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In the United States, the biggest news item of 1998 was the Presidential impeachment trial of Bill Clinton due to sexual misconduct. He was impeached by the House of Representatives but Senate acquitted the President on all charges.
-On January 8, Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life imprisonment for the
planning o the 1st World Trade Center bombing in 1998.
-On January 22, Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski pleaded guilty for the "Unabomber"
terrorist attacks on many institutions from 1978 - April 24, 1995. He was
sentence to life without parole.
-On February 18, 2 Nevada white separatists are arrested in Nevada for
planning a biological attack on the New York City subways.
-On March 24, 2 young boys, ages 11 and 13, fire on students in a wooded
area outside the Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Arkansas.
-On August 8, there were a succession of terrorist bombings of U.S. Embassies
in East Africa. The cities affected were Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and
Nairobi, Kenya. This was the first time the names of Osama Bin Laden and
Ayman Al-Zawdhir came in the forefront as the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) placed Bin-Laden's name on the top 10 most wanted.
-On October 14, Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with 6 bombings
including the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atalanta, Georgia.
-On October 29, the Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off with 77 year old Senator
John Glenn aboard. He is the second oldest astronaut and he was the first
NASA pilot to circle the Earth in 1962.
-During the entire year of 1998, there was an Iraqi disarmament crisis.
Other International events:
-There were five separate massacres in Algiers in 1998 where the GIA (Armed Islamic Group of Algiers) was responsible:
1. Wilaya of Relizane massacres on January 4;
2. Sidi-Hamed massacre on January 11;
3. Oued Bouaïcha massacre on March 26;
4. Wilaya of Saida massacre on September 2;
5. Tadjena massacre on December 8-9;
-The 1998 Winter Olympics takes place at Nagano, Japan from February 7 - 22.
