1998

1998 in other calendars
Gregorian calendar	1998; MCMXCVIII
Ab urbe condita	2751
Armenian calendar	1447; ԹՎ ՌՆԽԷ
Assyrian calendar	6748
Bahá'í calendar	154–155
Bengali calendar	1405
Berber calendar	2948
British Regnal year	46 Eliz. 2 – 47 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2542
Burmese calendar	1360
Byzantine calendar	7506–7507
Chinese calendar	丁丑年十二月初三日; (4634/4694-12-3) — to — 戊寅年十一月十三日; (4635/4695-11-13)
Coptic calendar	1714–1715
Ethiopian calendar	1990–1991
Hebrew calendar	5758–5759
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2054–2055
- Shaka Samvat	1920–1921
- Kali Yuga	5099–5100
Holocene calendar	11998
Igbo calendar
- Ǹrí Ìgbò	998–999
Iranian calendar	1376–1377
Islamic calendar	1418–1419
Japanese calendar	Heisei 10; (平成10年)
Juche calendar	87
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4331
Minguo calendar	ROC 87; 民國87年
Thai solar calendar	2541
Unix time	883612800–915148799
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	1998 by topic:
	Subject
	Archaeology; Architecture; Art; Aviation; Awards; Comics; Film; Home video; Literature (Poetry); Meteorology; Music (Country, Heavy metal); Rail transport; Radio; Science; Spaceflight; Sports; Television; Video gaming;
	By country
	Australia; Canada; People's Republic of China; Ecuador; France; Germany; Greece; India; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Japan; Luxembourg; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Norway; Pakistan; Philippines; Russia; Singapore; South Africa; United Kingdom; United States; Zimbabwe;
	Leaders
	Sovereign states; State leaders; Religious leaders; Law;
	Birth and death categories
	Births; Deaths;
	Establishments and disestablishments categories
	Establishments; Disestablishments;
	Works and introductions categories
	Works; Introductions;
	v; t; e;

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1960s 1970s 1980s – 1990s – 2000s 2010s 2020s
Years:	1995 1996 1997 – 1998 – 1999 2000 2001

This article is about the year 1998. For the number see 1998 (number). For other uses, see 1998 (disambiguation).

1998 : January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1998

1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year that started on a Thursday. In the Gregorian calendar, it was the 1998th year of Anno Domini; the 998th year of the 2nd millennium; the 98th year of the 20th century; and the 9th of the 1990s.

The year 1998 was designated International Year of the Ocean by UNESCO.^[1]

Events[edit]

January[edit]

January 2 – Russia begins to circulate new rubles to stem inflation and promote confidence.
January 4 – Wilaya of Relizane massacres of 4 January 1998 in Algeria: Over 170 are killed in 3 remote villages.
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 8 – Ramzi Yousef is sentenced to life in prison for planning the first World Trade Center bombing.
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 20 – Nepalese police intercept a shipment of 272 human skulls in Kathmandu^{[citation needed]}.
January 22 – Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski pleads guilty, and accepts a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
January 28 – Gunmen hold at least 400 children and teachers hostage for several hours, at an elementary school in Manila, Philippines.

New rubles

Lunar Prospector

February[edit]

The United States Senate passes Resolution 71, urging U.S. President Bill Clinton to "take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs

February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: a United States Military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying plane severs the cable of a cable-car.

February 4 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale in northeast Afghanistan kills more than 5,000 people.
February 12–
February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
February 16 – China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, killing 202 people (all 196 on board and 6 on the ground).
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.

March[edit]

March 2
- Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
- Natascha Kampusch is abducted by Wolfgang Priklopil (she will remain in his captivity until August 2006).
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 10 – Danish parliamentary election, 1998:
March 11 – Danish parliamentary election, 1998: Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is re-elected.
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 Best Picture.
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 2.

April[edit]

Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge

April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū and costing about US$3.8 billion, opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.
April 6 – Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of hitting India.
April 10 – Good Friday: 1 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.
April 22 – Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World opens to the public for the first time.

