The more things change, the more they remain the same. History has plenty of examples to support the old tag. But for certain groups and individuals the year nearly expired has seen strange and wonderful alterations in their circumstances.
One week you are an elderly man having treatment for back pain. The next you are in every news bulletin around the globe. No longer a footnote, Gen Augusto Pinochet has seen his comfortable "retirement" rudely interrupted by the warrant issued by crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.
This story is one of the most important of the year. Does the world community have any sanction against those who offend so grievously it transcends all geographical and moral boundaries? Do political and legal boundaries dissolve under pressures of extraordinary wrongdoing?
Jack Straw's decision to let the law take its course - deciding in effect not to allow the former dictator to go home - won applause from Pinochet's victims and human rights activists. And it drew equally predictable derision from Pinochet's apologists in Chile and among the British right.
The Pinochet affair came several months after what could be called the "active" world community, largely consisting of United Nations members, decided to establish an international criminal court - a permanent tribunal for trying crimes such as genocide.
In the coverage of the often fraught five-week session which worked to formalise the court, many wild stories were written about how individuals such as Pol Pot, Radovan Karadzic and, occasionally, Augusto Pinochet, would be suitable subjects for this new legal forum. Few people expected the principle to see a specific example so soon.
Changes were also on the cards for young English woman Louise Woodward. Her appeal against a manslaughter conviction for baby Matthew Eappen was rejected, but she was still able to return to England in the middle of the year, two years after she started working as a nanny in Massachusetts.
But Louise, gradually transforming into a savvy media personality, was not yet out of the woods. The civil trial against her permitted by Massachusetts law (Echoes of the O.J. Simpson case in California last year) is continuing. Meantime, Louise has done what any sensible young person who has gone through all that would: she has started to study law.
Television presenter Ulrika Jonsson had the honour of hosting Eurovision in the spring, when the winner was Israeli transsexual Dana, who added International to her name to avoid confusion with Ireland's own treasured former winner and presidential candidate. But during the World Cup in July Ulrika's run of luck ended with a thump in a French bar when boyfriend Stan Collymore lost his temper with her.
Nelson Mandela changed his status, as did Graca Machel, from formerly to currently married when in July, after months of rumours and denials, they celebrated joyously and in private, their wedding.
It was a sideways move seen initially as a step down when Ginger Spice, born Geraldine Halliwell, left the phenomenal girl group in the summer. Subsequently she became a UN goodwill ambassador for children's issues, and was seen in discreet cardigans instead of Union Jack mini-dresses. She also sang a Marilyn Monroe style happy birthday greeting to the Prince of Wales when he attained his half-century in November. Apparently he is a great Ginger fan. Who would have thought the royal taste tended to the obvious?
Marital infidelity in the prince's unhappy marriage was still fodder for the press and public, but marital infidelity on the part of the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook occupied public attention very early in the year. Mr Cook, who has been wrestling with the "ethical dimension" in his foreign policy, got plentiful support from his prime minister during this difficult time. He divorced wife Margaret with alacrity, married secretary Gaynor Regan and went back to his more high-minded international affairs.
Such generous Blair support was conspicuously absent when a sexual scandal of a less acceptable hue - pink - washed around the British cabinet in October, after Welsh Secretary Ron Davies's puzzling nocturne on Clapham Common led to his resignation and a spate of outings of gay ministers including Agriculture Minister Nick Brown and, allegedly, Peter Mandelson. Is Britain being run by a gay mafia? demanded the Sun - about 10 days after declaring in an editorial that one's sexual predilections had no bearing on how one did one's political job.
This unfortunately is not a view shared by the long-time Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. In Malaysia homosexual acts are illegal, and it was on this charge that Dr Mahathir's deputy and erstwhile heir-apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, was sent before a court that sometimes seemed to have come out of Alice in Wonderland.
"Off with his head" was not actually shouted by Judge Augustine Paul, but the international diplomats observing this trial were shocked at what appeared to be a travesty of a fair hearing.
Further south, in the Australian election in October, Pauline Hanson, the red-headed racist from Queensland, was sent packing by voters. Back to the fish-and-chip shop.
It was a good year for British nurses Lucille McLauchlan and Deborah Parry, who were released from a Saudi jail despite being convicted of the murder of an Australian colleague, Yvonne Gilford. However, Lucille found herself in a courtroom setting again in November in her native Scotland when a charge of theft was heard.
Shocking stories, as ever, abounded. The dreadful fate of a handicapped black American, James Byrd jnr, who was picked up when hitchhiking in the south by two white men who proceeded to beat him senseless and then drag his still living body behind their truck, sent a chill reminiscent of the Ku Klux-Klan.
Nature triumphed as ever, and 1998 was a vintage year for disasters. Hurricane Mitch caused a terrible toll of death and suffering in central America. In July a tsunami, or sea surge as they are now more prosaically known, struck a remote area of Papua New Guinea, killing thousands and leaving devastation and disease in its wake.
For tales that were just plain terrifying on a personal scale, the story of Jack Nairn, the Australian pleasure boat captain who took a party out to one of the reefs of the Queensland coast which appear for just a few hours a day was hard to beat. For Capt Nairn left two of his party out there. Their bodies have not been recovered, and Capt Nairn is to stand trial for manslaughter.
And in the how-could-they? category, the tale of Hull blonde Tracy Nolan ranks high. Mrs Nolan is the woman who sent her three children, aged nine, 10 and 11, to the British consulate in Istanbul in a taxi with a note asking consular staff to arrange for them to be flown back to Britain.
Mrs Nolan, who had a husband already, had fallen in love with a Jordanian waiter and could no longer support the children, she said. She's still out there, somewhere.