1997

1997	Colombia [fiction]	The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez publishes his novel News of a Kidnapping.
1997	England, Russia [historical study]	The English historian Orlando Figes publishes A People's Tragedy, a history of the Russian Revolution.
1997	Japan [toys and games]	The Tamagotchi toy, a pocket-sized electronic (or virtual) pet that requires daily attention from its owner to continue to function, is launched in Japan. It quickly becomes very popular worldwide, both with children and adults.
23 January 1997	Switzerland [political events]	Switzerland establishes a fund to compensate victims of the Holocaust and their families following the discovery of Nazi gold in Swiss banks.
19 February 1997	China [political events]	Deng Xiaoping, China's ‘paramount leader’ since 1980–97, chief architect of China's social reform, dies in Beijing, China (93).
27 February 1997	UK [biology]	Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, announces that British geneticists have cloned an adult sheep. A cell was taken from the udder of the mother sheep and its DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) combined with an unfertilized egg that had had its DNA removed. The fused cells were grown in the laboratory and then implanted into the uterus of a surrogate mother sheep. The resulting lamb, Dolly, came from an animal that was six years old. This is the first time cloning has been achieved using cells other than reproductive cells. The news is met with international calls to prevent the cloning of humans.
23 March 1997	world, USA [astronomy]	The comet Hale-Bopp comes to within 190 million km/120 million mi of Earth, the closest since 2000 BC. NASA launches rockets to study the comet. Its icy nucleus is estimated to be 40 km/25 mi wide, making it at least ten times larger than that of the comet Hyakutake and twice the size of Halley's Comet.
31 March 1997	USA [terrorism]	The trial of Timothy McVeigh, charged with the Oklahoma City bombing of 19 April 1995, opens in Denver, Colorado; on 2 June, McVeigh is found guilty and on 13 June he is sentenced to death.
22 April 1997	Peru [terrorism]	Troops storm the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, ending the hostage crisis which began on 17 December 1996; all 14 Tupac Amarú guerrillas are killed.
1 May 1997	UK [elections]	The Labour Party led by Tony Blair wins the general election in Britain; Labour wins 418 seats, the Conservatives 165, and the Liberal Democrats 46; the following day John Major resigns as leader of the Conservative Party.
16 May - 17 May 1997	Zaire [political events]	Antigovernment Tutsi rebels take Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, and President Mobutu Sese Seko flees. The country is renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.
23 May 1997	Belarus, Russia [treaties]	A Union Charter linking Belarus and Russia and aiming at eventual unification of the two countries is signed by presidents Alexander Lukashenko and Boris Yeltsin.
29 May 1997	Zaire [political events]	The antigovernment Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Kabila is sworn in as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire).
June 1997	UK [fiction]	English writer J K Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book of what becomes her best-selling children's series about a schoolboy wizard.
20 June 1997	USA [law and government]	In a landmark agreement, US tobacco companies agree to settle claims made against them by former smokers by paying $368.5 billion into a compensation fund over the next 25 years. This is in exchange for the industry's immunity from legal action.
25 June 1997	France [births and deaths]	Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer who invented the aqualung, dies in Paris, France (87).
26 June 1997	[maths]	The English mathematician Andrew Wiles is awarded the Wolfskehl Prize for solving Fermat's last theorem. The most notorious problem in mathematics, the Last Theorem was created in the 17th century by the French judge Pierre de Fermat, who studied mathematics in his spare time. In 1908 the German industrialist Paul Wolfskehl bequeathed DM100,000 (£1 million by today's value) to be given to the first person to prove it.
28 June 1997	USA, World [boxing]	Evander Holyfield of the USA retains his World Boxing Association (WBA) world heavyweight title in Las Vegas, Nevada, when the challenger Mike Tyson of the USA is disqualified in the third round for biting Holyfield's ear. Tyson is subsequently fined $3 million and banned from fighting but he is allowed to keep his $30-million purse.
July 1997	UK [civic and commercial buildings]	Building begins on the Millennium Dome, a temporary structure to house a millennium exhibition, designed by British architect Richard Rogers, in Greenwich, London, England.
2 July 1997	USA [births and deaths]	James Stewart, US actor, dies in Beverly Hills, California (89).
4 July 1997	USA [space exploration]	The US spacecraft Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars. Two days later the probe's rover Sojourner, a six-wheeled vehicle that is controlled by an Earth-based operator, begins to explore the area around the spacecraft.
4 August 1997	UK, Peru, Australia, India, South America [computing]	Using computer models, British meteorologist Alan O'Neill demonstrates a connection between the collapse of anchovy fishing in Peru, drought in Australia, and the late arrival of India's monsoons and El Niño, the warm water current off South America's west coast.
7 August 1997	USA [space exploration]	The US Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reports the discovery of bacteria on Mars, but later reports there was no bacterial life after all.
31 August 1997	France, UK [births and deaths]	Diana Spencer, princess of Wales, humanitarian, and charity worker, is killed in a car crash in the Place de l'Alma underpass in Paris, France, along with her companion Dodi Fayed, and their driver (36).
1 September 1997	USA [welfare]	Wisconsin introduces a welfare program called ‘Wisconsin Works’ or ‘W2’. The program assumes that every welfare claimant is capable of some type of work and eliminates automatic welfare entitlement. Wisconsin is the first state to do so.
6 September 1997	India [births and deaths]	Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Albanian-born Indian ascetic who founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, devoted to helping the poor, dies in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India (87).
20 September 1997	UK [popular music]	The English pop star Elton John releases the single ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’ as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales. It goes immediately to number one and becomes the best-selling single of all time.
2 October 1997	UK [health and medicine]	The UK scientists Moira Bruce and, independently, John Collinge, and their colleagues show that the new variant form of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans is the same disease as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or ‘mad cow disease’) in cows.
December 1997	USA [law and government]	Lorillard Tobacco Co. pays the family of Milton Horowitz over US$1.5 million, the first time a US tobacco company has ever paid a smoking-related personal injury claim.
12 December 1997	USA [legislation]	The US Justice Department orders Microsoft to sell its Internet browser separately from its Windows operating system to prevent it from building a monopoly of Web access programs.