50 Fun Facts About 1997

Which rival's $150 million stake in a struggling Apple did Steve Jobs announce at a Macworld Expo keynote?

Microsoft put $150 million into Apple and pledged to keep making Office for the Mac, and Jobs told the Macworld crowd to stop treating the two companies as rivals.

Which DVD-by-post start-up did Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph found in Scotts Valley, California, that August?

Netflix offered itself to Blockbuster for $50 million in 2000 and, its finance chief later said, was laughed out of the office; Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy ten years later.

Jeanne Calment, who died that August at a record 122, said she had met which painter as a girl?

Van Gogh lived and painted in Arles, where she was born. She later outlived the man who agreed, when she was 90, to pay her a monthly sum for her flat on her death; he paid more than twice its value and died first.

Which comedy about six jobless Sheffield men forming a striptease act briefly became Britain's highest-grossing film of all time?

The Full Monty cost about $3.5 million, took $257 million worldwide and beat Titanic to the BAFTA for Best Film, though Titanic soon took its British box-office record.

Who replaced Val Kilmer as Batman opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze in the summer's Batman & Robin?

George Clooney later said of Batman & Robin "I think we might have killed the franchise", and Warner Bros. made no Batman film until Batman Begins in 2005.

Which number did Major League Baseball retire for every team on the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut?

Number 42 was retired for all of baseball in 1997, the first time any sport had honoured a player that way; Mariano Rivera, grandfathered in, was the last to wear it regularly until he retired in 2013.

Which band's songwriters took the royalties from The Verve's 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' after a lawsuit over its sample?

The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took the songwriting credit because the hook was lifted from an orchestral cover of their 'The Last Time'; they handed the credits and royalties back to Richard Ashcroft in 2019.

Which Nobel Peace laureate, born that July, became the youngest winner in the prize's history at 17?

Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan's Swat valley on 12 July 1997, survived a Taliban gunman's bullet at 15 and shared the Peace Prize two years later.

In which country did Princess Diana walk through a minefield being cleared at Huambo that January?

Angola's minefields put Diana at odds with the government, where a defence minister called her a 'loose cannon' for backing a ban; the Ottawa treaty outlawing the mines was signed that December.

Which dot-com floated on the Nasdaq that May at $18 a share, then waited until late 2001 for its first profit?

Amazon's IPO on 15 May 1997 valued a bookshop barely two years online; its first profit came in the last quarter of 2001, one cent a share on sales above $1 billion.

Which diplomat, the first UN Secretary-General promoted from its own staff, took office on 1 January?

Kofi Annan got the job after the United States vetoed a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and went on to share the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the organisation itself.

Which Spielberg sequel, the widest cinema release ever at the time, took Ian Malcolm to a second dinosaur island?

The Lost World was the only sequel Michael Crichton ever wrote, and it had to revive Ian Malcolm, who was reported dead at the end of the first novel.

Which David E. Kelley legal comedy, new on Fox in September, made Calista Flockhart and a dancing baby famous?

Ally McBeal's heroine ended up on a 1998 Time cover beside Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, under the headline 'Is Feminism Dead?'

Which former Neighbours actress debuted with 'Torn', a cover that spent three November weeks at UK number two?

Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn' was a hand-me-down: it had already been released in Danish and by the Los Angeles band Ednaswap before her cover made it a worldwide hit.

Which 'Annie's Song' singer died in October when his home-built Long-EZ plane crashed into Monterey Bay?

John Denver had run out of fuel in one tank and could not reach the selector valve behind his shoulder to switch to the other; the FAA had revoked his medical certificate the year before.

Michael Hutchence, found dead in a Sydney hotel room in November aged 37, fronted which Australian band?

INXS performed with guest singers, then chose a new frontman in 2005 through a television talent contest, Rock Star: INXS, won by the Canadian J.D. Fortune.

Which 16-year-old Swiss became tennis's youngest world number one in March and won three of the year's Grand Slams?

Martina Hingis won the Australian Open at 16 years and 3 months, became Wimbledon's youngest champion since 1887, and beat Venus Williams in the US Open final.

Which gymnast, born in Columbus, Ohio, that March, won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics?

