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.
March 1 » Battle of Adwa: An Ethiopian army defeats an outnumbered Italian force, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
March 1 » Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay.
April 6 » In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I.
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 12, 1897
The temperature on August 12, 1897 was about 19.5 °C. The airpressure was 76 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 63%. Source: KNMI
February 28 » Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, is deposed by a French military force.
April 18 » The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
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.
June 16 » A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.
July 2 » British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.
August 21 » Oldsmobile, an American automobile manufacturer and marque, is founded.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Hans Weening, "Family tree Weening", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-weening/I107741.php : accessed October 8, 2026), "Geertje van der Heide (1896-1897)".
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