Deep Impact was released two months before Armageddon.

Probably an esoteric anecdote, but Italy's first ever left-wing government underwent a drastic reshuffle in 1998. Although it had been in power since 1996, the governing coalition imploded due to infighting, pursued with particular abandon thanks to the belief that the political right was irreparably split between Silvio Berlusconi's vapid media-friendly "Forza Italia," the hysterio-regionalist Northern League, and the Nationalist Alliance (among other, smaller, parties).

Although on the surface the left might have seemed more compact, the late 90s might very well be the period when Italian politics earned its reputation for having an absurd amount of political parties: although the government was theoretically in the hands of the "Democratic Party of the Left" and its five electoral allies in the "Olive Branch" coalition, in reality it depended on broad external support from as many as nine other small left-aligned political parties, who merged and split freely while the 13th legislature was in session. One of these external supporters, a party called "Communist Refoundation," in 1998 pushed for a revolt from the back benches and replaced the rather centrist Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, with the farther left-leaning Massimo D'Alema. The consequences, alas, fall outside our twenty year rule.

The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management.

Windows 98 crashing live on CNN (and before a large live audience) during a spring Las Vegas demo with Bill Gates before its summer launch. It's difficult to remember, but at the time Microsoft's following was similar to what Apple's is currently. People waited hours in line for product launches, there was stil a lot of hype, etc...

They were demonstrating the brand new "Plug and Play" capabilities of Windows 98, plugged a device in, and it promptly crashed to the infamous "Blue Screen of Death".

Aaaaaaand now I feel very old.

The Asian financial crisis was just settling in.