November 3, 1992 - Bill Clinton was elected 42nd President of the United States; defeated President George Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot.

January 1, 1993 - The Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to control the use of ozone-depleting substances, came into force.

January 20, 1993 - Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States.

January 26, 1993 - Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel was elected president of the new Czech Republic.

February 5, 1993 - President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act into law. Covered employers must grant an eligible employee up to a total of 12 workweeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for one or more of the following reasons: for the birth and care of the newborn child of the employee; for placement with the employee of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care; to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition; or to take medical leave when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.

February 5, 1993 - Federal judge Kimba Wood, President Bill Clinton's expected choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration, said her baby sitter had been an illegal alien for seven years.

February 26, 1993 - An explosion apparently caused by a car bomb in an underground garage shook the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan with the force of a small earthquake shortly after noon yesterday, collapsing walls and floors, igniting fires and plunging the city's largest building complex into a maelstrom of smoke, darkness and fearful chaos, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

March 12, 1993 - Janet Reno is sworn in as the first female attorney general of the United States; presided over a period of falling national crime rates, and her Dade Country programs of judicial reform proved effective on the national level. However, only two months after assuming office, Reno was severely criticized for failing to prevent the disastrous end of the Waco standoff in Texas and in later years was also accused by some of protecting President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore from investigation on various charges of impropriety.

March 20, 1993 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared emergency rule, setting a referendum on whether the people trusted him or the hard-line Congress to govern.

April 13, 1993 - The day before George Bush was scheduled to visit Kuwait and be honored for his victory in the Persian Gulf War, Kuwaiti authorities foiled a car-bomb plot to assassinate him. Fourteen suspects, most of them Iraqi nationals, were arrested, and the next day their massive car bomb was discovered in Kuwait City. June 26 - "compelling evidence" of the direct involvement of Iraqi intelligence in the assassination attempt, President Clinton ordered a retaliatory attack against their alleged headquarters in the Iraqi capital. Twenty-three Tomahawk missiles, each costing more than a million dollars, were fired off the USS Peterson in the Red Sea and the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building and, according to Iraqi accounts, killing several civilians.

April 19, 1993 - A 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended when fire destroyed the structure after federal agents smashed their way in. Dozens of people, including sect leader David Koresh, were killed.

April 22, 1993 - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, DC.

April 25, 1993 - Russia elect Boris Yeltsin leader.

May 19, 1993 - The White House set off a political storm by firing the entire staff of its travel office; five of the seven staffers were later reinstated and assigned to other duties.

June 25, 1993 - In Ottawa, Kim Campbell is sworn in as Canada's 19th prime minister, becoming the first woman to hold the country's highest office. October 25, 1993 - the Conservatives' nine years as Canada's ruling party came to a decisive end. Voters had become disenchanted with the party after enduring higher taxes and constitutional crisis under Mulroney, and the Conservatives were reduced to just two seats in the House of Commons. Campbell herself lost her Vancouver seat and retired from politics. She returned to academic life, accepting a fellowship at Harvard University. Later, she served as Canada's Consul General to Las Vegas. She continues to hold a position as an honorary fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

June 26, 1993 - In retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during his April visit to Kuwait, President Bill Clinton orders U.S. warships to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in downtown Baghdad. Twenty-three Tomahawk missiles, each costing more than a million dollars, were fired off the USS Peterson in the Red Sea and the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building and, according to Iraqi accounts, killing several civilians.

July 9, 1993 - Drs. Peter Gill and Kevin Sullivan of the British Forensic Science Service in Birmingham, England announce that they have positively identified the remains of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Czarina Alexandra; and three of their daughters from bone fragments discovered in Ekaterinburg in 1979. The scientists used mitochondria DNA fingerprinting to identify the bones, which had been excavated from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991. July 17, 1918 - three centuries of the Romanov dynasty came to an end when Bolshevik troops executed Nicholas and his family in the town of Yekaterinburg; details of the execution and the location of their final resting place remained a Soviet secret for more than six decades.

July 19, 1993 - President Bill Clinton announced a compromise allowing homosexuals to serve in the military, but only if they refrained from homosexual activity.

July 20, 1993 - White House deputy counsel Vince Foster was found shot to death in a park near Washington in an apparent suicide.

August 3, 1993 - The Senate voted 96-3 to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

August 4, 1993 - Rwandian Hutu's and Tutsi's sign peace treaty in Arusha.

August 6, 1993 - Bill Clinton's budget plan squeaked by the Senate. The budget was passed on a fifty-one-to-fifty vote, as Vice President Al Gore weighed in with the tie-breaking ballot.

August 10, 1993 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the second female Supreme Court justice.

August 11, 1993 - President Bill Clinton named Army Gen. John Shalikashvili chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, succeeding Gen. Colin Powell.

August 13, 1993 - U.S. Court of Appeals rules congress must save all E-Mail.

September 9, 1993 - The Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to recognize Israel's right to exist, and Israel agreed to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

September 13, 1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands at the White House after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy; The "Declaration of Principles" was the first agreement between Jews and Palestinians to end their conflict and share the holy land along the River Jordan that they both call home. (Fighting between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates to the 1920s when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Arabs (not yet call themselves Palestinians) sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state. 1964 - the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed as a political umbrella organization of several Palestinian groups and meant to represent all the Palestinian people). The agreement, which will eventually allow Palestinians to run their own affairs as Israeli troops pull back within months from the Gaza Strip and Jericho in a first step, was reached during secret negotiations over the past few months between Israelis and Palestinians, under the direction of Minister Shimon Peres of Israel and Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, the foreign policy aide for the Palestine Liberation Organization, through the mediation of Norway.

October 4, 1993 - Rebel parliamentarians led by Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrendered to president Boris Yeltsin after a 10-hour tank siege of the Russian White House parliament building.

October 4, 1993 - Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.

