.
October 17 – 1998 Jesse pipeline explosion: An oil pipeline explosion in Jesse, Nigeria results in 1,082 deaths.
October 29 – Hurricane Mitch makes landfall in Central America, killing an estimated 11,000 people.

November

November 8 – Valve Corporation releases their first-person shooter video game Half-Life to critical acclaim. The game would be deemed one of the most influential titles of its genre, and one of the greatest video games of all time.
November 17 – Voyager 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as the most distant man-made object from the Solar System, at a distance of 69.419 AU (1.03849×10¹⁰ km).
November 20 – A Russian Proton rocket is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the first segment of the International Space Station, the 21-ton Zarya Module.
November 24 – A declassified report by Swiss International Olympic Committee official Marc Hodler reveals that bribes had been used to bring the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City during bidding process in 1995. The IOC, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Department of Justice immediately launch an investigation into the scandal.

December

December 1 – Ireland formally relinquishes its territorial claim over Northern Ireland and recognizes the United Kingdom's sovereignty there.
December 4 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour launches the first U.S.-built component to the International Space Station, the 25,600 pounds (11,600 kg) Unity module on STS-88. It docks with Zarya two days later.
December 6 – Hugo Chávez, politician and former officer of the Venezuelan army, is elected President of Venezuela.
December 11 – Thai Airways International Flight 261 crashes upon attempted landing at Surat Thani International Airport, killing 101, the second-deadliest air crash in Thailand.
December 14 – The Yugoslav Army ambushes a column of 140 Kosovo Liberation Army militants attempting to smuggle arms from Albania into Kosovo, killing 36.
December 16 – Iraq disarmament crisis: U.S. President Bill Clinton orders airstrikes on Iraq. UNSCOM withdraws all weapons inspectors from Iraq.
December 19 – The U.S. House of Representatives forwards articles of impeachment against President Clinton to the Senate, making him the second president to be impeached in U.S. history.
December 29 – The Khmer Rouge's leaders apologize for the post-Vietnam War genocide in Cambodia that killed more than one million people in the 1970s.
December 31
- The first leap second since June 30, 1997, occurs.
- In the Eurozone, the currency rates of this day are fixed permanently.

Date unknown

European Small Business Alliance organization is formed.
Ibrahim Hanna, the last native speaker of Mlahsô, dies in Qamishli, Syria, making the language effectively extinct. Also, the last native speaker of related Bijil Neo-Aramaic, Mrs. Rahel Avraham, dies in Jerusalem.

Births