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Year '1897' ('MDCCCXCVII') was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1897

January - March

April - June

July - September

October - December

Undated

Births

January - June

July - December

Deaths

January-June

July-December

1897 in fiction

Events of 1897

January - March

★ January 4 - A British force is ambushed by Chief Ologbosere, son-in-law of the Oba of Benin. This leads to a Punitive Expedition against Benin.

★ January 23 - Elva Zona Heaster found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband was perhaps the only case in United States history where the testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.

★ February 2 - Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capitol, is destroyed by fire.

★ February 10 - Freedom of religion is proclaimed in Madagascar.

★ February 18 - Benin is put to the torch by the Punitive Expedition.

★ March 4 - William McKinley succeeds Grover Cleveland as President of the United States.

★ March 13 - San Diego State University is founded.

April - June

★ April 1 Jandamarra died

★ April 5 - "Ordinance of April 5," equalizing German and Czech in Bohemia, signed in Austria-Hungary (see Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni).


★ April 27 - Grant's Tomb is dedicated.



★ May 1 - The Tennessee Centennial Exposition opens in Nashville, for 6 months, illuminated by many electric lights.

★ May 10 - Snaefell Mining Disaster in the Isle of Man, 1897

★ May 18 - Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.

★ May 19 - Oscar Wilde is released from prison.


★ June 1 - The great miners strike of 1897 begins. The strike would successfully establish the United Mine Workers Union and brought about the 8-hour work day to the mines.

★ June 2 - Mark Twain, responding to rumors that he was dead, is quoted by the ''New York Journal'' as saying, "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

★ June 12 - World's first Fingerprint Bureau opens in Calcutta (now Kolkata) India after the Council of the Governor General approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal records.

★ June 22 - Queen Victoria celebrates her Diamond Jubilee.

July - September

★ July 11 - S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 begins. The ill-fated expedition to fly over the arctic results in the death of the entire team within months.

★ July 17 - Klondike Gold Rush begins when first successful prospectors arrive in Seattle.

★ July 25 - Writer Jack London sails to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he will write his first successful stories.

★ July 31 - First ascent of Mount Saint Elias, second highest peak in the United States and Canada.

★ August 29 - First Zionist Congress convenes in Basel, Switzerland.


★ September 1 - The Boston subway opens, becoming the first underground metro in North America.

★ September 10 - In the Lattimer Massacre, a sheriff's posse killes more than nineteen unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.

★ September 11 - After months of searching, generals of Menelik II of Ethiopia capture Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom.

★ September 20 - Greece and Turkey sign a peace treaty to end the Greco-Turkish War.

October - December

★ October 2 - The first issue is published of the radical paper ''Tocsin''.

★ October 6 - Ethiopia uses tricolore flag: green is for the land, yellow for peace, and red is symbolic of strength.

★ October 12 - The USS ''Baltimore'' (Cruiser # 3, later CM-1) is recommissioned, since 1890, for several months of duty in the Hawaiian Islands.

★ October 13 - The HMS Canopus (1898), a pre-Dreadnought battleship of the British Royal Navy, is launched at Portsmouth, England (will be deployed widely in World War I).

★ December 9 - First issue of the feminist newspaper ''La Fronde'' is published by Marguerite Durand.

★ December 28 - The play ''Cyrano de Bergerac'', by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.

★ December 30 - Natal annexes Zululand.

Undated

★ France allows women to study at the ''Ecole des Beaux-Arts''.

★ First use of the word "computer" meaning an electronic calculation device.

★ Coseley Urban District Council is formed.

★ Dos Equis is first brewed in anticipation of new century.

★ J. J. Thomson discovers the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1800 times smaller than a proton (in the nucleus).

Births

January - June

★ January 3 - Marion Davies, American actress (d. 1961)

★ January 21 - René Iché, French sculptor (d. 1954)

★ January 23

★
★ Subhash Chandra Bose, Indian political leader (d. 1945(?))

★
★ Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Austrian architect and anti-Nazi activist (d. 2000)

★ January 28 - Ivan Stedeford, British Industrialist (d. 1975)

★ February 4 - Ludwig Erhard, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1977)

★ February 7 - Quincy Porter, American composer (d. 1966)

★ February 10

★
★ John F. Enders, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1985)

★
★ Dame Judith Anderson, Australian actress (d. 1992)

★ February 21 - Elizabeth Harrison, daughter of President Benjamin Harrison and Mary Dimmick Harrison (d. 1955)

★ February 27

★
★ Ferdinand Heim, WWII German general, the "Scapegoat of Stalingrad" (d. 1977)

★
★ Marian Anderson, American contralto (d. 1993)

★ March 1 - Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith (d. 1957)

★ March 4 - Lefty O'Doul, baseball player and restaurateur (d. 1969)

★ March 5 - Set Persson, Swedish communist politician (d. 1960)

★ March 15 - Jackson Scholz, American sprinter (d. 1986)

★ March 20 - Ruby Muhammad, African Americans' rights activist

★ March 24 - Wilhelm Reich, Austrian psychotherapist (d. 1957)

★ March 28 - Sepp Herberger, German football coach (d. 1977)

★ April 1 - Nita Naldi, American film actress (d. 1961)

★ April 7 - Walter Winchell, American broadcast journalist (d. 1972)

★ April 9 - John B. Gambling, American radio talk-show host (d. 1974)

★ April 19

★
★ Peter de Noronha, Indian businessman (d. 1970)