November 1, 1993 - Maastricht Treaty comes into effect, formally establishing the European Union (EU). The treaty was drafted in 1991 by delegates from the European Community meeting at Maastricht in the Netherlands and signed in 1992. The agreement called for a strengthened European parliament, the creation of a central European bank, and common foreign and security policies. The treaty also laid the groundwork for the establishment of a single European currency, to be known as the "euro." By 1993, 12 nations had ratified the Maastricht Treaty on European Union: Great Britain, France, Germany, the Irish Republic, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Austria, Finland, and Sweden became members of the EU in 1995. After suffering through centuries of bloody conflict, the nations of Western Europe were finally united in the spirit of economic cooperation.

November 11, 1993 - A bronze statue honoring the more than 11,000 American women who served in the Vietnam War was dedicated in Washington, DC.

November 19, 1993 - The U.S. Senate voted in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

November 20, 1993 - Senate Ethics Committee handed down a stern censure of Alan Cranston, taking the California senator to task for his "dealings" with the scandal-ridden Savings and Loan executive Charles Keating. In the strongly worded statement, which capped off a two-year probe into the actions of the "Keating Five," the committee chided Cranston for "violating unwritten but commonly understood standards of Senate behavior." Specifically, Cranston had pursued $800,000 in "charitable contributions" from Keating during the same period in which he had acted with Federal regulators to defend Lincoln Savings and Loan, Keating's troubled operation. However, an enraged Cranston took to the Senate floor to rebut the claims brought against him. "Nothing I did violated a law or Senate rule," the senator declared, though he did tender an apology for engaging in behavior which gave the appearance of being improper.

November 24, 1993 - U.S. Congress passed the Brady handgun-control bill; established 5-day waiting period for handgun sales.

November 30, 1993 - President Bill Clinton signed into law the Brady handgun-control bill, which requires a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers; staunchly opposed by many congressmen, who, in reference to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, questioned the constitutionality of regulating the ownership of arms; 1981 - James Brady, press secretary for President Ronald Reagan, was shot in the head by John Hinckley, Jr., during an attempt on President Reagan's life outside a hotel in Washington, DC; momentarily pronounced dead at the hospital but survived and began an impressive recovery from his debilitating brain injury.

December 8, 1993 - President Bill Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); trade pact between the United States, Canada, and Mexico eliminated virtually all tariffs and trade restrictions between the three nations; January 1, 1994 - pact took effect, created the world's largest free-trade zone.

December 8, 1993- The U.S. Secretary of Defense declared that the Global Positioning System, accurate within 100 meters, had 24 GPS satellites operating in their assigned orbits, available for navigation use at Standard Positioning Service (SPS) levels for civil users; April 27, 1995 - U.S. Air Force Space Command formally declares that the GPS satellite constellation had met the requirement for Full Operational Capability after successful testing for military functionality; worldwide, satellite-based radionavigation system used as the DoD's primary radionavigation system provided authorized users encrypted Precise Positioning Service accurate to at least 22 meters.

December 9, 1993 - The Air Force destroyed the first of 500 Minuteman II missile silos marked for elimination under an arms control treaty.

December 30, 1993 - Israel and the Vatican agreed to recognize one another.

January 1, 1994 - The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect.

January 4, 1994 - The 104th Congress convened, the first entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era; Newt Gingrich was elected speaker of the House.

January 14, 1994 - President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed accords to stop aiming missiles at any nation and to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine.

February 3, 1994 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with a woman, Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins, in the pilot's seat for the first time.

February 3, 1994 - Nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, US President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam, since Vietnam's government cooperated in locating the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War. Despite the lifting of the embargo, high tariffs remained on Vietnamese exports pending the country's qualification as a "most favored nation," a U.S. trade-status designation that Vietnam might earn after broadening its program of free-market reforms.

February 9, 1994 - Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

February 22, 1994 - The Justice Department charged 31-year CIA veteran Aldrich Ames and his wife, Rosario, with selling national security secrets to the Soviet Union.

February 28, 1994 - Brady Law, imposing a wait-period to buy a hand-gun, went into effect.

February 28, 1994 - First military action in the 45-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. fighter planes shoot down four Serbian warplanes engaged in a bombing mission in violation of Bosnia's no-fly zone; 1949 - United States, 10 European countries, and Canada founded NATO as a safeguard against Soviet aggression; December 20, 1995 - NATO began the mass deployment of 60,000 troops to enforce the Dayton peace accords, signed in Paris by the leaders of the former Yugoslavia on December 14.

March 14, 1994 - Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell resigned because of controversy over billings he'd charged while in private law practice.

March 23, 1994 - Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexico's ruling party's presidential candidate, is gunned down during a campaign rally in the northern border town of Tijuana. Colosio campaigned as a man of the people and often appeared without the protection of bodyguards. Mario Aburto Martinez, a factory worker, was arrested at the scene and later convicted as the sole shooter. During the next few years, however, evidence was uncovered suggesting a conspiracy that may have led all the way up to President Salinas' office. Colosio had promised to fight Mexico's rampant political corruption, of which Salinas, who had ties to organized crime in Mexico, was guilty.

March 25, 1994 - American troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia at end of a largely unsuccessful 15-month mission; left 20,000 U.N. troops behind to keep the peace and facilitate "nation building" in the divided country; December 4, 1992 - with deteriorating security and U.N. troops unable to control Somalia's warring factions, U.S. President George Bush ordered 25,000 U.S. troops into Somalia in "Operation Restore Hope".

March 29, 1994 - Serbs and Croats signed a cease-fire to end the war in Croatia.

April 19, 1994 - A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.

April 26, 1994 - More than 22 million South Africans turn out to cast ballots in the country's first multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government that included his African National Congress Party, former President F.W. de Klerk's National Party, and Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party. May 4 - Mandela was inaugurated as president, becoming South Africa's first black head of state; May 2, 1994 - Nelson Mandela claimed victory in South Africa's first democratic elections.

May 4, 1994 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed an accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

May 6, 1994 - House passes the assault weapons ban.

May 6, 1994 - Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton; alleged he'd sexually harassed her in 1991.

May 9, 1994 - South Africa's newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country's first black president; May 10, 1994 - Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president of South Africa.

