What Happened in 1998?

As you will come to see, 1998 was a pretty pivotal year for major societal changes – from search engines that would become part of our daily lives to agreements that brought about peace.

This was the year in which French soccer went stratospheric, more and more of us went online, and men took advantage of a certain blue pill for the first time!

Here are some of the biggest events from 1998 worth remembering.

In this year

1January

As of January 7th, 1998, NASA’s Lunar Prospector spacecraft was launched to explore the Moon. The spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral with a Lockheed Martin LMLV2 rocket.

2February

Tara Lipinski became the youngest Olympic figure skating gold medalist at the age of 15, at the Nagano Winter Games in Japan. In doing so, she beat Sonja Henie’s record by just two months. The previous record was held for 70 years. Lipinski would actually retire from her sport later in the year, virtually undefeated professionally.

3March

As of March 27th, 1998, the FDA approved the use of Viagra, the first oral treatment for erectile dysfunction, in the United States. In that same month, they also approved the use of rBGH, a synthetic growth hormone, in dairy cows.

4April

The Belfast Agreement, which is also known to many as the Good Friday Agreement, was signed in Northern Ireland on April 10th, 1998. The agreement is actually split into two: the Multi-Party Agreement between Northern Ireland’s political parties and the British-Irish Agreement between the Irish and British governments. The overall agreements are said to have ended most of the violence in the nation, which had been ongoing since the late 60s.

5May

The United States Department of Justice and 20 different US states officially filed an antitrust case against Microsoft. The US government accused the company of having illegally upheld its consumer monopoly in the PC market by forcing technical restrictions on manufacturers and users, notably to uninstall some of their programs (such as Internet Explorer, Java, and Netscape). The technological landscape has changed massively since that time, as Apple, most notably, took a bite out of Microsoft’s monopoly in the decades since!

6June

The FIFA World Cup 1998 took place in France. Eventually, the host nation won the tournament against Brazil. This was the first time France won the World Cup, and would be the only time they did so until 2018, when they finally won again.

7July

Japan finally established itself as a space exploration nation as of July 5th, 1998, when they deployed a probe to explore Mars – (NOZOMI) putting them firmly in the space race with Russia and the US.

8August

Despite the prior signing of the Good Friday Agreement, one of the most devastating terrorist attacks of the Irish Troubles occurred on August 15th, 1998, as the Real IRA bombed the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland. The event led to a firm ceasefire, with some historians claiming it closed off the decades of Troubles.

9September

Google was officially incorporated as a privately held company by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. To this day, the platform remains the top search engine in the world, with around 8.5 billion searches performed every single day!

10October

Hurricane Mitch, known as one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes, struck Central America, causing widespread devastation and thousands of deaths. The hurricane lasted from October 22nd to November 5th of the same year.

11November

Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist Without Beard” was sold at auction for $71.5 million. At the time, this made the painting the third most expensive painting ever sold.

12December

The US and UK jointly launched air strikes against Iraq in Operation Desert Fox. The bombings took place over four days and were announced by President Bill Clinton on December 16th, 1998.

1998 was the year of the…tiger!

Like 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 2010, and 2022, 1998 was a year in which followers of the Chinese Zodiac gave thanks to people born as “tigers.” People born in Tiger years are usually warm, brave, mysterious, and confident – people you’ll likely want to keep around in your life! The next Tiger year won’t be until 2034, so you have plenty of time to make a stripy friend or two in the years to come!

Celebrity Births in 1998

• Ariel Winter, American actor, born January 28th, 1998
• Elle Fanning, American actor, born April 9th, 1998
• Daisy Edgar-Jones, British actor, born May 24th, 1998
• Maya Hawke, American actor and singer, born July 8th, 1998
• Hunter Schafer, American actor, born December 31st, 1998

Famous People We Lost in 1998

• Frank Sinatra, American singer, died aged 82
• Alan Shepard, American astronaut, died aged 74
• Lloyd Bridges, American actor, died aged 85
• Enoch Powell, British politician, died aged 85
• Carl Wilson, American musician, died aged 51