1998 was designated as the International Year of the Ocean.
January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.
January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria.
January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.
January 17 – The Drudge Report breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him.
February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car.
February 4 – The 5.9 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong). With up to 4,000 killed, and 818 injured, damage is considered extreme.
February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
February 20 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein negotiates a deal with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, allowing weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad, preventing military action by the United States and Britain.
February 28
A massacre in Likoshane, FR Yugoslavia starts the Kosovo War.
A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement. Although subsequent large epidemiological research found no link between vaccines and autism, the study contributed – in the following years and decades – to a sharp drop in vaccination rates and the resurgence of measles in several countries. The study, fully retracted in 2010, was later characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the 20th Century".
March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
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January 1967 January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. January 5 Spain and Romania sign an agreement in Paris, establishing full consular and commercial relations (not diplomatic ones). Charlie Chaplin launches his last film, A Countess from Hong Kong, in the UK. January 6 – Vietnam War: USMC and ARVN troops launch Operation Deckhouse Five in the Mekong Delta. January 8 – Vietnam War: Operation Cedar Falls starts.
January 1973 January 1 – The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union. January 15 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, U.S. President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam. January 17 – Ferdinand Marcos becomes President for Life of the Philippines. January 20 – Richard Nixon is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States.
1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin Wall in November, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the overthrow of the communist dictatorship in Romania in December; the movement ended in December 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.