On January 5, 1998, Sonny Bono, best known as half of the 1960s singing and acting husband-and-wife duo Sonny & Cher, is killed in a skiing accident while on vacation with his family in South Lake Tahoe, California.

In a Sacramento, California, courtroom on January 22, 1998, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.”

On February 3, 1998, a U.S. Marine jet flying low over the town of Cavalese in the Italian Alps severs a ski-lift cable, sending a tram crashing to the ground and killing 20 people.

A judge reinstates the suspended sentence of schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau and sends her back to prison for seven years after she is caught violating a no-contact order with her former student Vili Fualaau, when she is found in a vehicle with the boy.

On February 6, 1998, Austrian pop star Falco is killed when his rental car is struck by a bus while he was vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

Austrian ski racer Hermann Maier makes one of the most dramatic crashes in skiing history when he catapults 30 feet in the air, lands on his helmet and rams through two safety fences at an estimated 80 miles per hour on February 13, 1998. Amazingly, Maier suffered just minor injuries and walked away from the crash. Several days later, he won gold medals in the giant slalom and super-G events.

On February 15, 1998, after 20 years of trying, racing great Dale Earnhardt Sr. finally wins his first Daytona 500, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) season opener and an event dubbed the “Super Bowl of stock car racing.”

On February 17, 1998, in Nagano, Japan, the United States defeats Canada, 3-1, to win the gold medal in the first women's hockey tournament held at the Winter Olympics. "After these Olympics, I hope the sport grows times a million," American forward Katie King says. "Anyone who watched the (gold medal) game, they're going to want to watch more women's hockey."

On February 20, 1998, 15-year-old Tara Lipinski wins the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, and becomes the youngest gold medalist in her sport.

By the time James Cameron took the stage to accept his Academy Award for Best Director on the night of March 23, 1998, the Oscar dominance of his blockbuster film Titanic was all but assured. Titanic tied the record for most Oscar nominations with 14—joining 1950’s _All About Eve—_and by night’s end would tie with Ben Hur (1959) for most wins by sweeping 11 categories, including the coveted Best Picture.

Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shoot their classmates and teachers in Jonesboro, Arkansas on March 24, 1998. Golden, the younger of the two boys, asked to be excused from his class, pulled a fire alarm and then ran to join Johnson in a wooded area 100 yards away from the school’s gym. As the students streamed out of the building, Johnson and Golden opened fire and killed four students and a teacher. Ten other children were wounded.

On March 27, 1998, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves use of the drug Viagra, an oral medication that treats impotence.

Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia’s killing fields, dies of apparently natural causes while serving a life sentence imposed against him by his own Khmer Rouge.

On May 7, 1998, the German automobile company Daimler-Benz—maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz—announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation.

On May 14, 1998, the legendary singer, actor and show-business icon Frank Sinatra dies of a heart attack in Los Angeles, at the age of 82.

Long before his stature in the world of show business earned him the nickname “Chairman of the Board,” Frank Sinatra was known simply as “The Voice.” During a career that saw him go from skinny teen idol to middle-aged playboy, Sinatra’s personality and looks were certainly major factors in his success, but they could never fully overshadow his voice—an instrument that could convey very deep emotions in a sincere, understated way.

On May 28, 1998, the comedian and actor Phil Hartman, famous for his work on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, is shot to death by his wife, Brynn, in a murder-suicide. He was 49.

On June 6, 1998, the cable network HBO airs the pilot episode of "Sex and the City," a new comedy series chronicling the lives and loves of four women living in New York City.

On July 24, 1998, the director Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic, Saving Private Ryan, is released in theaters across the United States. The film, which starred Tom Hanks and Matt Damon, was praised for its authentic portrayal of war and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. It took home five Oscars, for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Effects Editing.

The U.S. 500, the most prestigious race in the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series, dissolves into tragedy on July 26, 1998, when three fans are killed and six others wounded by flying debris from a car at Michigan Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan.

On August 5, 1998, Marie Noe, age 70, is arrested at her Philadelphia home and charged in the smothering deaths of eight of her children, who died between 1949 and 1968.

At 10:30 a.m. local time, a massive truck bomb explodes outside the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Minutes later, another truck bomb detonated outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital of neighboring Tanzania. The dual terrorist attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded more than 4,500. The United States accused Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, a proponent of international terrorism against America, of masterminding the bombings. On August 20, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles launched against bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, where bin Laden allegedly made or distributed chemical weapons.

On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent Counsel as the subject of a grand-jury investigation.

On September 1, 1998, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 finally goes into effect. The law required that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States have airbags on both sides of the front seat.

University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard dies after a vicious anti-gay attack. After meeting Shepard in a Laramie, Wyoming, gay bar, The Fireside Lounge, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney lured him to the parking lot, where he was beaten and robbed.

Doctor Barnett Slepian is shot to death inside his home in Amherst, New York by an anti-abortion radical. His killing marks the fifth straight year that an abortion-providing doctor in upstate New York and Canada became the victim of a sniper attack.

On October 28, 1998, President Bill Clinton signs into law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The legislation was written in order to strengthen existing federal copyright protections against new threats posed by the Internet and by the democratization of high technology. .

Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Herschel Glenn Jr. is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery on October 29, 1998. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.

On November 3, 1998, former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota with 37 percent of the vote. His opponents, seasoned politicians Hubert Humphrey III (son of Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president and the attorney general of Minnesota) and St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, spent a total of $4.3 million on their campaigns. Ventura, the Reform-Party candidate, spent $250,000—money he raised by selling $22 t-shirts and accepting $50 donations from his supporters. His only political experience had been his years as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, but his laid-back, straight-talking, libertarian approach to politics resonated with many Minnesotans—especially young men who had never voted before. “I voted for Jesse because he was the most honest,” one young constituent told a reporter for Newsweek. “If he doesn’t know something, he says he doesn’t know.”

On December 16, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary releases a 265-page report recommending the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors.

On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announces he has ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors. Clinton’s decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the air strikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him.

After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term.