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).

On February 2, 1897, Black inventor and businessman Alfred Cralle patents the first ice cream scoop. His popular creation is part of a surge in patents by Black inventors after the end of the Civil War.

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

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 Thomson referred to them as "corpuscles," what he found is more commonly known today as the electron.

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).

According to the Daily News of London, the first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, go on sale on May 27, 1897.

On July 25, 1897, 21-year-old Jack London leaves for the Klondike region of far-northern Canada to join the gold rush, where he will write his first successful stories.

On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds of Lansing, Michigan, founds Olds Motor Vehicle Company, which will later become Olds Motor Werks and then Oldsmobile.

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.

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 20 shillings.