May 26, 1994 - President Bill Clinton renewed trade privileges for China and announced his administration would no longer link China's trade status with its human rights record.

May 31, 1994 - The United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.

June 15, 1994 - Israel and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations.

July 1, 1994 - PLO chairman Yasser Arafat drove from Egypt into Gaza, returning to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.

July 5, 1994 - U.S. changes refugee policy, sends Haitian boat people back.

July 8, 1994 - Kim Il Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948, dies of a heart attack at the age of 82. 1948 Kim became the first leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). June 1950 - launched an invasion of South Korea; hoped to reunify Korea by force; ignited the Korean War, which ended in a stalemate in 1953. He was succeeded as president by his son, Kim Jong Il, whose reign has been equally repressive and isolating. In recent years, Kim Jong Il has earned censure from much of the world for his continuing attempts to manufacture nuclear weapons, even as millions of his country's people live in poverty.

July 12, 1994 - President Bill Clinton visited the eastern sector of Berlin, the first president to do so since Harry Truman.

July 25, 1994 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old state of war.

July 30, 1994 - Jesse Timmedequas, a known child molester who had moved across the street from the family without their knowledge, rapes and murders Megan Kanka (7) in New Jersey. In the wake of the tragedy, the Kankas sought to have local communities warned about sex offenders in the area. Inspired Megan's Law, a statute enacted in 1994 requiring that information about convicted sex felons be available to the public. Versions of Megan's Law have been passed in many states since her murder. A database of all types of sex offenders is now accessible through a 900 number and CD-ROMs at police stations around the state. Evidence as to the ability of Megan's Law to actually protect children or deter crime was inconclusive in the first few years of its enactment.

August 2, 1994 - Congressional hearings begin on White Water.

August 3, 1994 - Stephen G. Breyer was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice in a private ceremony at Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's Vermont summer home.

August 4, 1994 - A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington chose Kenneth W. Starr to take over the Whitewater investigation from Robert Fiske.

August 4, 1994 - Serb-dominated Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs, sealing the 300-mile border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia.

August 10, 1994 - President Bill Clinton claimed presidential immunity in asking a federal judge to dismiss, at least for the time being, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee.

August 12, 1994 - Stephen G. Breyer, sworn in as Supreme Court Justice.

August 19, 1994 - President Bill Clinton halted the nation's three-decade open-door policy for Cuban refugees.

August 31, 1994 - Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics after half a century.

September 3, 1994 - China and Russia pledged they would no longer target nuclear missiles at or use force against each other.

September 18, 1994 - On the eve of the American invasion of Haiti, in response to evidence of atrocities committed by Haiti's military dictators and the United Nations's authorization of the use of force to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, a diplomatic delegation led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute agreement with Haiti's military to give up power. Bloodshed was prevented. September 19, 1994 - 20,000 U.S. troops landed unopposed to oversee Haiti's transition to democracy. In October, Aristide returned and served as president until the expiration of his term in 1996. He was succeeded by his close friend and handpicked successor Rene Preval, who was elected president in a landslide victory the previous year. In 2000, Aristide was again elected Haitian president in an election marked by violence and corruption.

September 27, 1994 - More than 350 Republican congressional candidates signed the ''Contract with America,'' a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the U.S. House.

October 3, 1994 - Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy announced his resignation because of questions about gifts he had received.

October 15, 1994 - President Jean-Baptiste Aristide returns to Haiti from three-year exile.

October 26, 1994 - Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton, put behind them 46 years of war, mistrust and fear for tomorrow. Israel's second full peace with an Arab country, came 15 years after its treaty with Egypt.

October 27, 1994 - U.S. Justice Department announced that the U.S. prison population has topped one million.

November 8, 1994 - Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and won a majority in the Senate in midterm elections. Led by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who subsequently replaced Democrat Tom Foley of Washington as speaker of the House, the empowered GOP united under the "Contract with America," a 10-point legislative plan to reduce federal taxes, balance the budget, and dismantle social welfare programs established during six decades of mostly Democratic rule in Congress. Gingrich's House of Representatives, home to the majority of the Republican freshmen, led the "Republican Revolution" by passing every bill incorporated in the Contract with America--with the exception of a term-limits constitutional amendment--within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress.

November 13, 1994 - Sweden voted to join the European Union.

December 1, 1994 - U.S. Congress passed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty.

December 5, 1994 - Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP speaker of the House in four decades.

December 11, 1994 - In the largest Russian military offensive since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks pour into the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya (about size of Connecticut). Encountering only light resistance, Russian forces had by evening pushed to the outskirts of the Chechen capital of Grozny, where several thousand Chechen volunteers vowed a bitter fight against the Russians. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Chechnya, like many of the other republics encompassed by the former Soviet Union, declared its independence. However, unlike Georgia, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and the other former Soviet states, Chechnya held only the barest autonomy under Soviet rule and was not considered one of the 15 official Soviet republics. Instead, Chechnya is regarded as one of many republics within the Russian Federation. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who permitted the dissolution of the Soviet Union, would not tolerate the secession of a state within territorial Russia. After the initial gains of the Russian army, the Chechen rebels demonstrated a fierce resistance in Grozny, and thousands of Russian troops died and many more Chechen civilians were killed during almost two years of heavy fighting. In August 1996, Grozny was retaken by the Chechen rebels after a year of Russian occupation, and a cease-fire was declared. In 1997, the last humiliated Russian troops left Chechnya. Despite a peace agreement that left Chechnya a de facto independent state, Chechnya remained officially part of Russia. In 1999, Yeltsin's government ordered a second invasion of Chechnya after bombings in Moscow and other cities were linked to Chechen militants. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's handpicked successor as Russian leader, said of the Chechen terrorists, "we will rub them out, even in the toilet." In 2000, President Putin escalated Russian military involvement in Chechnya after terrorist bombings in Russian cities continued. In this second round of post-Soviet fighting in Chechnya, the Russian army has been accused of many atrocities in its efforts to suppress Chechen militancy. A peace agreement remains elusive.

