01|Eleven of the 15 member nations of the European Union (EU) launch the euro, Western Europe's first single currency in more than 1,500 years. While euro notes and coins will not go into general circulation until 2002, trading in the new currency begins in European banks and stock exchanges when markets open on Monday, January 4, 1999. Three EU members--Sweden, Denmark, and Great Britain--chose not to participate. Greece was disqualified from participation for economic reasons.|
02|A storm over the United States drops massive amounts of rain and snow over much of the South and Midwest. Detroit, Michigan, receives 11 inches (28 centimeters) of snow; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gets 12 inches (30 centimeters); and Chicago is hit by more than 22 inches (56 centimeters)--the second heaviest snowfall in the city's history. Wind gusts of up to 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour drive snow into drifts 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.4 meters) deep, closing highways and airports throughout the northern Midwest on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Along the storm's southern edge, freezing rain downs power lines, cutting off electricity for 58,000 people in Arkansas and more than 36,000 people in North and South Carolina. Tornadoes in northern Florida flatten houses and mobile homes and overturn cars and trucks. In Palm Beach County, Florida, torrential rains--more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) in less than 20 hours--trigger widespread flooding, wrecking at least 100 houses.|
03|Police in Israel arrest eight U.S. citizens believed to be involved in a mass suicide pact. Israeli authorities claim that the Americans, members of a Denver-based cult, planned to provoke their own deaths--and the second coming of Christ--by stirring up violence on the streets of Jerusalem in conjunction with the millennium.|
04|Japan's justice minister, Shozaburo Nakamura, accuses the United States of using military threats to protect its markets. In a New Year's greeting to ministry officials and prosecutors, Nakamura describes America's market economy as "not free" but dependent upon "atomic bombs and missiles when another country looks to be winning." U.S. Department of Commerce officials have long accused Japan of protecting its markets with restrictive rules and procedures that foreign companies are unable to satisfy.|
05|The Missionary Service, a Roman Catholic news agency, reports that rebel soldiers in and around Makobola in the Kivu region of eastern Congo have massacred at least 500 civilians in the last three days. The rebels, led by Tutsi officers and supported by the Tutsi-led governments of Uganda and Rwanda, launched the insurrection against President Laurent Kabila's government in August 1998. Kabila took control of the Congo in May 1997, after leading his own rebellion, aided by Uganda and Rwanda, against long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila's allies severed all ties with him when he failed to control Hutu rebels who used Congo as a base from which to launch attacks into the two countries.|
06|National Basketball Association (NBA) officials settle a 191-day lock-out of players by team owners just one day before owners were to vote on whether to cancel the rest of the season. While both sides made concessions, the players failed to stop the NBA from capping player salaries increase and the players' share of annual league revenues, which currently top $2 billion. An abbreviated 50-game season is scheduled to begin in February.|
07|William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, opens the first presidential impeachment trial in more than 130 years by swearing in as jurors the 100 members of United States Senate. The senators are to decide if President Bill Clinton should be removed from office for his alleged perjury and obstruction of justice in a civil suit that centered around Clinton's extramarital relationships.|
08|The U.S. Labor Department reports that the unemployment rate in the United States dropped in November 1998 to 4.3 percent, matching the April 1998 rate despite the current economic crisis in Asia and Russia. The last extended period in which the United States experienced such low unemployment occurred in 1969, when the economy was partially on a war footing because of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.|
09|Members of Colombia's United Self-Defense Forces, an alliance of outlaw, right-wing paramilitary gangs, murder 14 people in San Pablo, a village in the northern province of Bolivar. Police and military officials claim gang members have shot at least 60 people, many of them women, during a three-day killing spree. Victims, usually sympathizers with Colombia's Marxist-led Revolutionary Armed Forces, are typically dragged from their houses and gunned down in the street.|