★
★ Constance Talmadge, American actress (d. 1973)

★ April 21 - Aiden Wilson Tozer, American Protestant pastor (d. 1963)

★ April 23 - Lester B. Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1972)

★ April 25 - Mary, Princess Royal of England (d. 1965)

★ April 26

★
★ Douglas Sirk, German-born director (d. 1987)

★
★ Eddie Eagan, American boxer and bobsledder (d. 1967)

★ May 2 - J. Fred Coots, American songwriter (d. 1985)

★ May 14 - Sidney Bechet, American musician (d. 1959)

★ May 17 - Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)

★ May 18 - Frank Capra, American producer, director, and writer (d. 1991)

★ May 19 - Frank Luke, American World War I pilot (d. 1918)

★ May 21 - Nikola Avramov, Bulgarian painter (d. 1945)

★ May 27 - John Cockcroft, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)

★ May 29 - Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Austrian composer (d. 1957)

★ June 7 - George Szell, Hungarian conductor (d. 1970)

★ June 10 - Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia (d. 1918)

★ June 12 - Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1977)

★ June 13 - Paavo Nurmi, Finnish runner (d. 1973)

★ June 16 - Georg Wittig, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)

★ June 19

★
★ Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)

★
★ Moe Howard, American comedian and actor (d. 1975)

★ June 22 - Edmund A. Chester, American Broadcaster and journalist (d. 1973)

July - December

★ July 20 - Tadeus Reichstein, Polish-born chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1996)

★ July 24 - Amelia Earhart, American aviator (d. 1937 - presumed)

★ July 29 - Sir Neil Ritchie, British general (d. 1983)

★ August 2 - Max Weber, Swiss Federal Councilor (d. 1974)

★ August 5 - Aksel Larsen, Danish politician (d. 1972)

★ August 28 - Charles Boyer, French actor (d. 1978)

★ September 1 - Andy Kennedy, Northern Irish footballer (d. 1963)

★ September 8 - Jimmie Rodgers, American singer (d. 1933)

★ September 12 - Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 1956)

★ September 17 - Earl Webb, baseball player (d. 1965)

★ September 23 - Walter Pidgeon, Canadian actor (d. 1984)

★ September 25 - William Faulkner, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)

★ September 26

★
★ Pope Paul VI (d. 1978)

★
★ Arthur Rhys Davids, English pilot (d. 1917)

★ Ocking Jayat Mayaj - 19 december, actor (d. 1991)

★ October 2 - Bud Abbott, American actor (d. 1974)

★ October 3 - Louis Aragon, French author (d. 1982)

★ October 15 - Johannes Sikkar, Estonian statesman (d. 1960)

★ October 20 - Yi Un, Korean Crown Prince (d. 1970)

★ October 29 - Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi propagandist (d. 1945)

★ November 9 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1978)

★ November 15 - Sacheverell Sitwell, English author (d. 1988)

★ November 17 - Frank Fay, American actor and first husband of Barbara Stanwyck (d. 1961)

★ November 18 - Patrick Blackett, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)

★ November 23 - Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Bengali author (d. 1999)

★ November 24 - Charlie Luciano, Sicilian-American mobster (d. 1962)

★ November 30 - Virginia Henderson, American nurse theorist (d. 1996)

★ December 18 - Fletcher Henderson, American musician (d. 1952)

★ December 30 - Alfredo Bracchi, Italian author (d. 1976)

Deaths

January-June

★ February 4 - Major Charles Bendire, U.S. Army captain and ornithologist (b. 1836)

★ February 19 - Karl Weierstrass, German mathematician (b. 1815)

★ March 11 - Henry Drummond, Scottish evangelical writer and lecturer (b. 1851)

★ March 19 - Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie, Irish-born traveler (b. 1810)

★ April 3 - Johannes Brahms, German composer (b. 1833)

★ April 10 - Friedrich Franz III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (b. 1851)

★ May 4 - Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria (b. 1847)

★ May 10 - Andrés Bonifacio, Filipino revolutionary (b. 1863)

July-December

★ September 9

★
★ Richard Holt Hutton, English writer and theologian (b. 1826)

★
★ Ferenc Pulszky, Hungarian politician (b. 1814)

★ September 21 - Wilhelm Wattenbach, German historian (b. 1819)

★ September 30 - St Therese of Lisieux, Catholic saint (b. 1873)

★ October 29 - Henry George, American economist (b. 1839)

★ November - Francisco Gonzalo Marin, Cuban poet and freedom fighter (b. 1863)

★ November 3 - Thomas Lanier Clingman, "Prince of Politicians" (b. 1812)

★ November 19 - William Seymour Tyler, American educator and historian (b. 1810)

★ November 20 - Ernest Giles, Australian explorer (b. 1835)

★ December 17 - Alphonse Daudet, French writer (b. 1840)

★ ''date unknown'' - Owon, Korean painter (b. 1843)

1897 in fiction

Fictional references to the year 1897:

★ According to ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'', Baby Herman was supposedly created in 1897.

★ In M. Night Shyamalan's film ''The Village'', the setting for the village is in 1897.

★ Many adaptations of ''Dracula'' are set in 1897 (year of publication).

★ In the 1939 Will Hay film ''Convict 99'', the convict ''Jerry the Mole'' was imprisoned in 1897.

★ Erich von Raitenau "Adam" from the Trauma Center Series is born this year.