This year in history
In the year 1998
January
4th
Islamic guerrillas massacred 170 civilians in three remote villages of Algeria.
January
16th
Greek actor and producer, Dimitris Horn, died at the age of 77. He is widely considered as the greatest Greek actor of modern times.
February
2nd
A Cebu Pacific Air passenger plane went down in the Philippines. 104 people died in the crash.
February
4th
An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale struck Afghanistan killing more than 5,000 people.
February
16th
A China Airlines passenger flight crashed in a residential area near Taiwan's, Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, resulting in the death of 202 people, including 6 people on the ground.
February
23th
A series of tornadoes hit the US state of Florida causing damage to more than 2,500 buildings and killing more than 40 people.
March
15th
The blockbuster film, Titanic, was declared the highest money making movie of all time, ascending to the top position that had been previously held by the film Star Wars.
March
15th
American paediatrician and writer, Benjamin Spock, died at the age of 94. He was a very influential person in America, who helped shape the parenting philosophies of the 50's and 60's. His ideas created a lot of controversy and a lot of people became enemies of his ideas of permissiveness.
March
24th
In Jonesboro, Arkansas, two teenage boys opened fire upon students at the Westside Middle School, killing 5 people and injuring another 10.
March
27th
Austrian automobile manufacturer, Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, died at the age if 89. He was the founder of the Porsche AG sports cars manufacturing company.
March
31st
Netscape handed over the code for its browser to the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops the Mozilla internet browser.
April
15th
Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot, died at the age of 73. His regime was considered as one of he most repressive communist regimes of the 20th century and over two million people are rumoured to have died over the course of his 3 year leadership (1976 - 1979).
April
20th
An Air France passenger jet crashed into a mountain after taking off from Bogota, Colombia. 53 people died in the crash.
April
20th
The German terrorist group calling themselves the "Red Army Faction" (Baader-Meinhof) announced its dissolution. The group was Germany's most active terrorist organization and it operated from 1970 to 1998.
April
23th
James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, died in prison.
April
23th
Greek politician, Konstantine Karamanlis, died at the age of 91. He was one of the most prominent figures of Greek 20th century politics, having served twice as prime minister and twice as president of Greece.
May
2nd
The European Central Bank was founded in Brussels with the purpose of defining and executing the monetary policy of the European Community.
May
7th
The Mercedes-Benz company buys out the Chrysler company for a record US$40 billion, resulting in the DaimlerChrysler company. This was the largest industrial merger in history.
May
10th
Vladimir Arutinian attempted to assassinate United States President George W. Bush, using a hand grenade, while he was giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia. The grenade malfunctioned and did not detonate. He was arrested 2 months later, tried and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
May
14th
The last episode of the television series 'Seinfeld' aired on the NBC channel. It aired for nine straight seasons and was considered as one of the most successful and influential television shows of the 90's.
May
14th
American singer and actor, Frank Sinatra, died at the age 83. By the time of his death he had achieved the status of a living legend in the entertainment industry. Throughout his life Sinatra had been linked to members of the Mafia and the FBI kept a file on him that exceeded 2000 pages.
May
18th
The United States Department of Justice and 20 US states filed an antitrust case against Microsoft for abusing monopoly power.
May
21st
Kipland Kinkel, a student at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon USA, fired a semiautomatic rifle into a classroom, killing 2 students and wounding 25 others. Earlier in the day he had murdered his parents at home.
May
30th
An earthquake measuring at a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale hit northern Afghanistan, killing approximately 5,000 people.
June
3rd
A high speed train derailed in Lower Saxony, Germany, resulting in 101 fatalities.
June
4th
Terry Nichols was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 169 people died in the bombing and over 800 were wounded.
July
6th
American actor, Roy Rogers, died at the age if 87. He was nicknamed, King of the Cowboys, and was one of the most famous western movie actors of all time.
July
17th
A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed several villages and killed more than 3000 people in Papua New, Guinea.
August
7th
Two simultaneous bombings took place in the African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Both were directed at the US embassies in those cities. 227 people died in the explosions and more than 4000 were injured in the attacks which were the first major terrorist acts to be associated with the then newly formed al-Qaeda network.
August
17th
US President Bill Clinton admitted that he had an 'improper physical relationship' with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
September
2nd
A Swissair passenger jet crashed in Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board were killed.
September
6th
Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa, died at the age of 88. He was Japan's best known filmmaker and universally accepted as one of the great directors of the 20th century.
September
7th
Google was founded. It is estimated that as of 2006, Google runs utilizing over 450,000 servers.
September
15th
The merger of telecommunications companies, WorldCom and MCI Communications, was completed. The resulting company was MCI WorldCom, later be renamed to WorldCom. It would later become the largest bankruptcy United States history.
September
18th
ICANN was formed. It stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is the organization responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.
October
3rd
English actor, Roddy McDowall, died at the age of 70. He made his first appearance in film at the age of 10 and continued to be a respected and well known actor throughout the rest of his life.
October
12th
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in the United States. In essence it criminalized production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright. The European Union passed a similar directive, the EU Copyright Directive, in May 22 2001.
October
23th
The Swatch Internet Time was first introduced. Instead of hours and minutes, the day is divided into 1000 ".beats", each ".beat" equals 1 minute and 26.4 seconds.
October
29th
77-year old John Glenn becomes the oldest person to go into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. He was also the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
November
6th
Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.
November
12th
The Daimler-Benz automobile corporation completed its merger with Chrysler to form the Daimler-Chrysler company.
November
19th
American film director, Alan J. Pakula, died at the age of 70. He was a celebrated director who directed such hit movies as To Kill A Mockingbird, All the President's Men and Presumed Innocent.
November
26th
Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the parliament of the Republic of Ireland.
November
30th
Derman, Deutsche Bank, bought American, Bankers Trust, for 10 billion USD forming the largest financial institution in the world.
December
1st
Exxon bought Mobil for a staggering 73.7 billion USD, creating Exxon-Mobil one of the largest companies on the planet.
December
11th
A Thai Airways passenger jet crashed in Thailand, resulting in the death of 101 people.
December
29th
Six people died in Sidney, Australia, when huge waves struck the sail boats they were sailing in the famous d Sydney to Hobart race.
 
Click here to return to the Home page.

Look up a Year :


Share/Save/Bookmark


  Also Visit :
  Mixer
  Greek Recipes
  Greek Wine
  BiG
  Ecofind
  Start
  Free
  Hello
  Starbuzz
  Art.gr
  Evresi

 

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.