British physicist J.J. Thomson announces the discovery of electrons

Year
1897
Month Day
April 30

On April 30, 1897, British physicist J.J. Thomson announced his discovery that atoms were made up of smaller components. This finding revolutionized the way scientists thought about the atom and had major ramifications for the field of physics. Though Thompson referred to them as “corpuscles,” what he found is more commonly known today as the electron.

Mankind had already discovered electric current and harnessed it to great effect, but scientists had not yet observed the makeup of atoms. Thomson, a highly-respected professor at Cambridge, determined the existence of electrons by studying cathode rays. He concluded that the particles making up the rays were 1,000 times lighter than the lightest atom, proving that something smaller than atoms existed. Thomson likened the composition of atoms to plum pudding, with negatively-charged “corpuscles” dotted throughout a positively-charged field.

The plum pudding analogy was disproved by Ernest Rutherford, a student and collaborator of Thomson’s, in Thomson’s lab at Cambridge in 1910. Rutherford’s conclusion that the positive charge of an atom resides in its nucleus established the model of the atom as we know it today. In addition to winning his own Nobel Prize, Thomson employed six research assistants who went on to win Nobel Prizes in physics and two, including Rutherford, who won Nobel Prizes for chemistry. His son, George Paget Thomson, also won a Nobel Prize for his study of electrons. Combined with his own research, the network of atomic researchers Thomson cultivated gave humanity a new and detailed understanding of the smallest building-blocks of the universe.

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Thomas Edison patents the Kinetograph

Year
1897
Month Day
August 31

Thomas Edison receives a patent for his movie camera, the Kinetograph. Edison had developed the camera and its viewer in the early 1890s and staged several demonstrations.

The camera was based on photographic principles discovered by still-photograph pioneers Joseph Nicephone Niepce and Louis Daguerre of France. In 1877, inventor Edward Muybridge developed a primitive form of motion pictures when Leland Stanford, governor of California, invited him to develop photo studies of animals in motion. Muybridge developed an ingenious system for photographing sequential motion, setting up 24 cameras attached to trip wires stretched across a racetrack. As the horse tripped each wire, the shutters snapped. The resulting series of photos could be projected as something resembling a motion picture. This breakthrough in the early 1870s inspired another student of animal motion, Etienne Jules Marey of France, to develop in 1882 a rotating camera rather like a rifle, where different pictures were taken in a rapid sequence by a rotating cartridge.

Unlike these earlier cameras, Edison’s Kinetoscope and Kinetograph used celluloid film, invented by George Eastman in 1889. In February 1893, Edison built a small movie studio that could be rotated to capture the best available sunlight. He showed the first demonstration of his films—featuring three of his workers pretending to be blacksmiths—in May 1893.

READ MORE: 6 Key Inventions by Thomas Edison

The invention inspired French inventors Louis and August Lumiere to develop a movie camera and projector, the Cinematographe, that allowed a large audience to view a film. Several other cameras and projectors were also developed in the late 1800s.

In 1898, Edison sued American Mutoscope and Biograph Pictures, claiming that the studio had infringed on his patent for the Kinetograph. He had entrusted the development of the machine to his assistant, W.L.K. Dickson, who left Edison’s company in 1895 and helped found Biograph. However, in 1902, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that although Thomas Edison had patented the Kinetograph, he only owned rights to the sprocket system that moved perforated film through the camera, not the entire concept of the movie camera.

In 1909, Edison and Biograph joined forces with other filmmakers to create the Motion Pictures Patents Company, an organization devoted to protecting patents and keeping other players from entering the film industry. In 1917, the Supreme Court dissolved the trust, and the Edison Company left the film industry the same year.

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First drunk driving arrest

Year
1897
Month Day
September 10

On September 10, 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building. Smith later pleaded guilty and was fined 25 shillings.

In the United States, the first laws against operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol went into effect in New York in 1910. In 1936, Dr. Rolla Harger, a professor of biochemistry and toxicology, patented the Drunkometer, a balloon-like device into which people would breathe to determine whether they were inebriated. In 1953, Robert Borkenstein, a former Indiana state police captain and university professor who had collaborated with Harger on the Drunkometer, invented the Breathalyzer. Easier-to-use and more accurate than the Drunkometer, the Breathalyzer was the first practical device and scientific test available to police officers to establish whether someone had too much to drink. A person would blow into the Breathalyzer and it would gauge the proportion of alcohol vapors in the exhaled breath, which reflected the level of alcohol in the blood.