10|Chinese officials inform representatives of 150 international banks, many representing Hong Kong institutions, that the government-owned Guangdong International Trust Investment Corporation (GITIC) is unable to pay its debts and would be liquidated. GITIC, a conglomerate that owns 240 domestic and foreign companies, has assets of $260.9 million and debts amounting to $4.07 billion. It is the first financial institution in modern Chinese history to fail. The Chinese economy has remained largely untouched by the current economic crisis that began in Thailand in 1997 and spread through Asia into Russia and South America.|
11|Prosecutors drawn from the U.S. House of Representatives submit a memorandum to the U.S. Senate outlining their impeachment case against President Bill Clinton. The House accuses Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice by participating in a massive, illegal cover-up of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. President Clinton submits to the Senate a document delineating his defense. The president argues that the charges made by the House in articles of impeachment are vague, insubstantial, and fail to qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors"--the only grounds for presidential impeachment specified by the U.S. Constitution.|
12|An anonymous bidder pays more than $3 million for the baseball that Mark McGwire swatted on September 27, 1998, to finish his 1998 season with a record 70 home runs. The ball was sold by the baseball fan who had retrieved it after McGwire had knocked the ball into the stands of Busch Stadium in St. Louis.|
13|The government of Brazil devalues the country's currency, the real, by 8 percent. The move triggers sell-offs of stocks on European and U.S. markets. In November 1998, Brazil received $41.5 billion in loans arranged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a United Nations-affiliated organization that provides short-term credit to member nations. The IMF rescue plan, which required Brazil to carry out a variety of economic reforms, was designed to help Brazil avoid the possibility of a currency devaluation.|
13|Officers with Guangdong Enterprises Ltd. of China announce that the government-owned company is mired in debt, totaling nearly $3 billion, and is unable to make principal payments to creditors. The news, combined with the January 10 announcement that another government-owned conglomerate--Guangdong International Trust Investment Corporation--sends stocks of major Chinese-controlled companies plunging. Economists fear that China's failure to guarantee foreign investments in its companies will result in the same flight of foreign capital experienced by Russia in 1998.|
14|Arguments begin in the U.S. Senate in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. Prosecutors from the House of Representatives characterize the president's conduct in trying to conceal his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, as "egregious and criminal" and demand that the 100 members of the Senate remove the president from office on grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice.|
14|The Canadian government sends more than 400 soldiers into Toronto to help the city cope with the latest storm, which is expected to add 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow to the 30 inches (75 centimeters) that has fallen since January 3.|
15|The government of Brazil removes all controls on the real, the Brazilian currency, allowing it to trade at market value. The policy shift, which was made to check the flow of U.S. dollars from Brazil's foreign currency reserves, sends markets soaring in Brazil and the rest of Latin America.|
15|A British monitor and his translator, stationed in Yugoslavia to supervise the three-month-old cease-fire in Kosovo, are shot during a Serbian attack on rebels. In a separate attack in southern Kosovo, Serb forces kill at least 15 separatists with the Kosovo Liberation Army. The cease-fire, brokered in October 1998 by U.S. Special Envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, was designed to allow tens of thousands of ethnic-Albanian refugees to return home before the onset of winter. More than 2,000 people have been killed since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic began the crackdown in February 1998 on the 2.2-million ethnic-Albanians living in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia.|
16|Members of the Kosovo Verification Mission, an international group of diplomats in Yugoslavia monitoring the cease fire in Kosovo, accuse Serbian security forces of massacring at least 45 ethnic-Albanians. According to Western observers, many of the victim's bodies, dumped in a ravine near the town of Racak, had been mutilated. While Serbian police characterize the victims as "uniformed terrorists," U.S. Ambassador William Walker insists all victims--which included three women, a 12-year-old boy, and an elderly man--were civilians. Observers in Belgrade, the capital, claim the massacre dashes all hope of preserving the cease-fire, which went into effect in October 1998. More than 2,000 people have died since February 1998 in Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on the separatist movement in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia. Ninety percent of the province's 2.2-million population is ethnic Albanian.|
