1998: Difference between revisions

1998 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1998; MCMXCVIII
Ab urbe condita	2751
Armenian calendar	1447; ԹՎ ՌՆԽԷ
Assyrian calendar	6748
Baháʼí calendar	154–155
Balinese saka calendar	1919–1920
Bengali calendar	1404–1405
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 (Fire Ox); 4695 or 4488; — to —; 戊寅年 (Earth Tiger); 4696 or 4489
Coptic calendar	1714–1715
Discordian calendar	3164
Ethiopian calendar	1990–1991
Hebrew calendar	5758–5759
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2054–2055
- Shaka Samvat	1919–1920
- Kali Yuga	5098–5099
Holocene calendar	11998
Igbo calendar	998–999
Iranian calendar	1376–1377
Islamic calendar	1418–1419
Japanese calendar	Heisei 10; (平成１０年)
Javanese calendar	1930–1931
Juche calendar	87
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4331
Minguo calendar	ROC 87; 民國87年
Nanakshahi calendar	530
Thai solar calendar	2541
Tibetan calendar	阴火牛年; (female Fire-Ox); 2124 or 1743 or 971; — to —; 阳土虎年; (male Earth-Tiger); 2125 or 1744 or 972
Unix time	883612800 – 915148799

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

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Revision as of 13:26, 2 April 2018

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.^[1]

Events

January

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 in 1993.
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 would lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him.
January 22 – Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski pleads guilty, and accepts a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

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 plane 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 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.
February 28 – A massacre in Likoshane, FR Yugoslavia starts the Kosovo War.

March

March 1 – Titanic becomes the first film to gross US$1 billion.
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 – Danish general election, 1998: 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 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 2 - World's Wildest Police Videos debut on FOX
April 5 – In Japan, the Akashi Kaikyō 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 Agreement: 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 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 11
- 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.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]
May 19
- The Galaxy IV communications satellite fails, leaving 80–90% of the world'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 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 28 – Nuclear testing: In response to a series of Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan explodes five 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

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).
- Peter Arnett publishes a false report of Operation Tailwind (initiated 1970), claiming that sarin nerve agents were used to eliminate a group of deserting U.S. soldiers.
- James Byrd Jr. is beaten and dragged to death by 3 white men in Jasper, Texas.
June 9–12 – The 1998 FIFA World Cup begins in France.
June 25 – Microsoft releases Windows 98.^{[importance?]}
June 27 – Kuala Lumpur International Airport officially opened, which also became the new international gateway into Malaysia.^{[importance?]}
June 30 – Philippine Vice President Joseph Estrada is sworn in as the 13th President of the Philippines.

July

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 old Kai Tak Airport closes.^{[importance?]}
July 12 – France beats Brazil 3–0 in the FIFA 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 the Lenin-led 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.

August

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 Omagh bombing is carried out in Northern Ireland by the Real Irish Republican Army.

September

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 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.^[7]
September 5 – The Government of North Korea adopts a military dictatorship on its 50th anniversary.
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 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 3 – Australian federal election, 1998: John Howard's Liberal/National Coalition Government is re-elected with a substantially reduced majority, defeating the Labor Party led by Kim Beazley.^[8]
October 14 – Eric Rudolph is charged with four bombings (including the 1996 Olympic bombing) in Atlanta.
October 16 – British police place General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990, 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 11,000 people.

November

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 4 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour launches the first American component to the International Space Station, the 25,600 lb Unity module on STS-88. It docks with Zarya two days later.
December 6 – Hugo Chávez, politician and former member of the Venezuelan military, is elected President of Venezuela.
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 16–19 – 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 the nation.
December 29 – Khmer Rouge 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

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.^[9]