Despite the invention of the Breathalyzer and other developments, it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that public awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving increased and lawmakers and police officers began to get tougher on offenders. In 1980, a Californian named Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver while walking home from a school carnival. The driver had three previous drunk-driving convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier. Lightner and MADD were instrumental in helping to change attitudes about drunk driving and pushed for legislation that increased the penalties for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. MADD also helped get the minimum drinking age raised in many states. Today, the legal drinking age is 21 everywhere in the United States and convicted drunk drivers face everything from jail time and fines to the loss of their driver’s licenses and increased car insurance rates. Some drunk drivers are ordered to have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles. These devices require a driver to breath into a sensor attached to the dashboard; the car won’t start if the driver’s blood alcohol concentration is above a certain limit.

Despite the stiff penalties and public awareness campaigns, drunk driving remains a serious problem in the United States. Each year, roughly 1,500 people die in alcohol-related crashes and almost 1.5 million people are arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

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First Boston Marathon held

Year
1897
Month Day
April 19

On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott of New York won the first Boston Marathon with a time of 2:55:10.

The Boston Marathon was the brainchild of Boston Athletic Association member and inaugural U.S. Olympic team manager John Graham, who was inspired by the marathon at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. With the assistance of Boston businessman Herbert H. Holton, various routes were considered, before a measured distance of 24.5 miles from the Irvington Oval in Boston to Metcalf’s Mill in Ashland was eventually selected.

Fifteen runners started the race but only 10 made it to the finish line. John J. McDermott, representing the Pastime Athletic Club of New York City, took the lead from Harvard athlete Dick Grant over the hills in Newton. Although he walked several times during the final miles, McDermott still won by a comfortable six-minute, fifty-two-seconds. McDermott had won the only other marathon on U.S. soil the previous October in New York.

The marathon’s distance was changed in 1908 in accordance with Olympic standards to its current length of 26 miles 385 yards.

The Boston Marathon was originally held on Patriot’s Day, April 19, a regional holiday that commemorates the beginning of the Revolutionary War. In years when the 19th fell on a Sunday, the race was held the following Monday. In 1969, Patriots Day was officially moved to the third Monday in April and the race has been held on that Monday ever since.

Women were not allowed to enter the Boston race officially until 1972, but Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb couldn’t wait: In 1966, she became the first woman to run the entire Boston Marathon, but had to hide in the bushes near the start until the race began. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, who had registered as “K. V. Switzer”, was the first woman to run with a race number. Switzer finished even though officials tried to physically remove her from the race after she was identified as a woman.

In the fall of 1971, the Amateur Athletics Union permitted its sanctioned marathons (including Boston) to allow female entry. Nina Kuscsik became the first official female participant to win the Boston Marathon in 1972. Seven other women started and finished that race.

In 1975, the Boston Marathon became the first major marathon to include a wheelchair division competition. Bob Hall won it in two hours, 58 minutes. The Boston Marathon was the scene of a 2013 terrorist attack that killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 others. 

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“Dracula” goes on sale in London

Year
1897
Month Day
May 26

The first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on May 26, 1897.

A childhood invalid, Stoker grew up to become a football (soccer) star at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduation, he got a job in civil service at Dublin Castle, where he worked for the next 10 years while writing drama reviews for the Dublin Mail on the side. In this way, Stoker met the well-respected actor Sir Henry Irving, who hired him as his manager. Stoker stayed in the post for most of the next three decades, writing Irving’s voluminous correspondence for him and accompanying him on tours in the United States. Over the years, Stoker began writing a number of horror stories for magazines, and in 1890 he published his first novel, The Snake’s Pass.