Simone Biles was born on 14 March 1997 and was adopted, with her younger sister, by her grandfather and his wife Nellie, whom she calls Mom.

Which tennis player, born that October to a Haitian father, became the first Asian singles world number one in 2019?

Naomi Osaka was born in Osaka on 16 October 1997, beat her childhood idol Serena Williams to win the 2018 US Open, and lit the cauldron at the Tokyo Olympics.

Which French explorer, co-developer of the Aqua-Lung and captain of the Calypso, died in Paris in June aged 87?

Jacques Cousteau tested the first Aqua-Lung prototype in 1943 with engineer Émile Gagnan, and the device made extended underwater exploration possible for the first time.

Which architect of 'one country, two systems' died in Beijing in February, months before Hong Kong's return to China?

Deng Xiaoping negotiated Hong Kong's return himself, meeting Margaret Thatcher in Beijing in 1982 and refusing to let Britain keep any part of the colony, but he died too soon to see it.

Which Tommy Boy star died in his Chicago apartment in December aged 33, the age at which his idol John Belushi died?

Chris Farley had followed his idol step for step, from Chicago's Second City theatre to Saturday Night Live, and a cocaine-and-morphine overdose killed him at the same age.

Which Canadian became Formula One champion after Michael Schumacher drove into him at Jerez and was disqualified?

Jacques Villeneuve limped home third to win the crown by three points, and the FIA later stripped Schumacher of his second place in the championship while letting him keep his race wins.

Which Manchester United captain stunned football by retiring at 30 in May, days after winning the Premier League?

Eric Cantona swapped the pitch for the screen, playing a French ambassador in Elizabeth the following year and later starring in Ken Loach's Looking for Eric.

Which horse race was run on a Monday after IRA bomb threats forced 60,000 people out of Aintree on the Saturday?

The Grand National was run 49 hours late and won by Lord Gyllene by 25 lengths; the evacuation had stranded thousands overnight, their cars locked inside the course while police searched them.

Which Oasis songwriter posed with Tony Blair at a Downing Street party for celebrities who had backed New Labour?

Noel Gallagher was criticised for going, and answered that his parents had raised him to see Labour as the party of working people and that he had gone to meet the Labour prime minister, not the man.

Which royal yacht was decommissioned in December at a ceremony where the Queen was reported to have cried?

HMY Britannia's clocks all stand stopped at 3.01, the minute the Queen stepped ashore for the last time; the yacht is now a floating museum at Leith in Edinburgh.

Two Firearms Acts passed after the Dunblane school shooting banned private ownership of which weapons in Great Britain?

Handguns above .22 calibre were outlawed by the first Act, passed under the Conservatives, and Tony Blair's new Labour government banned the remaining .22 pistols later in the year.

Which dance act's 'Things Can Only Get Better' did Labour adopt as its anthem for the May general election?

D:Ream's keyboard player was Brian Cox, who went on to become a physics professor and the BBC science presenter who co-hosts The Infinite Monkey Cage.

Which country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May after Laurent Kabila's rebels ousted Mobutu?

Zaire's name went with Mobutu: he fled Kinshasa on 16 May 1997, the rebels walked into the capital without serious resistance, and Kabila proclaimed himself president the next day.

Where were Che Guevara's remains found and exhumed, 30 years after his execution there, before reburial in Cuba?

Bolivia's secret was a mass grave by an airstrip; once found, Guevara was reburied in Santa Clara, the Cuban city whose capture by his troops in 1958 had made his name.

Which space station was holed in June when a Progress supply craft struck its Spektr module during a docking test?

Mir's crew had just enough time to fit a hatch cover and seal off the leaking Spektr module, saving the station; Spektr stayed sealed and depressurised for the rest of Mir's life, re-entered only by cosmonauts in spacesuits.

Which James Ellroy adaptation starring Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce lost seven of its nine Oscar races to Titanic?

L.A. Confidential's two leads were little known in America when it was cast; it won Oscars for Kim Basinger and its screenplay on the night Titanic took eleven, equalling Ben-Hur's record.

Which cartoon's 166-episode record did The Simpsons pass in February with the episode that introduced Poochie?

