1998

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 15 – U.N. peacekeepers return Eastern Slavonia to Croatian control; 80,000 displaced Croatians begin returning home, while 60,000 Serbs begin vacating the region. The area will remain under UNPSG supervision until October.
• 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.
• January 21 - Pope John Paul II begins a 5-day visit to Cuba; Fidel Castro releases 300 political prisoners in a gesture of goodwill.
• January 23 - P.W. Botha appears in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to answer for apartheid-era policies; he refers to the hearing as a "circus".

  February

• February 2 - Cebu Pacific Flight 387 crashes into a mountain, this crash marked deadliest aviation accident in Philippines until 2000.
• 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 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII. With up to 4,000 killed, and 818 injured, damage is considered extreme.
• February 6 – Washington National Airport is officially renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
• February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
• February 12 - The Flag of the Philippines gets a minor redesign, changing its blue and red shades.
• 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 United Kingdom.
• February 26 – Oprah is cleared of slander in an Amarillo court after a highly publicized court battle with Texas beef moguls.
• 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 21 – The European Union announces an arms embargo against Serbia and Montenegro.
• 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.
• * Boris Yeltsin dismisses Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in "an effort to make economic reforms more energetic and effective."
• 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.
• * Bill Clinton makes the first visit to South Africa by a U.S. president.
• March 30 – Hungary begins European Union accession talks.
• March 31 – Quett Masire voluntarily steps down as President of Botswana after 18 years in office.

  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 17 – 1998 Australian waterfront dispute: Patrick Stevedores fires all 1,400 employees.
• April 20 – The alleged date the German Red Army Faction 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.
• April 24 – Rwanda executes 22 Hutus, including Froduald Karamira, for their roles in the 1994 genocide.

  May

• May 5–6 - landslides in Campania, Italy kill 161
• May 6 – A large Eritrean mechanized force enters Badme in Tigray Region, Ethiopia, resulting in the Eritrean–Ethiopian War.
• May 11
• * Pokhran-II : 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 are not finished, 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 holds 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.
• * Argentina expels seven Iranian diplomats over their connections to the 1994 AMIA bombing.
• May 18 – The Department of Justice files an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging its Windows operating system unfairly takes market share from Netscape's Navigator.
• May 19
• * The Galaxy IV communications satellite fails, leaving 80–90% of the US's pagers without service.
• * The wreck of the aircraft carrier, 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 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. Suharto's hand-picked Vice President, B. J. Habibie, becomes Indonesia's third president.
• May 26 – Australia holds its first National Sorry Day.
• May 27 – The United States requests that El Salvador reopen its probe into the 1980 murders of U.S. missionaries.
• 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.

  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.
• June 8 - The DeBruce Grain Elevator explosion in Wichita, Kansas kills 7.
• 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 Papua New Guinea earthquake shakes the region near Aitape with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII. This submarine earthquake triggered a landslide that caused a destructive tsunami, leaving more than 2,100 dead and thousands injured.
• July 21-September 5 - 1998 Sydney water crisis: suspected contamination by the microscopic pathogens cryptosporidium and giardia of the water supply system of Greater Metropolitan Sydney, Australia.
• 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.