What happened in 1998

“The Boy Is Mine”

Brandy & Monica · 13 weeks at #1 in 1998

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1. Jan 3Candle In The Wind 1997/Something About The Way You Look TonightElton John2 wks
2. Jan 17Truly Madly DeeplySavage Garden2 wks
3. Jan 31Together AgainJanet2 wks
4. Feb 14Nice & SlowUsher2 wks
5. Feb 28My Heart Will Go OnCeline Dion2 wks
6. Mar 14Gettin' Jiggy Wit ItWill Smith3 wks
7. Apr 4All My LifeK-Ci & JoJo3 wks
8. Apr 25Too CloseNext5 wks
9. May 23My AllMariah Carey1 wk
10. Jun 6The Boy Is MineBrandy & Monica13 wks
11. Sep 5I Don't Want To Miss A ThingAerosmith4 wks
12. Oct 3The First NightMonica5 wks
13. Oct 17One WeekBarenaked Ladies1 wk
14. Nov 14Doo Wop (That Thing)Lauryn Hill2 wks
15. Nov 28LatelyDivine1 wk
16. Dec 5I'm Your AngelR. Kelly & Celine Dion4 wks

Dates are the first chart week at #1 in 1998; weeks count only those in 1998.Find the #1 song on your birthday →

1. Jan 25During a historic visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II demands political reforms and the release of political prisoners while condemning US attempts to isolate the country.
2. Jan 26In a nationally televised press conference, U.S. president Bill Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with intern Monica Lewinsky.
3. Feb 3Despite a large international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.
4. Mar 1Titanic becomes the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide.
5. Mar 27The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil, better known by the trade name Viagra, as the first treatment approved in the United States for erectile dysfunction.
6. Jun 7White supremacists murdered James Byrd Jr., an African American, by chaining him behind a pickup truck and dragging him along an asphalt road in Jasper, Texas.
7. Aug 7Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,000 others.
8. Aug 17Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; later that same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship.
9. Aug 20The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was destroyed by a missile attack launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 U.S. embassy bombings.
10. Sep 2A fire in the cockpit on Swissair Flight 111, en route from New York City to Geneva, caused the aircraft to crash into the Atlantic Ocean near Canada, killing all 229 people on board.
11. Sep 4Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD students at Stanford University.
12. Sep 27The Google internet search engine retroactively claims this date as its birthday.
13. Nov 20A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
14. Dec 29Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the Cambodian genocide that claimed over one million lives.

Event summaries from Wikipedia’s “On this day”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Each links to its article.

• U.S. President

  Bill Clinton

• UK Prime Minister

  Tony Blair

• Prime Minister of Canada

  Jean Chrétien

• German Chancellor

  Helmut Kohl → Gerhard Schröder

• Prime Minister of Japan

  Ryutaro Hashimoto → Keizō Obuchi

• President of Russia

  Boris Yeltsin

Everyone who held the office at some point in 1998, from Wikidata.

A selection of the best-documented titles on Wikidata, by first release year; not a box-office ranking.

• EmiruAmerican online streamer · Jan 3
• XXXTentacionAmerican rapper (died 2018) · Jan 23
• Ariel WinterAmerican actress · Jan 28
• Chappell RoanAmerican singer and songwriter · Feb 19
• Tua TagovailoaAmerican football player · Mar 2
• Justin HerbertAmerican football player · Mar 10
• Ethel CainAmerican singer-songwriter, record producer, and model · Mar 24
• Paris JacksonAmerican actress, model and singer · Apr 3
• Peyton ListAmerican actress and model · Apr 6
• Elle FanningAmerican actress · Apr 9

From Wikipedia’s “On this day”, CC BY-SA 4.0.