January 4, 1995 - 104th Congress becomes the first held entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era.  Republican Party won majority control of congress for the time in forty years due toNewt Gingrich and his "Contract with America." 

January 31, 1995 - President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico; claimed that he was acting in the national interest and that national security was at stake, authorized the Treasury Department to issue a loan through the Exchange Stabilization Fund (first time the fund had been used to help stabilize a foreign currency); Mexico paid off the loan along with $500 million in interest.

March 24, 1995 - The House of Representatives passed a welfare reform package calling for the most profound changes in social programs since the New Deal.

April 19, 1995 - A truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to death. President Clinton appeared in the White House press room this afternoon and somberly promised that the Government would hunt down the 'evil cowards' responsible. 'These people are killers,' he said, 'and must be treated like killers.' A little over an hour after the explosion, Oklahoma state trooper Charles Hangar pulled over a car without license plates in the town of Perry. Noticing a bulge in the driver's jacket, Hangar arrested the driver, Timothy McVeigh, and confiscated his concealed gun. McVeigh was held in jail for gun and traffic violations. Meanwhile, a sketch of the man who was seen driving the Ryder truck in Oklahoma City was distributed across the country; April 21 - Hangar saw the sketch and managed to stop McVeigh's impending release. Soon, three friends of McVeigh-Terry and James Nichols, and Michael Fortier-were also arrested for their involvement in the bombing. Nichols and Fortier's assistance, McVeigh assembled a bomb that contained nearly 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, and acetylene. After Fortier testified against his former friend, McVeigh was convicted in June 1997. The jury imposed a death sentence. Terry Nichols was convicted of being an accessory to the mass murder, and he received a life sentence. April 23, 1995 - President Clinton declares a national day of mourning for Oklahoma City. June 11, 2001 - McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal death penalty to be carried out since 1963.

May 20, 1995 - President Bill Clinton announced that the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House would be permanently closed to traffic as a security measure.

June 28, 1995 - Webster Hubbell, the former No. 3 official at the Justice Department, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for bilking clients of the law firm where he and Hillary Rodham Clinton were partners.

June 29, 1995 - Shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.

July 11, 1995 - President Bill Clinton established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, about two decades after the fall of Saigon. In making the decision, Clinton was advised by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex-Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. Brushing aside criticism of Clinton's decision by some Republicans, McCain asserted that it was time for America to normalize relations with its old enemy.

July 25, 1995 - A U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes.

August 10, 1995 - Norma McCorvey, ''Jane Roe'' in the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, announced she had joined the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

September 27, 1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord to transfer much of the West Bank to the control of its Arab residents, ending nearly three decades of Israeli occupation of West Bank cities.

October 16, 1995 - A vast throng of black men gathered in Washington for the ''Million Man March'' led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

October 20, 1995 - United Nations handed out bills to its biggest debtors; United States topped the list -owed the U.N. $1.25 billion, after years of failing to pay dues or the expenses for peacekeeping missions. The debt even threatened the United States' membership in the organization. Under the United Nations' charter, a member would be forced to relinquish its vote if "its arrears equals or exceeds what it owes in contributions for the preceding two years." Though the U.S. threatened to cross that mark by 1997, officials conceded that it was highly unlikely that the U.N. would banish one of the world's most powerful countries. Still, America's delinquency was troublesome for the U.N., which had exceeded its annual budget by August of 1995 and was forced to take out a $125 million loan.

October 23, 1995 - U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to a joint peacekeeping effort in Bosnia.

October 30, 1995 - By a bare majority of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, citizens of the province of Quebec vote to remain within the federation of Canada. The referendum asked Quebec's citizens, the majority of whom are French-speakers, to vote whether their province should begin the process that could make it independent of Canada. Far narrower than the 1980 margin, the 1995 referendum was the most serious threat to Canadian unity in the country's 128-year existence, carrying with it the possibility of losing nearly one-third of Canada's population if the Oui (yes) vote won. Quebec separatists refrained from any significant violence after their narrow defeat, but former Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau raised the specter of racial tension by declaring that his campaign had been beaten by "money and the ethnic vote."

November 1, 1995 - Bosnia peace talks opened in Dayton, OH; leaders of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia participated.

November 4, 1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist after speaking at a peace rally in Tel Aviv; shot in the arm and the back by Yigal Amir, a 27-year-old Jewish law student who had connections to the far-right Jewish group Eyal. Israeli police arrested Amir at the scene of the shooting, and he later confessed to the assassination, explaining at his arraignment that he killed Rabin because the prime minister wanted "to give our country to the Arabs."

November 13, 1995 - President Clinton shot down a Republican-penned bill to keep the government afloat for another four weeks. The president reasoned that the bill was loaded with political pork that would erode progress that Democrats had made to protect environmental and public health programs. House Speaker Newt Gingrich fired a sharp volley back at Clinton, reminding the president that the Republicans "were elected to change politics as usual." The net result of all the wrangling was a difficult political mess and an extended vacation for some 800,000 government workers.

November 14, 1995 - The U.S. government instituted a partial shutdown, closing national parks and museums while government offices operated with skeleton crews.

November 23, 1995 - The Bosnian Serbs accepted a peace plan proposed during talks in Dayton, Ohio, to end the four years of conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

November 28, 1995 - President Bill Clinton signed a bill that ended the federal 55-mph speed limit.

November 30, 1995 - Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit Northern Ireland. 

December 14, 1995 - In Paris, leaders from the former Yugoslavia signed the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of conflict and creating two entities within Bosnia: a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb republic.

December 20, 1995 - United Nations peacekeeping force formally transfers military authority in Bosnia to U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith, commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Southern Europe; cleared the path for the deployment of 60,000 NATO troops to enforce the Dayton Peace Accords, signed in Paris by the leaders of the former Yugoslavia on December 14. The U.S.-backed peace plan ended four years of bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia; 3-year study by Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center concluded total of more than 97,000 people were killed or disappeared in 1992-1995 Bosnian war (Bosnian Muslims - 64,000, Serbs - 25,000, Croats - 8,000); half of casualties occurred in first year of war; dierect war participants - 58,000, civilians - 39,500).

