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Top Song(s)
• Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
• Take That - Back For Good
• Bryan Adams - Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?
• Mariah Carey - Fantasy
• Michael Jackson - You Are Not Alone
Top Film(s)
• Se7en
• The Usual Suspects
• Toy Story
• 12 Monkeys
• Braveheart
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
• Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb
• Sabriel - Garth Nix
• High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
• A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Famous Deaths
• January 1 - Eugene Wigner, Hungarian-American physicist and mathematician (1963 Nobel Prize for Physics)
• February 9 - J. William Fulbright, American senator and congressman
• March 7 - Paul-Emile Victor, French polar explorer, ethnologist, and writer
• April 2 - Hannes Alfven, Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist (Nobel Prize for Physic, 1970)
• May 11 - Ivo Samkalden, Dutch Minister of Justice, Mayor of Amsterdam
• June 3 - J. Presper Eckert, Jr., American engineer and co-inventor (1st electronic computer-ENIAC)
• June 23 - Jonas Salk, American medical researcher and virologist who created the Polio vaccine
• July 5 - Foster Furcolo, American politician, 60th Governor of Massachusetts
• August 2 - Colin Falkland Gray, New Zealand fighter ace of the Second World War
• September 21 - Rudy Perpich, American politician, 34th & 36th Governor of Minnesota
Medical/Science/Technology
• Project Phoenix begins looking for extraterrestrial transmissions using the Parkes Observatory radio telescope.
• Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered by Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp independently.
• NASA's Galileo Probe enters Jupiter's atmosphere.
• Sudden oak death, the tree disease caused by the plant Phytophthora ramorum, is first observed, in California.
• Prodigy (online service) offers access to the World Wide Web.
• The first Yahoo! Search interface is founded.
• Ward Cunningham loads the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, in Oregon.
• Bruce Luyendyk first proposes the name Zealandia for a southern continent.
• Workers from the National Institutes of Health announce the success of clinical trials for treatment of sickle cell anemia.
• The United States Food and Drug Administration approves Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor to treat HIV/AIDS.
Political
• January 4 – The 104th United States Congress, the first controlled by Republicans in both houses since 1953 to 1955, convenes.
• January 24 – State of the Union Address.
• January 26 – The House of Representatives passes a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution.
• January 31 – President Bill Clinton invokes emergency powers to extend a $20 billion loan to help Mexico avert financial collapse.
• April 5 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 246–188 to cut taxes for individuals and corporations.
• April 7 – House Republicans celebrate passage of most of the Contract with America.
• April 23 – President Clinton visits Oklahoma City and gives an address, stating "Today our nation is joined with you in grief."
• May 20 – President Bill Clinton indefinitely closes part of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to vehicular traffic.
• July 5 – The U.S. Congress passes the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act.
• September 22 – American millionaire Steve Forbes announces his candidacy for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination.
National
• January 1 – The History Channel is launched.
• February 9 – Dr. Bernard A. Harris Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African American and Briton, respectively, to walk in space.
• February 23 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 30.28 to close at 4,003.33 – the Dow's first ever close above 4,000.
• March 2 - Yahoo! is incorporated.
• May 17 – Shawn Nelson, 35, goes on a tank rampage in San Diego.
• June 16 – The International Olympic Committee awards the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City, Utah.
• June 29 – STS-71: Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.
• July 27 – In Washington, D.C., the Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated.
• August 24 – Microsoft releases Windows 95.
• October 1 – Ten people are convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Worldwide
• January 9 – Valeri Polyakov completes 366 days in space while aboard then Mir space station, breaking a duration record.
• February 26 – The United Kingdom's oldest investment banking firm, Barings Bank, collapses.
• March 3 – United Nations Operation in Somalia II, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia, ends.
• April 7 – Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of at least 250 civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
• May 11 – More than 170 countries agree to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
• July 9 – 125 civilians are killed in Navaly as result of bombing by the Sri Lanka Air Force.
• August 14 – Nepali Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikari along with seven other high-ranking officials survives a helicopter crash.
• September 26 – The trial against former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who is accused of Mafia connections, begins.
• November 2 – The Supreme Court of Argentina orders the extradition of ex-S.S. captain Erich Priebke.
• December 14 – The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris, officially ending the Bosnian War.