This day in history. Read about what happened today. A short and interesting account of historical events and facts about this day as well as any other day of the year. Find historical birthdays, deaths, tragedies, war events, disasters and sports events.

This year in history
In the year 1998

	January 4th	Islamic guerrillas massacred 170 civilians in three remote villages of Algeria.
	January 16th	Greek actor and producer, Dimitris Horn, died at the age of 77. He is widely considered as the greatest Greek actor of modern times.
	February 2nd	A Cebu Pacific Air passenger plane went down in the Philippines. 104 people died in the crash.
	February 4th	An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale struck Afghanistan killing more than 5,000 people.
	February 16th	A China Airlines passenger flight crashed in a residential area near Taiwan's, Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, resulting in the death of 202 people, including 6 people on the ground.
	February 23th	A series of tornadoes hit the US state of Florida causing damage to more than 2,500 buildings and killing more than 40 people.
	March 15th	The blockbuster film, Titanic, was declared the highest money making movie of all time, ascending to the top position that had been previously held by the film Star Wars.
	March 15th	American paediatrician and writer, Benjamin Spock, died at the age of 94. He was a very influential person in America, who helped shape the parenting philosophies of the 50's and 60's. His ideas created a lot of controversy and a lot of people became enemies of his ideas of permissiveness.
	March 24th	In Jonesboro, Arkansas, two teenage boys opened fire upon students at the Westside Middle School, killing 5 people and injuring another 10.
	March 27th	Austrian automobile manufacturer, Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche, died at the age if 89. He was the founder of the Porsche AG sports cars manufacturing company.
	March 31st	Netscape handed over the code for its browser to the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops the Mozilla internet browser.
	April 15th	Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot, died at the age of 73. His regime was considered as one of he most repressive communist regimes of the 20th century and over two million people are rumoured to have died over the course of his 3 year leadership (1976 - 1979).
	April 20th	An Air France passenger jet crashed into a mountain after taking off from Bogota, Colombia. 53 people died in the crash.
	April 20th	The German terrorist group calling themselves the "Red Army Faction" (Baader-Meinhof) announced its dissolution. The group was Germany's most active terrorist organization and it operated from 1970 to 1998.
	April 23th	James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, died in prison.
	April 23th	Greek politician, Konstantine Karamanlis, died at the age of 91. He was one of the most prominent figures of Greek 20th century politics, having served twice as prime minister and twice as president of Greece.
	May 2nd	The European Central Bank was founded in Brussels with the purpose of defining and executing the monetary policy of the European Community.
	May 7th	The Mercedes-Benz company buys out the Chrysler company for a record US$40 billion, resulting in the DaimlerChrysler company. This was the largest industrial merger in history.
	May 10th	Vladimir Arutinian attempted to assassinate United States President George W. Bush, using a hand grenade, while he was giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia. The grenade malfunctioned and did not detonate. He was arrested 2 months later, tried and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
	May 14th	The last episode of the television series 'Seinfeld' aired on the NBC channel. It aired for nine straight seasons and was considered as one of the most successful and influential television shows of the 90's.
	May 14th	American singer and actor, Frank Sinatra, died at the age 83. By the time of his death he had achieved the status of a living legend in the entertainment industry. Throughout his life Sinatra had been linked to members of the Mafia and the FBI kept a file on him that exceeded 2000 pages.
	May 18th	The United States Department of Justice and 20 US states filed an antitrust case against Microsoft for abusing monopoly power.
	May 21st	Kipland Kinkel, a student at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon USA, fired a semiautomatic rifle into a classroom, killing 2 students and wounding 25 others. Earlier in the day he had murdered his parents at home.
	May 30th	An earthquake measuring at a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale hit northern Afghanistan, killing approximately 5,000 people.
	June 3rd	A high speed train derailed in Lower Saxony, Germany, resulting in 101 fatalities.
	June 4th	Terry Nichols was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 169 people died in the bombing and over 800 were wounded.
	July 6th	American actor, Roy Rogers, died at the age if 87. He was nicknamed, King of the Cowboys, and was one of the most famous western movie actors of all time.
	July 17th	A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed several villages and killed more than 3000 people in Papua New, Guinea.
	August 7th	Two simultaneous bombings took place in the African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Both were directed at the US embassies in those cities. 227 people died in the explosions and more than 4000 were injured in the attacks which were the first major terrorist acts to be associated with the then newly formed al-Qaeda network.
	August 17th	US President Bill Clinton admitted that he had an 'improper physical relationship' with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
	September 2nd	A Swissair passenger jet crashed in Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board were killed.
	September 6th	Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa, died at the age of 88. He was Japan's best known filmmaker and universally accepted as one of the great directors of the 20th century.
	September 7th	Google was founded. It is estimated that as of 2006, Google runs utilizing over 450,000 servers.
	September 15th	The merger of telecommunications companies, WorldCom and MCI Communications, was completed. The resulting company was MCI WorldCom, later be renamed to WorldCom. It would later become the largest bankruptcy United States history.
	September 18th	ICANN was formed. It stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is the organization responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.
	October 3rd	English actor, Roddy McDowall, died at the age of 70. He made his first appearance in film at the age of 10 and continued to be a respected and well known actor throughout the rest of his life.
	October 12th	The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in the United States. In essence it criminalized production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright. The European Union passed a similar directive, the EU Copyright Directive, in May 22 2001.
	October 23th	The Swatch Internet Time was first introduced. Instead of hours and minutes, the day is divided into 1000 ".beats", each ".beat" equals 1 minute and 26.4 seconds.
	October 29th	77-year old John Glenn becomes the oldest person to go into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. He was also the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
	November 6th	Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.
	November 12th	The Daimler-Benz automobile corporation completed its merger with Chrysler to form the Daimler-Chrysler company.
	November 19th	American film director, Alan J. Pakula, died at the age of 70. He was a celebrated director who directed such hit movies as To Kill A Mockingbird, All the President's Men and Presumed Innocent.
	November 26th	Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the parliament of the Republic of Ireland.
	November 30th	Derman, Deutsche Bank, bought American, Bankers Trust, for 10 billion USD forming the largest financial institution in the world.
	December 1st	Exxon bought Mobil for a staggering 73.7 billion USD, creating Exxon-Mobil one of the largest companies on the planet.
	December 11th	A Thai Airways passenger jet crashed in Thailand, resulting in the death of 101 people.
	December 29th	Six people died in Sidney, Australia, when huge waves struck the sail boats they were sailing in the famous d Sydney to Hobart race.

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