January 20, 1996 - Yasser Arafat (founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is elected president of the Palestinian National Council with 88.1 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people in history; consolidated his rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 1993 - signed the historic Israel-Palestinian Declaration of Principles with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. One year later, Arafat and Rabin signed a major peace agreement granting Palestine limited self-government in territories occupied by Israel. 1995 - Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for his peace efforts. 2000 - hopes were dashed that the Oslo Accords might finally bring peace to the troubled region when Arafat, dogged by self-doubt and criticism at home that he was compromising too much, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak were unable to negotiate a final peace. December 2001 - after a series of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel, Bush did nothing to stop Israel as it re-conquered areas of the West Bank and even steamrolled the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters with tanks, effectively imprisoning Arafat within his compound. May 2002 - Arafat finally was released from his compound after an agreement was reached which forced him to issue a statement in Arabic instructing his followers to halt attacks on Israel. It was ignored and the violence continued. January 2005 - Mahmoud Abbas became the new chairman of the PLO and was elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

January 26, 1996 - First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before a grand jury connected to the Whitewater probe.

April 3, 1996 - An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.

April 9, 1996 - Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-IL, the once-powerful House Ways and Means chairman, pleaded guilty to two mail fraud charges. He served 15 months in prison. 

April 10, 1996 - President Bill Clinton signed a line-item veto bill into law (exercised veto 82 times); June 24, 1998 - Supreme Court decided (6-3) Line Item Veto Act was unconstitutional, Constitution gives a president only two choices: either sign legislation or send it back to Congress.

April 10, 1996 - President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique that opponents call ''partial-birth'' abortion.

April 24, 1996 - The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.

April 28, 1996 - President Bill Clinton gave 4 1/2 hours of videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners.

May 15, 1996 - Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole announced he was leaving the Senate after 27 years to challenge President Bill Clinton full time.

May 17, 1996 - President Bill Clinton signed "Megan's Law", a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in.

May 20, 1996 - Supreme Court votes six to three to strike down an amendment to Colorado's state constitution that would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals; argued that the law violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Colorado's Amendment Two was passed in 1992 with a majority of the state's citizens approving it in a special referendum. Four years later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Romer v. Evans, a case that allowed the nation's highest court to scrutinize the constitutionality of the amendment.

May 28, 1996 - President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, were convicted of fraud.

May 29, 1996 - Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Israeli prime minister.

May 31, 1996 - In what was regarded as a setback for the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu (47). Peres, leader of the Labor Party, became prime minister in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist; youngest prime minister elected in the country's history. May 18, 1999 - after three years as prime minister, a stalled peace process, and epidemic political in-fighting within his cabinet led to his electoral defeat by Labor challenger Ehud Barak. During his concession speech that evening, Netanyahu also resigned as Likud Party leader.

June 7, 1996 - The Clinton White House acknowledged it had obtained the FBI files of prominent Republicans, calling it ''an innocent bureaucratic mistake.''

June 11, 1996 - Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., left the Senate to concentrate on his campaign for the presidency.

June 12, 1996 - Senate Republicans chose Trent Lott of Mississippi to succeed Bob Dole as majority leader.

June 16, 1996 - Russian voters went to the polls in their first independent presidential election; the result was a runoff between President Boris Yeltsin, the eventual winner, and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.

June 26, 1996 - The Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

July 9, 1996 - U.S. Senate approves 90 cents raise to $4.25 minimum wage.

July 26, 1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that the Department of Energy had signed a two-year $93 million computer development contract with IBM to develop a custom "supercomputer", world's speediest computer, capable of finishing tasks 300 times faster than any previous computing machine. DOE intended to harness the machine's processing power to conduct nuclear test simulations, key plank of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The deal also called for the supercomputer to be swiftly converted to civilian duty, to perform tasks including the replication of hurricanes and wind tunnels in tests on space ships and airplanes.

August 2, 1996 - United States and Japan hashed out a new trade agreement. The deal, which American officials described as a "significant" step in trade relations the two nations, centered on establishing fair practices for the sale of American computer chips. When the dust settled, the two sides agreed to establish a council to monitor trading.

August 14, 1996 - The Republican National Convention in San Diego nominated Bob Dole for president and Jack Kemp for vice president.

August 20, 1996 - President Bill Clinton gave his approval to a ninety-cent hike in the minimum wage. The increase, which brought minimum pay to $5.15 an hour, was the first time the wage had received a boost in five years.

August 20,1996 - President Bill Clinton gave his approval to a ninety-cent hike in the minimum wage. The increase, which brought minimum pay to $5.15 an hour, was the first time the wage had received a boost in five years.

August 22, 1996 - President Bill Clinton signed welfare legislation ending guaranteed cash payments to the poor and demanding work from recipients.

August 28, 1996 - Democrats nominated President Bill Clinton for a second term at their national convention in Chicago.

August 29, 1996 - President Bill Clinton's chief political strategist, Dick Morris, resigned amid a scandal over his relationship with a prostitute.

September 24, 1996 - The United States and the world's other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.

September 27, 1996 - The Taliban, a band of former seminary students, drove the government of Afghani President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, captured the capital and hanged Mohammad Najibullah, the former Afghan president.

September 28, 1996 - U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to reduce the number of illegal immigrants.

October 2, 1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton signs The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments.

October 6, 1996 - Democratic President Bill Clinton faces his Republican challenger, Senator Bob Dole from Kansas, in their first debate of that year’s presidential campaign. Clinton took credit for improving the economy and slashing the budget deficit he had inherited from George H.W. Bush when he took over the presidency in 1992. Dole challenged Clinton’s "ad hoc" approach to foreign affairs, challenged his record on crime and spending and proposed a whopping tax cut of more than $550 billion.

November 5, 1996 - President Bill Clinton won a second term; defeated former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.

