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Top Song(s)
• Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On
• Cher - Believe
• Aerosmith - I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
• Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply
• Madonna - Frozen
Top Film(s)
• Saving Private Ryan
• The Big Lebowski
• American History X
• The Truman Show
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Best Selling Book(s)
• A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
• Holes - Louis Sachar
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
• Stardust - Neil Gaiman
• About a Boy - Nick Hornby
Famous Deaths
• January 8 - Walter Diemer, inventor (bubble gum 1928)
• February 6 - Nazim al-Kudsi, Syrian PM (1949, 1950-51)/pres (1961-63)
• March 27 - Ferry Porsche, Austrian automobile pioneer
• April 23 - Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greek politician, President of Greece (1980-85)
• May 28 - Philip L. Carret, American investor and founder of Pioneer Fund
• July 21 - Alan Shepard, American astronaut and 1st American in space
• August 18 - Otto Wichterle, Czech chemist and inventor of the soft contact lens
• August 26 - Frederick Reines, American physicist, 1995 Nobel Prize for Physics
• October 2 - Gene Autry, American cowboy singer, songwriter, actor, musician
• November 19 - Ted Fujita, Japanese-American meteorologist, invented the Fujita scale for rating tornadoes
Medical/Science/Technology
• Data sent from the Galileo space probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean.
• Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
• The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the European Southern Observatory.
• The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group publishes the first version of the APG System of plant classification.
• The hockey stick graph (global temperature) comes to public attention.
• XML is published as a recommendation of the W3C.
• The CIH virus is discovered in Taiwan.
• Tiger Electronics launch the Furby electronic toy, the first domestic robot.
• Researchers in Dallas, Texas, present findings about an enzyme that slows aging and cell death (apoptosis).
• Edinburgh Modular Arm System, the world's first bionic arm, is fitted.
Political
• January 17 – Paula Jones accuses U.S. President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.
• February 10 – Voters in Maine repeal a gay rights law passed in 1997.
• May 18 – The United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states file an antitrust case against Microsoft.
• May 21 – Suharto (elected 1967) resigns after 31 years as President of Indonesia, effectively ending the New Order period.
• June 2 – California voters approve Proposition 227, abolishing the state's bilingual education program.
• June 25 - In Clinton v. City of New York, the US Supreme Court decides that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 is unconstitutional.
• June 30 – Philippine Vice President Joseph Estrada is sworn in as the 13th President of the Philippines.
• August 20 - Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without federal government approval.
• October 8 - US House of Representatives votes to begin impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton.
• December 6 – Hugo Chávez, politician and former officer of the Venezuelan army, is elected President of Venezuela.
National
• January 1 – Smoking is banned in all California bars and restaurants.
• March 29 – A series of three tornadoes in southern Minnesota kill three people.
• April 22 - Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States.
• May 21 - In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.
• June 4 - Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
• July 19 - Goodwill Games IV opens in New York City.
• July 24 - Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers.
• September 18 - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is formed.
• October 29 - Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board.
• December 1 - Exxon announces a $73.7 billion USD deal to buy Mobil.
Worldwide
• January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria.
• February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
• March 11 – 1998 Danish general election: Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is re-elected.
• May 13–14 – Riots directed against Chinese Indonesians break out in Indonesia, killing around 1,000 people.
• May 30 - A 6.5 magnitude earthquake hits northern Afghanistan, killing up to 5,000.
• June 1 – European Central Bank established, replacing the European Monetary Institute.
• July 5 – Japan launches the probe Nozomi to Mars, joining the United States and Russia as an outer space-exploring nation.
• September 5 – The Government of North Korea adopts a military dictatorship on its 50th anniversary.
• October 1 – Europol is established when the Europol Convention signed by all of its member states comes into force.
• December 1 – Ireland formally relinquishes its territorial claim over Northern Ireland and recognizes the United Kingdom's sovereignty there.