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Lieutenant Governor of Utah: Olene S. Walker (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Barbara W. Snelling (Republican) (until month and day unknown), Doug Racine (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Don Beyer (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Washington: Joel Pritchard (Republican) (until January 15), Brad Owen (Democratic) (starting January 15)
January 20: Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, begins his second term.
January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
January 20 – President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore begin their second term.
January 26 – Super Bowl XXXI: The Green Bay Packers win the NFL Championship for the first time since 1967, defeating the New England Patriots 35–21 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
February[]
February 5 – A Santa Monica jury finds former football legend O. J. Simpson liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
February 8 – Motorcycle stunt rider Corey Scott is killed in front of a crowd of around 30,000 spectators at the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami, Florida, after a stunt goes terribly wrong.
February 10 – The United States Army suspends Gene C. McKinney, Sergeant Major of the Army, its top-ranking enlisted soldier, after hearing allegations of sexual misconduct.
February 13
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 7,000 for the first time, gaining 60.81 to 7,022.44.
STS-82: Astronauts from Space Shuttle Discovery begin tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope.
February 23 – 1997 Empire State Building shooting: A gunman kills one person and wounds six others before taking his own life on the observation deck of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York City.
February 28
FBI agent Earl Edwin Pitts pleads guilty to selling secrets to Soviet Union.
North Hollywood shootout: Two heavily armed bank robbers conflict with officers from the Los Angeles Police Department in a mass shootout.
March[]
March 4 – U.S. President Bill Clinton bars federal funding for any research on human cloning.
March 9 – 24-year-old Brooklyn rapper The Notorious B.I.G. is killed in a drive-by shooting shortly after leaving a Vibe magazine party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles before the release of his second album Life After Death. The album is released on March 25.
March 13 – The Phoenix Lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona.
March 14 – A famous study of gender reassignment of a twin boy who lost his penis to a botched circumcision is exposed as fraudulent. The supposedly successful outcome for "Joan" had been widely cited as proof that gender was determined by nurture, yet the patient, David Reimer, was deeply unhappy and had returned to his original gender by the age of 15, thus indicating the exact opposite thesis.[2]
March 24 – The 69th Academy Awards, hosted by Billy Crystal, are held at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, with Anthony Minghella's The English Patient winning nine awards out of 12 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The telecast garners nearly 40.1 million viewers.
March 26 – In San Diego, California, 39 Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide at their compound.
April[]
April 16 – Houston socialite Doris Angleton is murdered, drawing suspicion to her estranged husband, Robert. His brother Roger confesses to the crime and the investigation reveals that Robert had amassed a fortune through illegal betting.
April 18 – The Red River of the North breaks through dikes and floodsGrand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota, causing US$2 billion in damage.
May[]
May – For the first time since December 1973, unemployment falls below 5%. It would remain below 5% until September 2001, during the early 2000s recession.
May 2 – The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
May 15 – The United States government acknowledges existence of the "Secret War" in Laos, and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other "Secret War" veterans.
May 16 – U.S. President Bill Clinton issues a formal apology to the surviving victims of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male and their families.
May 22 – Kelly Flinn, the U.S. Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepts a general discharge in order to avoid a court martial.
May 25 – Strom Thurmond becomes the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Senate (41 years and 10 months).
May 27 – The second-deadliest tornado of the 1990s hits in Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.
June[]
June 2 – In Denver, Colorado, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
June 6 – In Lacey Township, New Jersey, high school senior Melissa Drexler gives birth in a toilet and leaves the newborn for dead in the trash.
June 7
A computer user known as "_eci" publishes his C source code on a Windows 95 and Windows NT exploit, which later becomes WinNuke. The source code gets wide distribution across the internet, and Microsoft is forced to release a security patch.
The Detroit Red Wings win their first Stanley Cup championship in 42 years, defeating the Philadelphia Flyers 4 games to 0. Red Wings goaltender Mike Vernon is awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.
