January 23 - Mir Aimal Kasi receives the death sentence for a 1993 assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters that killed two and wounded three others.
March 18 - The tail of a RussianAn-24 charter plane breaks off while en-route to Turkey causing the plane to crash killing all 50 on board and later the grounding of all An-24s.
March 21 - In Zaire, Etienne Tshiksekedi is appointed new prime minister - he ejects supporters of [[Mobutu Sese Seko] from his cabinet
April 22 - A 126-day hostage crisis at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru ends after government commandos storm and capture the building rescuing 71 hostages. One hostage dies of a heart attack, two soldiers are killed from rebel fire and all 14 Tupac Amaru rebels are slain
April 22 - In Lima, Peru, after four-month standoff, government troops storm the JapaneseAmbassador's residence - they release 71 hostages and kill one hostage and 14 captors
May 16 - US President Bill Clinton issues a formal apology to the surviving victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families, 25 years after the 40 year "study" was exposed by reporter Jean Heller.
June - Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi military escorts on board an UNSCOM helicopter try to physically prevent the UNSCOM pilot from flying the helicopter in the direction of its planned destination, threatening the safety of the aircraft and their crews.
June 7 - A computer user known as "_eci" published his Microsoft C source code on a Windows 95 and Windows NT exploit, which would later become WinNuke. The source code gets wide distribution across the Internet, and Microsoft is forced to release a security patch.
June 10 - Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members before Pol Pot flees his northern stronghold (the news did not reach outside Cambodia for three days)
June 19 - Fast food chain McDonald's won a partial victory in its libel trial, known as the McLibel case, against two environmental campaigners. The judge decided it was true that McDonald's targeted its advertising at children, who pestered their parents into visiting company's restaurants.
August 29 - Christopher Maier of Lexington, Kentucky is bludgeoned to death by serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz. Angel also rapes and beats Christopher's girlfriend, who survives. This is the first of a string of murders that Angel commits.
August 31 - Diana, Princess of Wales is taken to a hospital after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris. She is pronounced dead at 4:00 the next morning.
September 13 - Iraq disarmament crisis: An Iraqi military officer attacks an UNSCOM weapons inspector on board an UNSCOM helicopter while the inspector was attempting to take photographs of unauthorized movement of Iraqi vehicles inside a site designated for inspection
September 17 - Iraq disarmament crisis: While waiting for access to a site, UNSCOM inspectors witness and videotape Iraqi guards moving files, burning documents, and dumping waste cans into a nearby river
September 25 - Iraq disarmament crisis: UNSCOM inspector Dr. Diane Seaman catches several Iraqi men sneaking out the back door of an inspection site with log books for the creation of prohibited bacteria and chemicals.
September 26 - 234 die in air crash in Indonesia. Probable cause is the smoke rising from numerous forest fires in the area
October
October 1 - The main office of Kansai TV moves from Nishi-Temma, Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan to Ogimachi, Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan. Luke Woodham walked into Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi and opened fire killing two girls, after earlier in the morning killing his mother.
October 17 - The remains of Che Guevara were laid to rest with full military honours in a specially built mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, where he had won the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution thirty-nine years before
October 27 - Stock markets around the world crash because of a global economic crisis scare. The Dow Jones Industrial Average follows suit and plummets 554.26, or 7.18%, to 7,161.15. The points loss exceeds the loss from Black Monday. Officials at the New York Stock Exchange for the first time invoke the "circuit breaker" rule to stop trading (this was a very controversial move and prompted a quick change in the rule; trading stops will only occur when the DJIA drops at least 10 or 20 percent) (see October 27, 1997 mini-crash).
December 29 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the chickens within its territory (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly Influenza strain.
December 30 - In the worst incident in Algeria's insurgency, the Wilaya of Relizane massacres of December 30, 1997, 400 people are killed from four villages in the wilaya of Relizane: Khrouba (176 deaths), Sahnoun (113 deaths), El-Abadel (73 deaths), and Ouled-Tayeb (50 deaths). Six days later they would be followed by another set of local massacres.
The Toyota Prius comes to showrooms, only in Japan. The Prius was the first hybrid vehicle to go into full production. The Prius would come to US showrooms in 2000.
