No longer a society of soldier-pioneers settling the desert, Israelis used the 50th anniversary of their country to grapple with religious, social and political divisions and ever-present question of peace.

Seventy-seven-year-old John Glenn returned to space in 1998 in one of the most celebrated space missions in years.

The nuclear tests in the Indian sub-continent in May 1998 shook the region as well as the world as India and Pakistan joined the so-called "nuclear club."