The Flintstones lost its record to an episode that mocked long-running shows: Poochie parodies the hip new character an ageing series adds to win back viewers.

Which ITV series, adapted from Caroline Graham's Barnaby novels with John Nettles as the detective, began in March?

Midsomer Murders outlasted its star: John Nettles retired in 2011 and Neil Dudgeon took over as the detective's cousin, John Barnaby, so the show kept its Inspector Barnaby.

Which album did Ry Cooder record in Havana with veterans such as Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer?

Buena Vista Social Club was an accident: Cooder had come to record Malian musicians with Cubans, and when the Africans could not make the trip he recorded old Cuban songs with local veterans instead.

Which Indian writer won the Booker Prize with her debut The God of Small Things, set among Kerala's backwaters?

Arundhati Roy drew on her childhood in the Kerala village of Aymanam, then published no second novel for twenty years, until The Ministry of Utmost Happiness in 2017.

Which Defence Secretary's shock defeat in Enfield Southgate became the defining image of Labour's landslide night?

Michael Portillo lost to Labour's Stephen Twigg, and the sight of a presumed future party leader being unseated became the shorthand for the scale of the Tory collapse.

Which Hayao Miyazaki film about a wolf-raised girl and a cursed young warrior briefly became Japan's highest-grossing film?

Princess Mononoke reached English-speaking cinemas with a script by the fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman, who worked from a translation of the Japanese script.

Which nation's September devolution referendum passed by just 6,721 votes?

Wales voted 50.3 per cent in favour of its own Assembly, the result hanging on the final declaration, from Carmarthenshire; Scotland had backed its parliament a week earlier by about three to one.

Who became Ireland's eighth president in November, the second woman in a row to hold the office?

Mary McAleese, born in Belfast, was the first president from Northern Ireland, and in 2011 she welcomed Queen Elizabeth II on the first visit by a British monarch since Irish independence.

Which Chelsea midfielder's goal inside the first minute against Middlesbrough was the fastest yet in a Wembley FA Cup final?

Roberto Di Matteo's long-range strike went in off the crossbar, and Eddie Newton's late second gave Chelsea a 2–0 win and their first major trophy for 26 years.

Which RAF pilot drove ThrustSSC to the first supersonic land speed record, 763 mph across Nevada's Black Rock Desert?

Andy Green's run came 50 years and a day after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the air; the project's leader, Richard Noble, had held the record himself since 1983.

Jeff Buckley drowned in May while swimming fully clothed in a river harbour in which Tennessee city?

Memphis's Wolf River Harbor claimed the 30-year-old while he waited for his band to arrive from New York, and Grace, released in 1994, stayed his only finished studio album.

Which Steve Coogan character, sacked by the BBC and left by his wife, lived in a roadside hotel in his November sitcom?

Alan Partridge spent the first series of I'm Alan Partridge in the Linton Travel Tavern presenting a graveyard slot on Norwich local radio; by the 2002 second series he had downgraded to a static caravan.

Which film-noir star of The Night of the Hunter died in Santa Barbara on 1 July, one day before James Stewart?

Robert Mitchum's career had survived a 1948 marijuana arrest and weeks in jail, a conviction a court wiped from the record in 1951; James Stewart died the day after him.

Who won an unshared Nobel Prize in Medicine for proposing that misfolded proteins called prions cause mad cow disease?

Stanley Prusiner's claim that a protein with no genes of its own could be infectious met years of scepticism; prions are now blamed for scrapie, BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Which one-man act's 'Your Woman', recorded at home on an Atari ST and a cassette deck, topped the UK chart in January?

White Town was Jyoti Mishra alone, and the song's muted-trumpet hook is a sample of Nat Gonella playing on Lew Stone's 1932 recording 'My Woman'.

Which Italian playwright and actor, author of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Dario Fo was praised by the Swedish Academy for emulating the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority; his best-known play draws on a real case, an anarchist's death in police custody in Milan in 1969.

The Asian financial crisis began on 2 July when which country was forced to let its currency float?

Thailand's baht lost its dollar peg that day; Thais called what followed the Tom Yum Kung crisis, and within months it had spread to South Korea and Indonesia.