December 1998 in History

Events in History

Dec 1 Exxon announces a $73.7 billion USD deal to buy Mobil, creating Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest company.
Dec 4 The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched

Election of Interest

Dec 6 Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela

Dec 8 Tadjena massacre: 81 people are killed by armed groups in Algeria.

Nobel Prize

Dec 10 Indian Professor Amartya Sen is awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics

Nobel Prize

Dec 10 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine presented to Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings and James W. Black for development of new drugs

Dec 11 Thai Airways Airbus A310-200 crashes near Surat Thani Airport, killing 101
Dec 16 Iraq disarmament crisis: Operation Desert Fox - the United States and United Kingdom bomb targets in Iraq

Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton

Dec 19 US House of Representatives votes to impeach President Bill Clinton, forwarding the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial

Tickets issued to former President Gerald Ford and his wife Betty

Dec 26 Iraq announces its intention to fire upon U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones
Dec 26 Severe gales over Ireland, northern England, and southern Scotland cause widespread disruption and widespread power outages in Northern Ireland and southern Scotland
Dec 29 Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over a million people
Dec 31 Exchange rates between the euro and legacy currencies in the Eurozone become fixed.

Weddings in History

Angela Merkel

Dec 30 Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel (44) weds quantum chemist Joachim Sauer (49) in Bonn, Germany

Deaths in History

Dec 5 Al Gore, Sr., American politician (b. 1907)
Dec 6 César Baldaccini, French sculptor, dies at 77
Dec 9 Shaughnessy Cohen, Canadian politician (b. 1948)
Dec 11 André Lichnerowicz, Polish-French physicist (b. 1915)
Dec 12 Lawton Chiles, U.S. Senator from Florida (1971-89) and Governor of Florida (1991-98), dies at 68
Dec 12 Marco Denevi, Argentine writer (b. 1922)
Dec 12 Mo Udall, American politician (Rep-D-AZ, 1961-91), dies at 76
Dec 13 Richard Thomas, British admiral (Royal Navy) and NATO representative, dies at 66
Dec 14 Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham, Jr., American civil rights activist & author, dies at 70
Dec 14 Annette Strauss, American philanthropist, dies at 74
Dec 16 William Gaddis, American writer (b. 1922)

Dec 18 Lev Demin, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1926)
Dec 19 Antonio Ordóñez, Spanish bullfighter (b. 1932)
Dec 19 Mel Fisher, American treasure hunter (b. 1922)
Dec 20 Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, British biophysicist (Nobel 1963), dies at 84
Dec 20 Chester P. Lyons, Canadian naturalist and author (b. 1915)
Dec 21 Ernst Gunther Schenck, German doctor who joined the Sturmabteilung in 1933 {b. 1904)

Dec 24 Raemer Schreiber, American Physicist (Manhattan Project) who helped develop the first atomic bomb during World War II and prepared the Fat Man bomb that was used in the bombing of Nagasaki, dies at 88