May[edit]

May 8 – CBS telecasts The Wizard of Oz for the last time. Beginning in 1999, The Wizard of Oz will be shown on cable, and in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 it will be telecast by the WB Television Network in addition to its cable showings.
May 11
- India conducts 3 underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, including 1 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. Indonesian natives destroy and burn Chinese Indonesian-owned properties and kill and rape more than 1,000 Chinese Indonesians.
May 19 – The Galaxy IV communications satellite fails, leaving 80–90% of the world's pagers without service.
May 21 – Suharto resigns, after 32 years as President of Indonesia and 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 26 – Bear Grylls, 23, becomes the youngest British climber to scale Mount Everest.^[2]
May 28 – Nuclear testing: In response to a series of Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan explodes 5 nuclear devices of its own in the Chaghai 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 6.6 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[edit]

June 2 – The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
June 3 – Eschede train disaster: An InterCityExpress high speed train derails between Hannover 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 9 – July 12 – The 1998 FIFA World Cup begins in France.
June 12 – Centennial Celebration of Independence of the Philippines from Spain
June 18 – Samuel Lawerence Abbitt and Harriet Gordon were born
June 25 – Microsoft releases Windows 98
June 30 – Philippine Vice President Joseph Estrada was sworn in as the 13th President of the Philippines.

July[edit]

July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as an outer space-exploring nation.
July 6 – The new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok opens, while the historic Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport closes.
July 12 – France beats Brazil 3–0 in the football World Cup final.
July 17
- 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 Bolsheviks.
- A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea, killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
- Biologists report in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of the bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum.

August[edit]

Aug.7: Nairobi Embassy bombing.

August 2 – Second Congo War begins. 3,900,000 people are killed 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 – Omagh bombing, A terrorist bombing carried out in Northern Ireland by the Real IRA.
August 24 – The first RFID human implantation is tested in the United Kingdom.

September[edit]

Canadian Coast Guard Vessel Henry Hudson searches for Swissair Flight 111 debris

September 2
- A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 airliner (Swissair Flight 111) crashes near Peggys 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.^[3]

October[edit]

October 14 – Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with four bombings (including the 1996 Olympic bombing) in Atlanta, Georgia.
October 6 – Matthew Shepard is beaten and left to die in a cornfield in Laramie, Wyoming
October 16 – British police place General Augusto Pinochet under house arrest during his medical treatment in the UK.
October 17 – A pipeline explosion in Jesse, Nigeria results in 1,082 deaths.
October 29 – Hurricane Mitch makes landfall in Central America, killing an estimated 18,000 people.

November[edit]

November 16 – Sesame Workshop (back then known as Children's Television Workshop) launches Elmo's World, the most famous Sesame Street segment lasting from the late 90's to Sesame Street's 40th anniversary (69-09) and the 10th anniversary of the segment itself (99-09).
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 25 – 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.

December[edit]

December 6 – Hugo Chávez, politician and former member of the Venezuelan military, is elected President of Venezuela.
December 16–19 – Iraq disarmament crisis: U.S. President Bill Clinton orders airstrikes on Iraq. UNSCOM withdraws all weapons inspectors from Iraq.
December 29 – Khmer Rouge leaders apologize for the genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million 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[edit]

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 dies in Jerusalem.^{[citation needed]}

Births[edit]

January 4 – Coco Jones, American actress and singer
January 9 – Kerris Dorsey, American actress and singer
January 12 – Nathan Gamble, American actor
January 28 – Ariel Winter, American actress
February 15 – Zachary Gordon, American actor
April 6 – Peyton Roi List, American actress
April 9 – Elle Fanning, American actress
April 24 – Ryan Newman, American actress
May 16 – Ariel Waller, Canadian actress
July 8 – Jaden Smith, American actor
July 9 – Robert Capron, American actor
July 22 – Madison Pettis, American actress
July 24 – Bindi Irwin, Australian actress and television presenter
July 31 – Rico Rodriguez, American actor
August 25 – China Anne McClain, American actress and singer
October 23 – Amandla Stenberg, American actress
October 25 – Guan Tianlang, Chinese golfer
October 28 – Nolan Gould, American actor
November 23 – Bradley Steven Perry, American actor
December 22 – G. Hannelius, American actress