Stoker would go on to publish 17 novels in all, but it was his 1897 novel Dracula that eventually earned him literary fame and became known as a masterpiece of Victorian-era Gothic literature. Written in the form of diaries and journals of its main characters, Dracula is the story of a vampire who makes his way from Transylvania—a region of Eastern Europe now in Romania—to Yorkshire, England, and preys on innocents there to get the blood he needs to live. Stoker had originally named the vampire “Count Wampyr.” He found the name Dracula in a book on Wallachia and Moldavia written by retired diplomat William Wilkinson, which he borrowed from a Yorkshire public library during his family’s vacations there.

Vampires–who left their burial places at night to drink the blood of humans–were popular figures in folk tales from ancient times, but Stoker’s novel catapulted them into the mainstream of 20th-century literature. Upon its release, Dracula enjoyed moderate success, though when Stoker died in 1912 none of his obituaries even mentioned Dracula by name. Sales began to take off in the 1920s, when the novel was adapted for Broadway. Dracula mania kicked into even higher gear with Universal’s blockbuster 1931 film, directed by Tod Browning and starring the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. Dozens of vampire-themed movies, television shows and literature followed, though Lugosi, with his exotic accent, remains the quintessential Count Dracula. Late 20th-century examples of the vampire craze include the bestselling novels of American writer Anne Rice and the cult hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The 21st century saw the wildly popular Twilight film and book series. 

READ MORE: Vampires: Origins, Legends & Stories 

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Author Stephen Crane’s boat sinks


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Year
1897
Month Day
January 02

On January 2, 1897, American writer Stephen Crane survives the sinking of The Commodore off the coast of Florida. He will turn the harrowing adventure into his classic short story “The Open Boat” (1897).

The 25-year-old writer had gained international fame with the publication of his novel The Red Badge of Courage in 1896. A Civil War story told from the soldier’s point of view, the novel originally appeared as a syndicated newspaper series.

Crane, the youngest of 14 children, was born in 1871 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. He became a journalist in New York, working short stints for various newspapers and living in near poverty. Immersed in the hand-to-mouth life of poor New York, Crane closely observed the characters around him, and in 1893, at age 23, he self-published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, about a poor girl’s decline into prostitution and suicide. The book was a critical success but failed to sell well. He turned his attention to more popular topics and began writing The Red Badge of Courage.

After the book’s success, the same newspaper syndicate dispatched Crane to write about the West and Mexico, and in 1897 Crane headed to Cuba to cover the insurrection against Spain. On the way there, he met his future lifelong companion, Cora Howard Taylor, the proprietress of a rundown hotel where he was staying. After The Commodore sank, Crane and four of his shipmates spent a day in a 10-foot lifeboat before they reached Daytona Beach. Crane published an account in a New York newspaper five days later, and “The Open Boat” was published in Scribner’s magazine the following June. Crane later covered the war between Greece and Turkey, and settled in England, where he befriended Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James.

Crane contracted tuberculosis in his late 20s. Cora Howard Taylor nursed him while he wrote furiously in an attempt to pay off his debts. He exhausted himself and exacerbated his condition. He died in June 1900, at the age of 28.

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Poet and playwright Oscar Wilde is released after two years in prison

Year
1897
Month Day
May 19

On May 19, 1897, writer Oscar Wilde is released from jail after two years of hard labor. His experiences in prison were the basis for his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898).

Wilde was born and educated in Ireland. He studied at Oxford, graduated with honors in 1878, and remained in London. He became a popular society figure valued at dinner parties for his witty remarks. Embracing the late 19th century aesthetic movement, which embraced art for art’s sake, Wilde adopted the flamboyant style of a passionate poet and self-published a volume of verse in 1881. He spent the following year in the United States lecturing on poetry and art. Wilde’s dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art were parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience in 1882.

After returning to Britain, Wilde married and had two children. In 1888, he published a collection of fairy tales he wrote for his children. Meanwhile, he wrote reviews and became editor of Women’s World. In 1891, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published. He wrote his first play, The Duchess of Padua, the same year and wrote five more before his arrest. His most successful comedies, including The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan, are still performed today.

