1897

1897 (MDCCCXCVII) was a common year beginning on a Friday according to the Gregorian calendar.

Events

February

• 7 February: in Madrid (Spain) Benito Pérez Galdós is received by the Royal Spanish Academy.

March

• March 4: Republican William McKinley takes office as President of the United States.

April

• April 20: the city of Barcelona grows quickly and engulle several populations.

June

• 12 June:
  • In Assam, India, at 11:06 (local time) an earthquake of 8.3 degrees leaves a balance of 1500 victims. See Major earthquakes between the 10th and the 19th century.
  • In Barcelona, Pere Romeu opens the iconic café Els Quatre Gats, a meeting place for artists from Catalan Modernism and where Pablo Picasso made his first solo exhibition.

July

• July 2: In Italy, Guglielmo Marconi patents the telegraph without threads.

August

• 4 August: In Spain the bust of the Lady of Elche was accidentally discovered, made by an Iberian artist between the 5th and the 4th centuries. C.
• August 25: Uruguayan President Juan Idiarte Borda is murdered in Montevideo. It's the only registered magniicide in that country.
• August 31: Thomas Edison patents the kinetoscope, the first film projector.

September

• September 6: in Buenos Aires, the politicians Lisandro de la Torre and Hipólito Yrigoyen are beaten to a duel to the Navajas.
• September 16: In Mexico, during the celebration of the 87th anniversary of the Independence of Mexico, an attack was carried out on President Porfirio Díaz.
• 20 and 21 September: Two earthquakes of 7.4 and 7.5 are recorded on the Philippine island of Mindanao, causing tsunamis that leave hundreds of victims and much destruction.

October

• 21 October: in San José, Costa Rica, the National Theatre is opened with opera Fausto Charles Gounod.
• October 27: The Magellan Sports Club was founded in Chile, the first tri-campion team in that country.
• 29 October: the propaganda minister of the Third Reich Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt (Germany).

November

• 1 November: In Turin, Italy, the football club Juventus FC was founded.
• 9 November: In Buenos Aires, the Catholic charity organization Caritas was founded.
• November 19: William McKinley announced the US intervention in the Cuban insurrection against Spain.

December

• 2 December: Spain grants autonomy to Puerto Rico.
• December 14: In the Philippines, Spanish general Fernando Primo de Rivera and Filipino independentist leader Emilio Aguinaldo signed the Biak-na-Bató Pact, which ended the independentist insurrection against Spain.
• 27 December: in the Porte-Saint-Martin theater (Paris) the Cyrano de Bergerac is staged, heroic drama in five acts and in verse of the French poet and playwright Edmond Rostand.

Unknown date

• The First Zionist Congress is held in Basel, Switzerland.
• In Madagascar, the French army defeats Queen Ranavalona III of the merina and annexes the island as a colony.
• General Eloy Alfaro is made with power in Ecuador.
• In the province of Mendoza (Argentina) the first ascension to the Aconcagua mountain, the highest in the American continent is carried out.
• War between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
• David Hilbert publishes his monumental work on the theory of numerical fields and later clarifies the foundations of geometry.
• Ziolkovsky the rocket engine inventor creates the first aerodynamic tube.

Art and literature

• Maximum Gorki: The husbands Orlov.
• George Bernard Shaw: You can never know..
• H. G. Wells: The invisible man.
• Bram Stoker: Dracula.
• Edmond Rostand: Cyrano de Bergerac.
• Arthur Conan Doyle: Scarlet Study.

Science and technology

• Félix Hoffman (1867-1946, German chemical) synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
• Guillermo Marconi: wireless telegraph.
• Joseph John Thomson, University of Cambridge, discovers the electron.
• Martinus Beijerink discovers that viruses can be reproduced, thus demonstrating that they are not treated with some type of toxin.
• Merriam describes for the first time the sea bear of the island of Guadalupe (Arctocephalus townsendi).
• Lady of Elche. It was discovered on 4 August in La Alcudia, near Elche, Alicante (Spain).

• In Vienna, Austria, Austrian composer Gustav Mahler begins to lead the Vienna Opera, thus beginning his successful career as an orchestra director.

