| 6th January 1998 | The ‘Lunar Prospector’ spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon. It later finds evidence for frozen water in the soil of the permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. |
| 28th January 1998 | Ford Motor Company announces the buyout of Volvo Cars for $6.45 billion. |
| 4th February 1998 | An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale kills more than 5,000 people in northeast Afghanistan. |
| 7-22nd February 1998 | The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan. |
| 7th April 1998 | George Michael is arrested in a public toilet at Will Rogers Memorial Park, California, for committing a lewd act in front of a police officer. This incident leads to him coming out as gay following years of speculation. |
| 10th April 1998 | On Good Friday, eighteen hours after the end of the talks deadline, the Belfast Agreement is signed between the Irish and British governments and most Northern Ireland political parties, with the notable exception of the Democratic Unionist Party. |
| 14th May 1998 | Frank Sinatra, American entertainer (b. 1915) dies. |
| 26th May 1998 | Bear Grylls, 23, becomes the youngest British climber to scale the top of Mount Everest. |
| 12th July 1998 | France defeats Brazil 3-0 to win the 1998 FIFA World Cup. |
| 15th August 1998 | The Real IRA detonates a car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killing twenty-nine people and injuring over two hundred. |
| 7th September 1998 | Google Inc. is founded by Stanford University Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin. |
| 1st October 1998 | Sky Digital launches in the United Kingdom. |
| 1st November 1998 | The European Court of Human Rights is instituted. |
| 9th November 1998 | The death penalty is formally abolished in the United Kingdom. |
| 26th November 1998 | Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Dáil Éireann, the Republic of Ireland's parliament. |
| 1st December 1998 | Exxon announces a $73.7 billion deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon-Mobil; the second-largest company in the world on revenue. |
| 29th December 1998 | Khmer Rouge leaders apologize for the genocide in Cambodia that claimed over one million lives in the 1970s. |