November 5, 1996 - Pakistani President Farooq Leghari dismissed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolved the National Assembly amidst charges of mismanagement and corruption in the government.

November 20, 1996 - House Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be speaker for a second term.

December 5, 1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton nominated Madeleine Albright as secretary of state; she would become the highest-ranking woman ever in the federal government.

December 13, 1996 - The U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to be the world body's seventh secretary-general.

December 16, 1996 - Britain's agriculture minister announced the slaughter of an additional 100,000 cows thought to be at risk of contracting BSE (mad cow disease) in an effort to persuade the EU to lift its ban on British beef.

December 17, 1996 - Kofi Annan of Ghana was appointed United Nations Secretary-General.

December 21, 1996 - After two years of denials, House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted violating House ethics rules.

December 29, 1996 - War-weary guerrilla and government leaders in Guatemala signed an accord ending 36 years of civil conflict.

January 7, 1997 - Newt Gingrich became the first Republican re-elected House speaker in 68 years.

January 17, 1997 - Israel handed over its military headquarters in Hebron to the Palestinians, ending 30 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank city.

January 19, 1997 - Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron for the first time in more than 30 years, joining 60,000 Palestinians in celebrating the handover of the last West Bank city in Israeli control.

January 21, 1997 - Speaker Newt Gingrich was fined as the House voted for first time in history to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct.

January 22, 1997 - The Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the nation's first female secretary of state; January 23, 1997 - Madeline Albright (born Maria Jana Korbelova in Czechoslovakia in 1937) is sworn in as America's first female secretary of state by Vice President Al Gore at the White House. As head of the U.S. State Department, Albright was the highest ranking female official in U.S. history, a distinction that led some to declare that the "glass ceiling" preventing the ascension of women in government had been lifted.

February 27, 1997 - Legislation banning most handguns in Britain went into effect.

March 4, 1997 - President Bill Clinton barred spending federal money on human cloning.

March 5, 1997 - Representatives of North Korea and South Korea met for first time in 25 years, for peace talks in New York.

April 14, 1997 - Whitewater figure James McDougal drew a three-year prison sentence for 18 felony fraud and conspiracy counts.

April 29, 1997 - Worldwide Chemical Weapons Convention took effect after ratification by 88 countries; the U.S. ratified the treaty on April 24, but Russia and a number of other states known to possess such weapons failed to do so.

April 29, 1997 - Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

May 1, 1997 - After 18 years of Conservative rule, British voters give the Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, a landslide victory in British parliamentary elections. In the poorest Conservative Party showing since 1832, Prime Minister John Major was rejected in favor of Scottish-born Blair, who at age 43 became the youngest British prime minister in more than a century. He has now served longer as prime minister than any other Labour Party member in history.

May 9, 1997 - Twenty-two years and 10 days after the fall of Saigon, former Florida Representative Douglas "Pete" Peterson becomes the first ambassador to Vietnam since Graham Martin was airlifted out of the country by helicopter in late April 1975. Peterson himself served as a U.S. Air Force captain during the Vietnam War and was held as a prisoner of war for six and a half years after his bomber was shot down near Hanoi in 1966. Thirty-one years later, Peterson returned to Hanoi on a different mission, presenting his credentials to Communist authorities in the Vietnamese capital; 1994 - President Bill Clinton announced the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam, citing the cooperation of Vietnam's Communist government in helping the United States locate the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. Despite the lifting of the embargo, high tariffs remained on Vietnamese exports pending the country's qualification as a "most favored nation," a U.S. trade-status designation that Vietnam could earn after broadening its program of free-market reforms; 1995 - Clinton administration established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam. In making the decision, Clinton was advised by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex-navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi; 1996 - Clinton terminated the combat zone designation for Vietnam and nominated Democratic Congressman Pete Peterson as the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam; November 2000 - Clinton became the first president to visit Vietnam since Richard Nixon's 1969 trip to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

May 16, 1997 - Zaire's president, Mobutu Sese Seko, ended 32 years of autocratic rule, giving control of the country to rebel forces; May 17, 1997 - Rebel leader Kabila declared himself president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire.

May 25, 1997 - Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, marking 41 years, 10 months in office. (Thurmond's record was surpassed in 2006 by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, who won re-election to a ninth six-year term in November.).

May 27, 1997 - The Supreme Court ruled Paula Jones could pursue her sex harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.

June 9, 1997 - British lease on New Territories in Hong Kong expires.

June 24, 1997 - The Air Force released a 231-page report, written by Capt. James McAndrew, an intelligence officer assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force's Declassification and Review Team, on the so-called "Roswell Incident" (July 1947); suggested the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies; went beyond1994 report by revealing more about Federal work in the desert and examining what apparently inspired sightings of not only alien artifacts but of the extraterrestrials themselves. The desert work focused on the development of spy gear and high-altitude escape systems. February 1994 - Air Force began to investigate what took place many decades ago. September 1994 - 23-page report said the silvery wreckage in the desert had been part of a top-secret system of atomic espionage. That admission made the 1947 story about a weather balloon a white lie. Carried into the atmosphere by balloon, the spy sensors listened for weak reverberations from Soviet nuclear blasts half a world away.

June 26, 1997 - Supreme Court upholds doctor-assisted suicide ban; strikes down Internet indecency law.

June 30, 1997 - In Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years. July 1, 1997 - Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule. For the first time in Hong Kong's history a Hong Konger, Tung Chee-hwa (China's choice as Hong Kong's new chief executive), stepped before his people as their leader today, explaining in their own dialect of Cantonese how the onset of Chinese rule, and his stewardship of the territory, would change their lives. Mr. Tung promised to solve the territory's housing problem -- 'the aim is to achieve a home ownership rate of 70 percent in 10 years,' he said -- as well as to reinvigorate the school system by improving teachers' qualifications and insure full day schooling at the primary level, introduce a mandatory retirement fund, and establish a government Commission for the Elderly. 1839 - Britain invaded China to crush opposition to its interference in the country's economic, social, and political affairs. One of Britain's first acts of the war was to occupy Hong Kong, a sparsely inhabited island off the coast of southeast China. 1841 - China ceded the island to the British with the signing of the Convention of Chuenpi, and in 1842 - the Treaty of Nanking was signed, formally ending the First Opium War. 1898 - Britain was granted an additional 99 years of rule over Hong Kong under the Second Convention of Peking. September 1984 - after years of negotiations, the British and the Chinese signed a formal agreement approving the 1997 turnover of the island in exchange for a Chinese pledge to preserve Hong Kong's capitalist system.