In 1891, the Marquess of Queensbury denounced Wilde as a homosexual. Wilde, who was involved with the marquess’ son, sued the Marquess for libel but lost the case when evidence supported the marquess’ allegations. Because homosexuality was still considered a crime in England, Wilde was arrested. Although his first trial resulted in a hung jury, a second jury sentenced him to two years of hard labor. After his release, Wilde fled to Paris and began writing again. He died of acute meningitis just three years after his release.

READ MORE: How Oscar Wilde’s Libel Trial Backfired and Ruined His Life 

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Jack London sails for the Klondike

Year
1897
Month Day
July 25

Jack London leaves for the Klondike to join the gold rush, where he will write his first successful stories.

London was born in San Francisco in 1876. His father, an astrologer named Chaney, abandoned the family, and his mother, a spiritualist and music teacher, remarried. Jack assumed his stepfather’s last name, London.

From an early age, London struggled to make a living, working in a cannery and as a sailor, oyster pirate, and fish patroller. During the national economic crisis of 1893, he joined a march of unemployed workers. He was jailed for vagrancy for a month, during which time he decided to go to college. The 17-year-old London completed a high school equivalency course and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, where he read voraciously for a year. However, he dropped out to join the 1897 gold rush.

While in the Klondike, London began submitting stories to magazines. In 1900, his first collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf, was published. Three years later, his story The Call of the Wild made him famous around the country. London continued to write stories of adventure amid the harsh natural elements. During his 17-year career, he wrote 50 fiction and nonfiction books. He settled in northern California about 1911, having already written most of his best work. London, a heavy drinker, died in 1916.

READ MORE: The Last Great Gold Rush 

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Olds Motor Works founded

Year
1897
Month Day
August 21

Ransom Eli Olds of Lansing, Michigan, founds Olds Motors Works—which will later become Oldsmobile—on August 21, 1897.

Born in Geneva, Ohio, in 1864, Olds went to work for his family’s machine-repair and engine-building business in 1883. In 1896, Olds completed his first gasoline-powered vehicle, and the following year he founded Olds Motor Works with financial backing from Samuel L. Smith, who had made his fortune in lumber. After the company moved from Lansing to Detroit in 1900, a fire destroyed all of its cars except its small, one-cylinder curved-dash model. Light, reliable and relatively powerful, the curved-dash Oldsmobile (as Olds had renamed his company) became a commercial sensation after appearing at the New York Auto Show in 1901. Olds returned to Lansing in 1902 and began large-scale production of the car.

The curved-dash Oldsmobile was the first American car to be produced using the progressive assembly-line system, and the first to become a commercial success. Olds soon split with Smith and his board of directors over the future direction of the company, however: Olds wanted to continue the focus on smaller cars, while the others favored the production of larger, more expensive automobiles. In 1904, Olds left to found the Reo Motor Car Company (for his initials, R.E.O.). After his departure, Oldsmobile struggled, and in 1908 it was swallowed up by the new General Motors (GM) conglomerate.

By the 1920s, Oldsmobile’s six- and eight-cylinder models sat solidly in the middle of GM’s lineup—less expensive than Buick or Cadillac, but still comfortably ahead of Chevrolet. Oldsmobile survived the Great Depression years and earned a reputation as GM’s “experimental” division, introducing the so-called “safety automatic transmission” in 1938, a precursor to 1940’s “Hydra-Matic,” which was the first successful fully automatic transmission. The 135-horsepower “Rocket” engine, introduced in the new 88 model in 1949, made Oldsmobile one of the world’s top-performing cars. In 1961, with the release of the upscale compact F-85 (powered by a V-8 engine), Oldsmobile launched its Cutlass, which would become one of the industry’s longest-running and most successful names. The Cutlass Supreme would reign as the best-selling American car for much of the 1970s and early 1980s.

In the 1980s, however, Oldsmobile sales declined, and in 1992 a story in The Washington Post–denied by both Oldsmobile and GM–claimed that GM had seriously considered killing the brand. In August 1997, Oldsmobile celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. Despite efforts to compete with foreign imports with smaller, more fuel-efficient models like the Aurora, Intrigue, Alero and Bravada, Oldsmobile continued to struggle, and in 2004 GM finally discontinued the brand. At the time of its demise, Oldsmobile was America’s oldest continuously operating automaker.

READ MORE: The Cars That Made America

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