Sports

Tennis

• Universidad de Estados Unidos:
  • Individual winner: Juliette Atkinson by the United States.
  • Individual winner: Robert Wrenn by United States.

• Wimbledon Championship:
  • Individual winner: Blanche Bingley by United Kingdom.
  • Individual winner: Reginald Doherty by UK.

• French Championship:
  • Individual winner: Adine Masson for France.
  • Individual winner: Paul Aymé by UK.

Births

Marion Davies was born on January 3.

Princess Tatiana of Russia was born on June 10.

January

• January 3: Marion Davies, American actress (f. 1961).
• January 6: María Josefa Cerrato Rodríguez, veterinaria española (f. 1981).
• January 9: Luis Gianneo, Argentine musical composer (f. 1968).
• 17 January: Lili Bleeker, Dutch entrepreneurship and physics (f. 1985).
• 25 January:
  • Florián Rey, actor and Spanish director (f. 1962).
  • Fernando Márquez Miranda, Argentinian archaeologist (f. 1961).
• January 29: Georges Catroux, French military (f. 1969).
• January 31: Ignacio Chávez Sánchez, Mexican cardiologist (f. 1979).

February

• February 2: Gertrude Blanch, American pioneer in computing and numerical analysis (f. 1996).
• 4 February: Ludwig Erhard, German politician, Federal Chancellor between 1963 and 1966 (f. 1977).
• February 5: Jorge Herrán, Uruguayan architect (f. 1969).

March

• March 2: Lola Cueto, Mexican Polyphacetic Artist (f. 1978).
• 8 March: Josep Pla, Spanish writer and journalist (f. 1981).
• 22 March: Pierre de Gaulle, a French politician (f. 1959).
• March 23: Raúl Porras Barrenechea, historian, lawyer, essayist, diplomat and Peruvian politician (f.1960).
• March 24: Wilhelm Reich, Austrian psychologist (f. 1957).
• March 28: Sepp Herberger, footballer and German coach (f. 1977).

April

• April 12: Julio Cueva, trompetista, composer and director of Cuban orchestra (f. 1975).
• April 14: Edgardo Donato, director of orchestra, composer and violinist Argentinian (f. 1963).
• April 24: Manuel Ávila Camacho, Mexican military and political, president between 1940 and 1946 (f. 1955).

May

• 2 May: Gregorio Prieto, a Spanish painter (f. 1992).
• May 8: José María Pemán, journalist and Spanish playwright (f. 1981).
• May 18: Frank Capra, American filmmaker (f. 1991).
• May 23: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Austrian composer. Father of the soundtracks of Californian cinema.
• May 29: Zhou Fohai, vice president of China during the Second World War (f. 1948).

June

• June 1st: Toño Salazar, cartoonist, illustrator and Salvadoran diplomat (f. 1986).
• June 7: George Szell, director of Hungarian-American orchestra and musician (f. 1970).
• 10 June: Tatiana Nikolayevna of Russia, great Russian duchess (f. 1918).
• 12 June:
  • Sir Anthony Eden, British politician (f. 1977).
  • Josefina Acosta de Barón, composer, pianist and Colombian teacher (f. ??).
• June 24: Hermann Busch, a German cellist (f. 1975).

July

• July 1: Alfonso Esguerra Gómez, doctor, physiologist and Colombian surgeon (f. 1967).
• July 16: Manuel Ortiz Guerrero, Paraguayan poet (f. 1933).
• July 20: Tadeus Reichstein, Swiss doctor, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1950 (f. 1996).
• July 24: Amelia Earhart, American airliner and pilot, the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean (f. 1937).
• July 29: Sofia Cancino de Cuevas, composer, pianist, opera promoter, singer and the first director of Mexican symphonic orchestra. (f. 1982).

August

• 2 August:
  • Philippe Soupault, French surrealist writer (f. 1990).
  • Ricardo Pampuri, physician and saint Italian (f. 1930).
• August 6: Andrés Eloy Blanco, Venezuelan poet and politician (f. 1955).
• 9 August:
  • Lauretta Bender, American neuropsychiatrist (f. 1987).
  • Marta Brunet, Chilean writer and diplomat (f. 1967).
• August 16: Vicente Ascone, composer, trumpeter and professor of Uruguayan music (f. 1979).
• 17 August: António Botto, Portuguese poet (f. 1959).
• 28 August:
  • Charles Boyer, French actor (f. 1978).
  • Horacio Butler, a plastic artist and an Argentine writer (f. 1983).
• August 31: Fredric March, American actor (f. 1975).

