January 18 » An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.
February 21 » An Englishman raised in Australia, Bob Fitzsimmons, fought an Irishman, Peter Maher, in an American promoted event which technically took place in Mexico, winning the 1896 World Heavyweight Championship in boxing.
April 15 » Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
May 26 » Nicholas II becomes the last Tsar of Imperial Russia.
August 17 » Bridget Driscoll became the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in the United Kingdom.
December 30 » Filipino patriot and reform advocate José Rizal is executed by a Spanish firing squad in Manila.
Day of death April 20, 1897
The temperature on April 20, 1897 was about 6.7 °C. The airpressure was 75 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 93%. Source: KNMI
January 31 » Czechoslav Trade Union Association is founded in Prague.
April 30 » J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London.
May 26 » Dracula, a Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, is published.
July 11 » Salomon August Andrée leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies.
September 11 » After months of pursuit, generals of Menelik II of Ethiopia capture Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, bringing an end to that ancient kingdom.
December 30 » The British Colony of Natal annexes Zululand.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Eva Drenth, "Family tree Diverse", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-drenth/I20535.php : accessed January 26, 2026), "Alida Groot (1896-1897)".
Copy warning
Genealogical publications are copyright protected. Although data is often retrieved from public archives, the searching, interpreting, collecting, selecting and sorting of the data results in a unique product. Copyright protected work may not simply be copied or republished.
Please stick to the following rules
Request permission to copy data or at least inform the author, chances are that the author gives permission, often the contact also leads to more exchange of data.
Do not use this data until you have checked it, preferably at the source (the archives).
State from whom you have copied the data and ideally also his/her original source.