16|Henry Hyde (R., Illinois), representing the U.S. House of Representatives before the Senate, sums up the prosecution's case against President Bill Clinton by characterizing him as an "unfit leader," whose continued tenure in office threatens the institution of the presidency. Impeached by the House in December 1998, the president is currently on trial before the Senate, whose members will decide if he should be removed from office. He is being tried on the grounds that he committed perjury and obstructed justice while attempting to hide his relationship with a former White House intern.|
17|Tornadoes, a highly unusual occurrence in winter, touch down in 12 eastern Tennessee counties, destroying more than 60 building and killing 9 people. Damage from winds as high as 100 miles (161 kilometers) per hour is reported in 16 additional Tennessee counties.|
18|Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president of Yugoslavia, orders William Walker, a U.S. diplomat who heads a truce-monitoring team in Kosovo, out of Yugoslavia within 48 hours. Walker had accused Milosevic's troops of "crimes against humanity" for massacring at least 45 ethnic-Albanian civilians on January 15. Milosevic launched his initial crackdown on the province in February 1998 with attacks on the Kosovo Liberation Army, which demanded independence for the area's 2.2 million ethnic Albanians. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, which dominates Yugoslavia.|
19|President Bill Clinton delivers his sixth State-of-the-Union address to the U.S. Congress just hours after his lawyers launch his defense in the Senate, where the impeached president is currently being tried on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Declaring the state of the union sound, Clinton outlines his plan to shore up the Social Security system. He urges Congress to contribute $33 billion annually to a new system of retirement accounts for U.S. workers and to allow a percentage of social security funds to be invested in the stock market.|
19|Hundreds of thousands of Jordanians line the route between a military airport and Amman, the capital, to welcome home King Hussein, who returns to Jordan after undergoing six months of treatment for cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.|
20|Germany's finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, admits that there is little chance that the unemployment rate in Germany, which is currently 10.9 percent of the work force, can be reduced in 1999. Lafontaine estimates that an average of 4.1 million Germans will be without jobs through the rest of 1999. There were 4.197 million people out of work in Germany in December 1998.|
21|Striking Romanian coal miners, marching on Bucharest, break through a roadblock 110 miles (177 kilometers) west of the capital and attack some 3,400 riot police. The police use tear gas and smoke bombs in an attempt to defend their position but are pushed back by the miners. More than 130 people are wounded, and 50 officers and a local politician are taken hostage. The miners went on strike 17 days ago, demanding that the government increase wages by 35 percent and halt plans to shut down as many as 140 mines in 1999. A similar march on Bucharest by miners in 1991 sparked riots that brought down the government. Romanian economists estimate that the government-owned mines lost $4 billion over the past nine years.|
21|As many of 36 tornadoes cut through Arkansas, touching down in the capital, Little Rock, before moving into western Tennessee. In Clarksville, Tennessee, much of the historic downtown is destroyed, including the 121-year-old court house. Eight people die in the storms. Tornadoes left nine people dead in Tennessee on January 17.|
22|Pope John Paul II addresses tens of thousands of Roman Catholics upon his arrival in Mexico City with a call for a "just society" built on goals higher than consumerism and profiteering.|
23|A federal judge orders former White House intern Monica Lewinsky to submit to questioning by the members of the U.S. House of Representatives currently prosecuting President Bill Clinton in a trial in the Senate. The prosecutors claim that the president's reluctance to reveal his relationship with Lewinsky during testimony in a civil law suite constituted perjury and obstruction of justice. The House impeached the president on those grounds in December 1998. The judge's ruling came in response to a petition made by Kenneth Starr, the special counsel who led a four-year, $40-million investigation into the professional and private lives of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Starr acted on behalf of the head of the House prosecution team, Henry Hyde (R., Illinois), who could not legally compel Ms. Lewinsky to meet with House prosecutors.|