June 8 – A United States Coast Guard helicopter crashes near Humboldt Bay, California; all four crew members perish.
June 12 – The United States Department of the Treasury unveils a new $50 bill, meant to be more difficult to counterfeit.
June 13 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
June 19 – The fast food chain McDonald's wins a partial victory in its libel trial, known as the "McLibel case", against two environmental campaigners. The judge agrees that McDonald's targeted its advertising at children, who pestered their parents into visiting the company's restaurants.
June 27 – Walt Disney Pictures' 35th feature film, Hercules, loosely based on the legendary mythological hero of the same name, is released to positive reviews but underperforms at the box office in comparison to its most recent predecessors.
June 28 – During the Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson II boxing match in Las Vegas, Mike Tyson bites off part of Evander Holyfield's ear.
July[]
July 21: USS Constitution under sail
July 2 – Men in Black is released in theaters.
July 4 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
July 15 – Spree killerAndrew Cunanan shoots fashion designer Gianni Versace to death outside Versace's Miami Beach, Florida, residence.
July 16 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average gains 63.17 to close at 8,038.88. It is the Dow's first close above 8,000. The Dow has doubled its value in 30 months.
July 18 – The first Speedway gas station opens in Ohio.
July 21 – The fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.
July 23 – Digital Equipment Corporation files antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.
August[]
August 6: ATC radio traffic after Korean Air Flight 801 crashed in Guam
August 1 – Steve Jobs returns to Apple Computer, Inc at Macworld in Boston.
August 6 – Microsoft buys a $150 million share of financially troubled Apple Computer.
August 6 – Korean Air Flight 801 crashes while attempting to land in the U.S. territory of Guam, killing 229.
September[]
September 4 – In Lorain, Ohio, the last Ford Thunderbird for 3 years rolls off the assembly line.
September 15 – www.google.com is registered by Google.
October 1 – Luke Woodham walks into Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi and opens fire, killing two girls, after killing his mother earlier that morning.
October 4
One million men gather for Promise Keepers' "Stand in the Gap" event in Washington, DC.
Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery: The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history ($17.3 million, mostly in small bills) occurs at the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Wells Fargo. An FBI investigation eventually results in 24 convictions and the recovery of approximately 95% of the stolen cash.
October 15
Andy Green sets the first supersonic land speed record for the ThrustSSC team, led by Richard Noble of the UK. ThrustSSC goes through the flying mile course at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, at an average speed of 1,227.985 km/h (763.035 mph).
NASA launches the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn.
October 16 – The first color photograph appears on the front page of The New York Times.
October 26 – 1997 World Series: The Florida Marlins defeat the Cleveland Indians.
October 27 – Stock markets around the world crash due to a global economic crisis scare. The Dow Jones Industrial Average follows suit and plummets 554.26, or 7.18%, to 7,161.15. The points loss exceeds the loss from Black Monday. Officials at the New York Stock Exchange for the first time invoke the "circuit breaker" rule to stop trading.
October 28 – In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average gains a record 337.17 points, closing at 7,498.32. One billion shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time ever.
October 30 – In Newton, Massachusetts, British au pairLouise Woodward is found guilty of the baby-shaking death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen.
November[]
November 12: Ramzi Yousef guilty of planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
November – The unemployment rate drops to 4.6%, the lowest since October 1973.
November 10
Telecom companies WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a US$37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom (the largest merger in U.S. history).
A Fairfax, Virginia, jury finds Mir Qazi guilty of murdering two CIA employees in 1993.
November 12 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
November 14 – Mary Kay Letourneau is sentenced to six months imprisonment in Washington after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. Letourneau gave birth to her victims' child and the leniency of her sentence was widely criticized.[3]
November 19 – In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies are born alive, and the first in which all survive infancy.
December 1 – Michael Carneal opens fire on a prayer group at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing three and injuring five.
December 3 – In Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign a treaty prohibiting the manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel land mines. However, the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty.
December 19 – James Cameron's Titanic, the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar (2009), premieres in the U.S.