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Top Song(s)
• Spice Girls - Wannabe
• Los Del Rio - Macarena
• The Fugees - Killing Me Softly With His Song
• Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me
• Toni Braxton - Un-Break My Heart
Top Film(s)
• Fargo
• Trainspotting
• Independence Day
• From Dusk Till Dawn
• Waiting for Guffman
Best Selling Book(s)
• A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
• Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt
• The Green Mile - Stephen King
• Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
• Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Famous Deaths
• January 1 - Orapin Chaiyakan, first Thai woman elected to the Parliament of Thailand
• February 15 - Bruno Ferenc Straub, Hungarian biochemist and statesman
• March 2 - Jacobo Majluta Azar, 47th President of the Dominican Republic
• April 3 - Carl Stokes, first African American mayor of a major US city (Cleveland)
• May 11 - Nnamdi Azikiwe, 1st President of Nigeria
• June 6 - George Davis Snell, American geneticist, 1980 Nobel Prize
• August 2 - Michel Debre, French politician, Prime Minister of France (1959-62)
• August 8 - James Whitman McLamore, American businessman and 1st CEO of Burger King who created The Whopper
• September 22 - Mohammed Ben Amhed Abdelghani, Prime Minister of Algeria (1979-84)
• November 1 - J. R. [Junius Richard] Jayawardene, 2nd President of Sri Lanka (1978-89)
Medical/Science/Technology
• Comet Hyakutake is discovered.
• First naked-eye observation of Comet Hale-Bopp.
• Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell.
• NASA announces that the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite thought to originate from Mars.
• The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae's genome is sequenced, the first eukaryotic genome to be fully sequenced.
• NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft launched.
• First USB specification issued.
• The first version of the Java programming language is released.
• Donepezil (Aricept), a palliative treatment for moderate Alzheimer's disease, is approved in the United States.
• Sildenafil (Viagra), a treatment for erectile dysfunction, is patented by Pfizer.
Political
• January 23 – State of the Union Address.
• January 26 - Whitewater scandal: U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton testifies before a grand jury.
• April 9 – President Bill Clinton signs the Line Item Veto Act of 1996.
• April 24 – President Bill Clinton signs the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 into law.
• August 15 – Bob Dole is nominated for President of the United States, and Jack Kemp for vice president.
• August 21 – President Bill Clinton signs the War Crimes Act of 1996 into law.
• August 22 – President Clinton signs the landmark Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law.
• August 29 - President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are re-nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
• September 24 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.
• November 5 – Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton defeats Republican challenger Bob Dole to win his second term.
National
• January 7 – One of the worst blizzards in American history hits the eastern states, killing more than 150 people.
• February 2 – Frontier Middle School shooting: A gunman kills his algebra teacher and two other students in Moses Lake, Washington.
• March 19 – In Los Angeles, Lyle and Erik Menendez are found guilty of first-degree murder for the shotgun killing of their parents.
• May 8 – The Keck II telescope is dedicated in Hawaii.
• June 12 – In Philadelphia, a panel of federal judges blocks a law against indecency on the internet.
• July 19 – The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta begin.
• August 16 – Binti Jua, a gorilla, saves a 3-year-old boy who fell into the 20 foot deep gorilla enclosure at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago.
• September 5 – Hurricane Fran makes landfall near Cape Fear, North Carolina as a Category 3 storm.
• October 1 – Animal Planet and Discovery Civilization are launched.
• November 25 - An ice storm strikes the U.S., killing 26 directly and hundreds more from accidents.
Worldwide
• January 9–20 – Serious fighting breaks out between Russian soldiers and rebel fighters in Chechnya.
• February 15 - The American Embassy in Athens, Greece, comes under mortar fire.
• March 3–4 – Two suicide bombs explode in Israel, killing 32 people.
• May 13 – Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kill 600 people.
• June 29 - The Prince's Trust concert is held in Hyde Park, London, and is attended by 150,000 people.
• July 1 - The Northern Territory in Australia legalises voluntary euthanasia.
• August 9 – Boris Yeltsin is sworn in at the Kremlin for a second term as President of Russia.
• October 22 – A fire at La Planta prison in southwest Caracas, Venezuela, kills thirty prisoners.
• November 7 - A category 4 cyclone strikes Andhra Pradesh, India, killing at least 1,000 people.
• December 9 – Jerry Rawlings is re-elected as President of Ghana.