24|Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, leader of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announces that the IOC executive board, meeting in Lusanne, Switzerland, has asked six IOC members to resign. Observers describe the call for resignations as an attempt to control a widening scandal involving allegations that cities hoping to host Olympic Games in 2000 and 2002 bought the support of IOC board members with various valuable gifts. Two additional board members who were linked to the scandal resigned before the latest call for resignations.|
25|An earthquake measuring 6.0 kills at least 830 people and injures 3,000 in western Colombia, a mountainous region that is the center of coffee cultivation in Colombia. Two-thirds of the buildings in the city of Armenia are rendered uninhabitable, leaving at least 180,000 of the population of 300,000 homeless. Officials describe the quake as the country's worst since 1875, when more than 1,000 people died in Cucuta, a town along the Venezuelan border.|
25|The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the 2000 census must be conducted by head count, rather than through a combination of actual count and statistical sampling. The Census Bureau had proposed using statistical sampling to count residents in urban neighborhoods largely populated by ethnic minorities and the poor. According to Bureau estimates, as many as 4 million people from this segment of the population was missed in the 1990 count. The use of statistical sampling was endorsed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. Seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are apportioned according to census figures.|
26|King Hussein of Jordan returns to the United States for medical treatment only hours after naming his eldest son, Prince Abdullah, heir to the throne. Abdullah replaces the king's brother, Hassan, as crown prince. He will act in his father's stead during the king's absence. In a letter, which the king released to the public, Hussein accused his younger brother of acting as if the king were already dead. Hassan ruled as regent in Jordan for six months in 1998 while Hussein was undergoing an earlier round of cancer treatments at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.|
26|President Bill Clinton welcomes Pope John Paul II to St. Louis, Missouri, where the pope questions the foundations of a culture that "affirms, cherishes, and celebrates" life, but excludes "the unborn, the terminally ill, and the handicapped from legal protection."|
27|The U.S. Senate, by 56 to 44, votes down Senator Robert Byrd's (D., West Virginia) motion to dismiss impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton. Political experts note that the votes to dismiss were all cast by Democrats, which suggests that the Senate's 55 Republicans are unlikely to ever muster the 67 votes, or two-thirds majority, required to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency. Senate Republicans nevertheless vote in a block to continue the trial by calling witnesses.|
27|The government in Sierra Leone reports that hospital officials in Freetown, the capital, estimate that at least 3,000 people have died in the latest outbreak of fighting, which began in early January. The restoration of the democratically elected government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in 1998 failed to end fierce resistance from rebels allied with the remnants of the military regime that held power from May 1997 until March 1998.|
28|Temperatures in Finland, Norway, and Sweden dip to -60 degrees F (-51 degrees C), the coldest weather in more than 100 years. The cold causes power lines to snap, leaving many towns in Arctic provinces without electricity. In parts of the Norway's Kola Peninsula, temperatures fall to -69 degrees F (-56 degrees C).|
29|The United States and its European allies warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to negotiate a peace settlement for Kosovo or face a series of air attacks. Meeting in London, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy issue an ultimatum summoning representatives from the governments of Yugoslavia and Serbia and representatives of the Kosovar Albanians to a summit in Rambouillet, France, no later than February 6.|
30|Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India makes his strongest condemnation yet of the recent attacks on Christian places of worship in India and the murders of an Australian missionary and his two young sons. In a somber address to the nation, Vajpayee calls the incidents "a blot on our collective consciousness." Critics of the government has moved too slowly to stop the sectarian violence and acted too quickly to exculpate Hindu militants who belong to groups associated with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that Vajpayee heads.|
31|The Denver Broncos beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-19 to win football's Super Bowl.|
31|Researchers report that the AIDS virus probably originated in chimpanzees and was transmitted to humans during hunting in Africa sometime in the past 50 years. Since the virus does not appear to cause disease in chimpanzees, the finding may open an avenue toward treatment.|
