January 28 » Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2mph (3.2km/h).
June 2 » Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his wireless telegraph.
July 9 » William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetallism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
August 16 » Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
December 14 » The Glasgow Underground Railway is opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.
December 17 » Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Schenley Park Casino, which was the first multi-purpose arena with the technology to create an artificial ice surface in North America, is destroyed in a fire.
Day of death August 4, 1897
The temperature on August 4, 1897 was about 23.5 °C. The airpressure was 77 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 59%. Source: KNMI
January 31 » Czechoslav Trade Union Association is founded in Prague.
February 28 » Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, is deposed by a French military force.
November 1 » The first Library of Congress building opens its doors to the public; the library had previously been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.
December 6 » London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs.
December 9 » Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde in Paris.
December 30 » The British Colony of Natal annexes Zululand.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Sim Mostert, "Genealogy Pot en Smit", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/genealogie_pot_smit/I7078.php : accessed October 2, 2026), "DERKJE LAMBERTS (1896-1897)".
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