January 27 - American First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on the Today show calling the attacks against her husband part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
January 28 - Gunmen hold at least 400 children and teachers hostage for several hours at an elementary school in Manila, Philippines.
January 29 - In Birmingham, Alabama a bomb explodes at an abortion clinic killing one and severely wounding another. Serial bomber Eric Rudolph is suspected as the culprit.
February 6 - The french prefet Claude Erignac is assassinated in the streets of Ajaccio (Corse) by a commando of corsican insurgents, among them Yvan Colonna (trial june 2).
March 5 - NASA announced that that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon had found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station
March 24 - In Jonesboro, Arkansas, two young boys (aged 11 and 13 years) fire upon students at Westside Middle School while hidden in woodlands near the school. Four students and one teacher are killed and 10 injured
April 8 - Iraq disarmament crisis: UNSCOM reports to the UN Security Council that Iraq's declaration on its biological weapons program is incomplete and inadequate.
April 25 - A waste reservoir at Los Frailes mine in Andalusia, Spain, ruptures, discharging heavy metal waste into the Guadiamar River. The pollution threatens the sensitive ecosystem and endangered species of Spain's largest nature reserve, but is diverted into the Guadalquivir River. Up to 100 km² of farmland are ruined by the spill. [1] (http://edition.cnn.com/EARTH/9804/25/spain.disaster.reut/)
May
May 2 - hide (Hideto Matsumoto) is dead from asphyxiation
May 11 - Nuclear testing: In the Rajasthan Desert, India conducts its second series of underground nuclear tests (the first were in 1974) and inflaming its rival neighbor Pakistan (who already has nuclear weapons).
May 21 - School shooting: At Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, Kipland Kinkel (who was suspended for bringing a gun to school) shoots a semi_automatic rifle into a room filled with students killing 2 wounding 25 others after killing his parents at home
May 21 - Suharto resigns, after 32 years as Indonesian President and 7th consecutive re_election by the Indonesian Parliament (MPR). Suharto's hand_picked Vice President, B. J. Habibie, became Indonesia's third president.
May 21 to September 30 - Expo '98 is held in Lisbon, Portugal, with the title "Oceans, an Heritage for the Future". UNESCO had previously declared 1998 to be the International Year of the Oceans due to the Expo. 12 million people attend the world fair
June 12 - A jury in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, convicts 17_year_old Luke Woodham of killing two students and wounding seven others at Pearl High School [2] (http://www.cnn.com/US/9806/12/school.shooting.verdict/)
July 17 - A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless
August 26 - Iraq disarmament crisis: Scott Ritter resigns from UNSCOM, sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter told reporters that "Iraq is not disarming," "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike."
August 31 - North Korea reportedly launches Kwangmyongsong, their first satellite. Although North Korea reports that it reached stable orbit, NORAD was never able to confirm this assertion
September 2 - 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 29 - Iraq Liberation Act", which states that the United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power and replace the government with a democratic institution.
October 7 - United States Congress passes, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which gives copyright holders 20 more years of copyright privilege on work which they control the copyright. This effectively freezes the public domain to works created before 1923 in the United States.
October 28 - An Air China jetliner is hijacked by disgruntled pilot Yuan Bin and flown to Taiwan. After landing the plane safely, Yuan Bin was arrested.
October 29 - While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacking into thinking that he was landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel
October 29 - In Göteborg, Sweden two arsonists burn down a disco of a local Macedonian Society - 63 dead, over 200 injured, most of them children of refugees
November 9 - In the largest civil settlement in United States history, a federal judge approves a US$1.03 billion settlement requiring dozens of brokerage houses (including Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Salomon Smith Barney) to pay investors who claim they were cheated in a wide_spread price_fixing scheme on the NASDAQ
December 1 - Exxon announces a US$73.7 billion deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon_Mobil, the largest company on the planet.
December 11 - Iraq announces that U.N. weapons inspections will no longer take place on Friday, the Muslim day of rest. Iraq also refuses to provide test data from the production of missiles and engines
In 1998, the perennial champion New York Yankees set a new standard for excellence in baseball outplaying the 1927 franchise considered by most expert analysts as the greatest team ever to play the game.
With an all-star lineup known as "Murderer's Row", New York outscored its opponents by nearly four-hundred runs and hit.307 as a team in 1927.
If '27 was considered the best, then 1998 certainly was the greatest.
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