What Happened in 1897

Major Events

  • Jan 1 1st football game between black colleges-Atlanta U 10, Tuskegee 0
  • Jan 7 Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil, opens with a performance by Italian tenor Enrico Caruso
  • Jan 8 Michael Eagan wins 1st US national amateur handball championship
  • Jan 10 Henrik Ibsen's play "John Gabriel Borkman" premieres in Helsingfors
  • Jan 10 Ukrainian bacteriologist Wademar Haffkine performs the first human trial for a vaccine for the plague on himself during the Bombay epidemic
  • Jan 10 Vincent d'Indy's "Istar" premieres in Amsterdam & Brussels
  • Jan 11 Martha Hughes Cannon takes office as the 1st woman state senator in US, in Utah, after defeating her own husband
  • Jan 14 6,960 m (22,834 ft) Cerro Aconcagua (Argentina) 1st climbed by European expedition led by British mountaineer Edward FitzGerald
  • Jan 16 American scholar John Dewey's essay "My Pedagogic Creed" appears in School Journal
  • Jan 23 Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Resulting murder trial of her husband perhaps only case in US history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.
  • More 1897 Events

1897 in Film & TV

  • Aug 31 Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope [kinetographic camera], a device which produces moving pictures

1897 in Sport

  • Mar 17 British boxer Bob Fitzsimmons KOs American champion 'Gentleman' Jim Corbett in the 14th round to win World Heavyweight title in Carson City, Nevada
  • Apr 19 1st Boston Marathon (B.A.A. Road Race), won by John J. McDermott in 2:55:10; the world's oldest annual marathon inspired by success of the first marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics

Did You Know?

"Dracula" by Irish author Bram Stoker is published by Archibald Constable and Company in London

May 26, 1897


More People Born in 1897

Fun Fact About 1897

Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Resulting murder trial of her husband perhaps only case in US history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.

January 23, 1897


More 1897 Deaths

Famous Weddings in 1897

  • Sep 8 Confederate General James Longstreet (76) weds Helen Dortch (34) at the governor's mansion in Atlanta, Georgia