September

• September 8: Juan Natalicio González, politician, poet, sociologist, Paraguayan writer and journalist (f. 1966).
• September 12: Irène Joliot-Curie, a French chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 (f. 1956).
• September 14: Eduardo Blanco Amor, Spanish writer and journalist (f. 1979).

Arturo Barea

• September 16: Pilar Bayona López de Ansó, a Spanish pianist (f. 1979).
• September 20: Arturo Barea, Spanish writer (f. 1957).
• September 25: William Faulkner, American writer (f. 1962).
• September 26: Giovanni Battista Montini, future Pope Paul VI (f. 1978).

October

• October 3: Gonzalo Delgrás, film director and Spanish producer. (f. 1984).
• 5 October:
  • Gaspar Cassadó, violonchelist and Spanish composer (f. 1966).
  • Juan Del Prete, painter, artist, sculptor, scenographer, plotter and self-taught photographer (f. 1987).
• 7 October: Julio Ruiz de Alda, Spanish aviator (f. 1936).
• October 8: Rouben Mamoulian, American filmmaker (f. 1987).
• October 23: Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, comediographer, diplomat and Spanish journalist (f. 1975).
• October 29: Joseph Goebbels, German politician, propaganda minister of Adolf Hitler (f. 1945).
• October 30: Francisco de Val, Spanish composer (f. 1984).

November

• 4 November: Edavalath Kakkath Janaki Ammal, botany, and Indian cytologist (f. 1984).
• 14 November: Conchita Badía, soprano y pianista española (f. 1975).
• November 24: Lucky Luciano, mafioso italoestadounidense founder of the Commission (f. 1962).

Miguel Fleta

• 26 November: Luis Batlle Berres, politician and Uruguayan president (f. 1964).
• November 26: Manuel A. Odría, a Peruvian politician, president between 1948 and 1956 (f. 1974).
• November 28: Felix Armando Núñez, poet, essayist and Venezuelan literary critic (f. 1972).

December

• 1 December: Miguel Fleta, Spanish tenor (f. 1938).
• December 5: Nunnally Johnson, writer, producer and filmmaker (f. 1977).
• 12 December: Magdalena Aulina, Spanish religious (f. 1956).
• 14 December: Georges Thill, French tenor (f. 1984).
• December 23: Rafael Rivelles, a Spanish actor (f. 1971).
• 26 December: Martin Domínguez Esteban, Spanish architect (f. 1970).

Deaths

The religious Teresa of Lisieux died on September 30th.

January

• 1 January: Adolfo Caminha, Brazilian writer (n. 1867).

February

• February 2: Luisa Fernanda de Borbón, aristocrat española (n. 1832).
• February 19: Karl Weierstrass, German mathematician (n. 1815).

March

• March 2: Guillermo Prieto, Mexican poet, politician and journalist (n. 1818)
• March 7: Gustav Adolph Kenngott, German mineralogist (n. 1818).
• March 20: Apolón Máikov, Russian poet (n. 1821).

April

• April 3: Johannes Brahms, German composer (n. 1833).

June

• June 18: Eloy Gonzalo, a Spanish military officer (n. 1868).

July

• 9 July: Augustine Tolton, American priest (n. 1854).
• July 19: Ambrosio López Pinzón, Colombian artisan and politician (n. 1809).

August

• August 8: Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Spanish politician (n. 1828).
• August 25: Juan Idiarte Borda, president of Uruguay (n. 1844).

September

• September 30: Teresa de Lisieux, nun and Saint-French (n. 1873).
• September 30: Manuel Baquedano, Chilean military (n. 1823).

October

• October 27: Carlos Antúnez González, a Chilean politician (n. 1847).

November

• November 23: Ramon List, explorer and genocidal Argentinean (n. 1856).

December

• 16 December: Alphonse Daudet, French novelist (n. 1840).