On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Writers of Seinfeld, NBC-TV's hit comedy which will air final episode in May, are besieged by studios to work on existing shows or create new ones; photo (M)
New York City Board of Education votes to require its 500,000 elementary-school children to wear uniforms beginning in 1999; city joins in national trend in which public schools troubled by truancy and low achievement have turned to uniforms in attempt to return discipline and serious learning environment to their classrooms; Mayor Rudolph W Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew support policy, which was proposed by board president, William C Thompson Jr; photo (M)
Nike stumbles after years of unchallenged supremacy in athletic footwear industry; Nike is victim of outside factors, including brown shoe craze of teen-agers, and management missteps such as oversaturating market and raising shoe prices, already among highest; Nike announces that it earned 69 percent less in its fiscal third quarter, which ended Feb 28, than year earlier; says it will cut spending on marketing by third and eliminate 1,600 jobs and take restructuring charge of $125 million to $175 million in next quarter; half of job cuts will be in United States; as Nike battles to regain its footing, portion of its market share is being fought over by other sneaker companies, such as Adidas, and some new competitors, such as fashion houses that have started their own sneaker lines; photos; charts (L)
National Research Council recommends that children should be taught to read by using combination of old-fashioned phonics and newer whole-language method that emphasizes meaning of words; pleads for 'an end of the reading wars'; conflict over methods has sent school districts, and in some cases entire states, ricocheting from one exclusive approach to other over last 25 years, with little academic ground gained by children; Prof Catherine Snow of Harvard led panel of 16 reading experts who wrote report (M)
Peter H Lewis article on loss of privacy in information age; holds key issue is whether monitoring by surveillance cameras and computers that track movements and purchases influences behavior; cites ways in which his trip from Austin to New York was monitored; table of steps to cover ones data tracks; photos (L)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of March 18, 1998, covering March 19, 1998.
Soundtrack
Madonna
Celine Dion
Scarface
Savage Garden
1998Caylee Cowan, American actress[†]
Catherine Caylee Cowan is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in Sunrise in Heaven (2019), Willy's Wonderland (2021), Spinning Gold (2022), and Frank and Penelope (2022).
1998Julian Love, American football player[†]
Julian Love is an American professional football safety for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
1998Sakura Miyawaki, Japanese singer[†]
Sakura Miyawaki, also known mononymously as Sakura, is a Japanese singer and actress based in South Korea. She is a member of the South Korean girl group Le Sserafim, and a former member of South Korean-Japanese girl group Iz*One and Japanese girl groups AKB48 and its sister group HKT48.
1998E. M. S. Namboodiripad, Indian theorist and politician, 1st Chief Minister of Kerala (born 1909)[†]
Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad, popularly known as 'E.M.S. Namboodiripad' or simply by his initials 'E. M. S.', was an Indian communist politician and theorist, who served as the first Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957–1959 and then again in 1967–1969. As a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), he became the first non-Congress Chief Minister in the Indian republic. In 1964, he led a faction of the CPI that broke away to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
1998An Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 727 crashes on approach to Kabul International Airport, killing all 45 on board.[†]
Ariana Afghan Airlines Co. Ltd. also known simply as Ariana, is the flag carrier and largest airline of Afghanistan. Founded in 1955, Ariana is state owned and the oldest airline in the country. The company has its main base at Kabul International Airport, from which it operates domestic flights and international connections to destinations in China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. The carrier is headquartered in Shāre Naw district, Kabul. Ariana Afghan Airlines has been on the list of air carriers banned in the European Union since October 2006 .
In 1998, the world population was approximately 6,007,066,690 people[†]