Seattle
- Voters approved funding for a new Mariners ballpark, averting the team's departure and signaling the city's willingness to compete for major-league status.
- The city's population crossed 500,000 for the first time since the 1960s, driven by the tech boom and the cultural magnetism of the grunge years.
- Washington Mutual, headquartered in Seattle, was growing into one of the nation's largest savings institutions.
The United States
- Bill Clinton was reelected in a comfortable victory over Bob Dole, consolidating a "Third Way" Democratic centrism that reshaped the party.
- Welfare reform signed into law transformed the federal safety net, ending the entitlement guarantee that had existed since the New Deal.
- A pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the Summer Games; Richard Jewell was falsely accused before the real perpetrator was identified.
The World
- The Taliban seized Kabul, imposing a strict interpretation of sharia on Afghanistan; Osama bin Laden had recently moved his operations to the country. (Reference, BBC)
- Scottish scientists announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. This opened a new era of biological possibility and ethical debate.
- A mad cow disease (BSE) crisis in Britain killed consumer confidence in beef and foreshadowed future debates about industrial agriculture and food safety.
