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 11 » Salomon August Andrée leaves Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashes and dies.
August 10 » German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovers an improved way of synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
September 1 » The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
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.
Day of death January 26, 1898
The temperature on January 26, 1898 was about 4.8 °C. The airpressure was 77 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 98%. Source: KNMI
January 1 » New York, New York annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, are joined on January 25 by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.
February 23 » Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing J'Accuse…!, a letter accusing the French government of antisemitism and wrongfully imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
March 16 » In Melbourne the representatives of five colonies adopted a constitution, which would become the basis of the Commonwealth of Australia.
June 21 » The United States captures Guam from Spain. The few warning shots fired by the U.S. naval vessels are misinterpreted as salutes by the Spanish garrison, which was unaware that the two nations were at war.
June 27 » The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.
November 10 » Beginning of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in United States history.
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/I108845.php : accessed October 15, 2026), "Melle Westra (1897-1898)".
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.