1997
Centuries: Year in Review 20th Century (19th century - 20th century - 21st century)
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 - 1997 - 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
International Year of the Reef
Births
Deaths
- February 11 - Don Porter, actor.
- February 19 - Xiaoping Deng
- July 2 - James Stewart
- July 20 - John Akii-Bua Ugandan hurdler
- August 2 - William S. Burroughs, US author
- August 31 - Diana, English princess
- September 5 - Georg Solti
- September 5 - Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa)
- September 9 - Burgess Meredith
- September 17 - Red Skelton
- December 3 - Kathy Acker, post-punk post-feminist and post-industrial author
- Allen Ginsberg, US poet
Events
- February 11 - Bill Parcells becomes head coach of New York Jets.
- March 26 - Thirty-nine bodies found in Heaven's Gate cult suicide.
- May 1 - The UK's Labour Party end 18 years of Conservative rule in the 1997 UK general election
- May 11 - IBM's Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, the first time a computer beat a chess grand master
- September 11 - Scotland votes to create its own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.
- South Korea suffers a severe economic crisis
Sport
- January 26 - Super Bowl XXXI Green Bay Packers (35) def. New England Patriots (21)
- Physics - Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, William D. Phillips
- Chemistry - Paul D Boyer, John E Walker, Jens C Skou
- Medicine - Stanley B Prusiner
- Literature - Dario Fo
- Peace - International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Jody Williams
- Economics - Robert Merton, Myron Scholes