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).
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.
June 4 » Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
November 17 » The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which later became the first ice hockey league to openly trade and hire players, began play at Pittsburgh's Schenley Park Casino.
December 10 » Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi premieres in Paris. A riot breaks out at the end of the performance.
Day of death January 17, 1897
The temperature on January 17, 1897 was about -0.2 °C. The airpressure was 76 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 96%. 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.
May 26 » Dracula, a Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, is published.
September 12 » Tirah Campaign: In the Battle of Saragarhi, ten thousand Pashtun tribesmen suffer several hundred casualties while attacking 21 Sikh soldiers in British service.
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.
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/I25973.php : accessed October 24, 2026), "Roelof Wobbes (1896-1897)".
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