July 1, 1997 - Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.

July 3, 1997 - In his first formal response to charges by Paula Jones of sexual harassment, President Bill Clinton denied all allegations in her lawsuit, and asked a judge to dismiss the case.

July 4, 1997 - After traveling 120 million miles in seven months, NASA's Mars Pathfinder (at a cost just $150 million) becomes the first U.S. spacecraft to land on Mars in more than two decades. In an ingenious, cost-saving landing procedure, Pathfinder used parachutes to slow its approach to the Martian surface and then deployed airbags to cushion its impact. Colliding with the Ares Vallis floodplain at 40 miles an hour, the spacecraft bounced high into the Martian atmosphere 16 times before safely coming to rest. July 5 - the Pathfinder lander was renamed Sagan Memorial Station in honor of the late American astronomer Carl Sagan, and the next day Sojourner, the first remote-control interplanetary rover, rolled off the station. Soujourner, which traveled a total of 171 feet during its 30-day mission, sent back a wealth of information about the chemical components of rock and soil in the area. In addition, nearly 10,000 images of the Martian landscape were taken.

July 6, 1997 - The rover Sojourner rolled down a ramp from the Mars Pathfinder lander onto the Martian landscape to begin inspecting soil and rocks.

July 25, 1997 - K.R. Narayanan became the first member of an "untouchable" Dalits caste to become India's president.

August 6, 1997 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair shook hands with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in the first meeting in 76 years between a British leader and the IRA's allies.

August 11, 1997 - President Bill Clinton made the first use of the line-item veto approved by Congress, rejecting three items in spending and tax bills.

September 9, 1997 - Sinn Fein accepts Mitchell Principles on para-military disarmament; renounced violence as it took its place in talks on Northern Ireland's future.

September 11, 1997 - Scots voted to create their own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.

September 15, 1997 - The IRA-allied Sinn Fein party entered Northern Ireland's peace talks for the first time.

October 3, 1997 - Attorney General Janet Reno said she had found no evidence that President Bill Clinton broke the law with White House coffees and overnight stays for big contributors.

October 12, 1997 - Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were convicted in the United States of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.

October 17, 1997 - The remains of revolutionary Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.

November 3, 1997 - Attorney General Janet Reno said there was no evidence that President Bill Clinton broke the law with White House coffees and overnight stays for big contributors.

November 3, 1997 - The Supreme Court let stand California's groundbreaking Proposition 209, a ban on race and gender preference in hiring and school admission.

November 12, 1997 - Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

November 16, 1997 - The No Electronic Theft Act defined "financial gain" in relation to copyright infringement and set penalties for willfully infringing a copyright either for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain or by reproducing or distributing, including by electronic means phonorecords of a certain value.

December 2, 1997 - Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of telephone fund-raising by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Gore.

December 11, 1997- More than 150 countries agreed, at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control and reduce the amount of the Earth's greenhouse gases produced worldwide. 

December 11, 1997 - Henry Cisneros, President Bill Clinton's first housing secretary, was indicted on charges of conspiracy, obstructing justice and making false statements about payments to his former mistress.

January 7, 1998 - Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky signed an affidavit denying she had an affair with President Bill Clinton.

January 12, 1998 - Nineteen European nations signed a treaty in Paris opposing human cloning.

January 12, 1998 - Linda Tripp provided Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office with taped conversations between herself and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

January 14, 1998 - Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.

January 17, 1998 - President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil suit when he answered questions from lawyers for Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment.

January 21, 1998 - President Bill Clinton angrily denied reports he'd had an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and had tried to get her to lie about it.

January 26, 1998 - President Bill Clinton denied having an affair with a former White House intern, telling reporters, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

January 27, 1998 - First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on NBC's ''Today'' show, said that allegations against her husband were the work of a ''vast right-wing conspiracy.''

February 6, 1998 - President Bill Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

February 12, 1998 - A federal judge threw out President Bill Clinton's new line-item veto authority.

February 27, 1998 - With the approval of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's House of Lords agreed to end 1,000 years of male preference by giving a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as a first-born son.

March 4, 1998 - The Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.

March 23, 1998 - The Supreme Court ruled that term limits for state lawmakers are constitutional.

March 25, 1998 - President Bill Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that ''we did not act quickly enough'' to stop the slaughter of one million Rwandans four years earlier.

April 10, 1998 - Negotiators in Northern Ireland reached a landmark settlement that called for Protestants and Catholics to share power.

April 25, 1998 - Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on videotape about her work as a private lawyer for a failed savings and loan.

May 11, 1998 - India resumed nuclear testing (forst conducted in 1974), leading to international outrage and Pakistan's detonation of its first nuclear bomb later in the month.

May 28, 1998 - Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts.

June 2, 1998 - Voters in California passed Proposition 227, requiring that all schoolchildren be taught in English.

June 25, 1998 - The Supreme Court rejected a line-item veto law as unconstitutional.

June 26, 1998 - The Supreme Court issued a landmark sexual harassment ruling, putting employers on notice that they can be held responsible for supervisors' misconduct even if they knew nothing about it.

June 27, 1998 - During a joint news conference broadcast live in China, President Bill Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade and Tibet.

July 16, 1998 - Health Care Services Corporation, Medicare subsidiary carrier for both Illinois and Michigan, agreed to settle felony charges by paying the federal government roughly $140 million; charged with eight counts of felony (mishandling, shredding of claims, various attempts to manipulate and obscure evidence). Medicare giant also agreed to settle charges that it had blocked government attempts to audit company records ($4 million). In the wake of these settlements, the government pledged to keep a close watch on Health Care Services and even locked the company into a "strict corporate integrity agreement."

