THE coming year is a bit overshadowed by the hype surrounding the year 2000 and Mr Mandelson's dome, or doom, as the case may be, but it will no doubt produce memorable events of its own. If nothing else, it will mark a number of interesting anniversaries.

A quick glance back to the start of the AD era may be in order. In the year 98, the Tony Blair of his day, Trajan, became the Roman Emperor, which is strange because he was Spanish. Hang in there Michael Portillo.

Fast forwarding a millennium, we find something else in order - the Cistercian monks. Better known to us now as Trappists, they were founded in 1098.

1198 saw the accession of Innocent III to the Papacy. His 18-year reign coincided almost exactly with that of the not-so-innocent King John of England whom he excommunicated, then

re-communicated.

Scots will want to disregard 1298, when William Wallace was pretty cut up, in more ways than one, after the battle of Falkirk. Little of note seems to have occurred in 1398 - maybe it was an unlucky 13.

In 1498 Mozambique was discovered by Da Gama, though the residents probably thought they had discovered it some time before that. About the same time Savonarola, the Italian religious reformer, was strangled and burned at the stake. It could have been worse - he might have been Wallace.

1598 was the year of birth of a painter, a sculptor, and an architect all in one man, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, who seems to have had a profession for each of his names. It was also the year Boris Godunov was good enough to become Czar, and Romeo and Juliet was written. These events are not known to have been connected except in providing material for a future opera and ballet.

Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, elected to pop the German equivalent of his clogs in 1698. He features somewhere in our royal family's tree.

The French were up to high jinks all over the place in 1798, capturing Rome, landing in Ireland, and battling at the pyramids. Sadly for them, their other jinx, Lord Nelson, was destroying their fleet at Aboukir Bay. In the same year, Malthus published his Essay on Population, which was probably rendered instantly obsolete by the death of Casanova that same year.

1898 was a lively 12-month with a good many comings and goings in the spheres of art and entertainment. Stars were born in Gracie Fields, Paul Robeson, Ferdinand Delacroix, Henry Hall, Gertrude Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Moore, Rene Magritte, George Gershwin, C S Lewis, and Bertold that braw Brecht dramatist. Bowing out permanently were such as Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), Kathleen Harrison, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Two elder statesmen, W E Gladstone and Otto von Bismarck, finally quit life's hustings, to be commemorated by a bag and a battleship respectively. Around the same time, Willy Messerschmitt, who designed planes, and Amelia Earhart, who flew some, were both gliding into the world.

A gentleman by the name of Lindfield set a trend for succeeding generations by becoming the first car driver to be killed in a motoring accident; and, noblesse oblige, he was closely followed by the Marquis of Montaignac as the first motor-racing fatality. A happier accident was the Curies' discovery of radium.

HG Wells published The War of the Worlds and probably hoped it would inspire worthier spin-offs than the film Independence Day. A Mr V Poulsen, in patenting a machine for magnetic recording of sound, surely did not really, really want the invention to be responsible for the creation of the Sh-you-know-who Girls?

Hawaii was annexed by America, though it is not clear if that gave rise to the title of the film Blue Hawaii. The Dublin Daily Express received a report on the Kingston Regatta - an Irish connection seems inevitable here, this being the first press report by radio. After some victories in the Sudan, Lord Kitchener was granted the freedom of the city of London; a freedom which seems to have been surrendered now to American, Swiss, and other foreign financial institutions.

It would be a pity for the nostalgic wrinklies and the inquisitive young among us not to bring things up to date by reference to events of 50 years ago. Among the births were the NHS, Sinead Cusack, Dennis Waterman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lulu, Uri Geller, Noel Edmonds, and HRH Charles Philip Arthur George. Prince Charles might derive some hope from the fact Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands, abdicated.

85% of doctors voted against the establishment of the NHS (what would the figure be today?) but more than half joined it later in the year.

North and South Korea came into being as independent states, each claiming jurisdiction over the other - a claim neither might be so keen on today.

Rationing, a difficult concept for younger consumers, was still prevalent. The weekly milk allowance went up one pint to 31/2 pints, but the cheese allowance went down from 2 to 11/2 ounces; 12 extra clothing coupons were provided between May and September; motoring was restricted to 90 miles a month; but rationing of footwear and jam ended. If you had enough clothes to travel you would have found the French franc newly devalued from 480 to 864 in the pound, while Pan-Am Airways reduced its transatlantic fare to #118.12s 6d.

Believe it or not, the UK signed an alliance with Iraq. Some things do not change, however. Israel and Arab states entered into an uneasy truce, and the UK warned Argentina against naval operations near the Falklands. It would be nice if 1998 could be remembered as a peaceful prelude to the new millennium.