July 22, 1998 - Iran tested a medium-range missile capable of reaching Israel or Saudi Arabia.

July 28, 1998 - Monica Lewinsky was given blanket immunity from prosecution in exchange for grand jury testimony in the investigation of her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

August 6, 1998 - A House committee voted to cite Attorney General Janet Reno for contempt of Congress for her refusal to turn over reports recommending that she seek an independent counsel to investigate campaign fund-raising.

August 6, 1998 - Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky spent 8 1/2 hours testifying before a grand jury about her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

August 7, 1998 - A massive truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and another truck bomb detonated outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding more than 5,500. The United States accused Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, a proponent of international terrorism against America, of masterminding the bombings.

August 17, 1998 - Russia devalued the ruble.

August 17, 1998 - President Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent Council as the subject of a grand-jury investigation. The testimony came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals, including accusations of sexual harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and suspected "cronyism" involved in the firing of White House travel-agency personnel. The independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, then uncovered an affair between Clinton and a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. When questioned about the affair, Clinton denied it, which led Starr to charge the president with perjury and obstruction of justice, which in turn prompted his testimony on August 17.

August 20, 1998 - Retaliating 13 days after the deadly embassy bombings in East Africa, the United States launched cruise missile strikes against al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and what was described as a chemical plant in Sudan.

September 3, 1997 - Arizona Gov. Fife Symington was convicted of lying to get millions in loans to shore up his collapsing real estate empire. (The conviction was overturned in 1999.).

September 10, 1998 - President Bill Clinton met with members of his Cabinet to apologize and ask forgiveness in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

September 11, 1998 - Congress released Kenneth Starr's report, which offered graphic details of President Bill Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct and leveled accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice.

September 18, 1998 - The House Judiciary Committee voted to release a videotape of President Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony.

September 21, 1998 - President Bill Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony was publicly broadcast. In it, Clinton sparred with prosecutors about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, at one point answering a question by saying, ''It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.''

September 27, 1998 - Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder was elected chancellor of Germany, ending 16 years of conservative rule.

October 8, 1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives votes to proceed toward impeaching President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. By December 1998, the Republican-led House had gathered enough information from an investigation committee to vote in favor of impeachment, which in turn sent the case to the Senate. The House of Representatives’ decision to send the impeachment process to the Senate came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals including allegedly improper Arkansas real-estate deals, suspected fundraising violations, claims of sexual harassment and accusations of cronyism involving the firing of White House travel agents. Over the course of the investigation, the independent prosecutor assigned to the case, Kenneth Starr, was informed of an extramarital affair between Clinton and a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. The president had denied the affair as part of another lawsuit (the Paula Jones case), but when questioned by Starr, Clinton tried to invoke executive privilege to avoid responding. An undeterred Starr then charged the president with obstruction of justice, which forced the president to testify before a grand jury; August 1998 - In his testimony, the president admitted to an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky and that he regretted misleading his wife and the American people when he denied the affair earlier. He insisted he gave "legally accurate" answers in his testimony and "at no time" did he ask anyone to "lie, hide or destroy evidence or to take any unlawful action." When addressing the investigation into his past business dealings, Clinton insisted the investigation did not prove that he or his wife Hilary had engaged in any illegal activity. After his testimony, members of the House of Representatives engaged in a battle over whether or not to impeach Clinton. While Democrats favored censure, Republicans called loudly for impeachment, claiming Clinton was unfit to lead the country. In December 1998 - the House voted to impeach the president; he was acquitted, though, after a five-week trial in the Senate. Public opinion polls at the time revealed that many people disapproved of the Lewinsky affair--which was conducted in the White House Oval Office--but did not consider it an action worthy of impeachment or resignation. Bill Clinton was the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives since Andrew Johnson in 1868. Johnson was also acquitted.

October 23, 1998 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed a land-for-peace agreement at the White House, following nine days of talks at Wye River, MD.

October 28, 1998 - The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provided for the implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty; limited certain online infringement liability for Internet service providers; created an exemption permitting a temporary reproduction of a computer program made by activating a computer in the course of maintenance or repair; clarified the policy role of the Copyright Office; and created a form of protection for vessel hulls.

October 29, 1998 - South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.

November 5, 1998 - Lewinsky scandal: As part of the impeachment inquiry, House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde sends a list of 81 questions to US President Bill Clinton.

November 5, 1998 - A study showed strong genetic evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one child by his slave, Sally Hemings.

November 7, 1998 - House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned following election results in which the Republican House majority shrunk from 22 to 12.

November 11, 1998 - Israel's Cabinet narrowly ratified a land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians.

November 13, 1998 - President Bill Clinton agreed to pay Paula Jones $850,000, ending the four-year legal battle over her sexual harassment lawsuit that spurred impeachment proceedings against him. Clinton did not admit guilt or apologize.

November 17, 1998 - Israel's parliament overwhelmingly approved the Wye River land-for-peace accord with the Palestinians.

November 19, 1998 - Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr laid out his evidence against President Bill Clinton during a daylong appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.

November 26, 1998 - Tony Blair gave the first speech ever by a British prime minister to an Irish parliament.

December 7, 1998 - Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton over 1996 campaign financing.

December 10, 1998 - Six astronauts swung open the doors to the new international space station, becoming the first guests aboard the 250-mile-high outpost.

December 11, 1998 - The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

December 12, 1998 - The House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton and submitted the case to the full House.

December 13, 1998 - Voters in Puerto Rico rejected U.S. statehood in a non-binding referendum.

December 15, 1998 - U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary releases a 265-page report recommending the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Resolution No. 611 launched the impeachment process for high crimes and misdemeanors, including perjury and obstruction of justice. The report accused Clinton of concealing evidence, giving misleading testimony and influencing witnesses. In the opinion of the majority of the House, Clinton’s actions "undermined the integrity of his office." Democratic leaders also disapproved of Clinton’s conduct but preferred to formally censure the president over impeachment.