Half a century after the California Gold Rush, tens of thousands of prospectors descended on the Klondike region of northwestern Canada in 1897 to seek their fortunes in a region said to be rich in new deposits of gold. During the next few years, 100,000 Americans and Canadians ventured to the cold, forbidding Yukon Territory. A few struck it rich; most went home empty-handed.

In other noteworthy news of 1897:

• The New York Times started using the slogan, “All the News That's Fit to Print.”
• The New York Sun published its famous response to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
• “Wee Willie”Keeler, one of the smallest players in Major League Baseball history, won the National League batting title with a .424 average – the highest-ever for a left-handed batter – and hit in 44 consecutive games, a streak topped only by Joe DiMaggio.
• The first section of the Boston subway opened, becoming the first underground rapid transit sys tem in North America.
• The first Boston Marathon was held.
• A sheriff's posse killed 19 unarmed coal miners, mostly immigrants, staging a strike for better working conditions near Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Many were shot in the back.
• Grant's Tomb, final resting place of Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant, was dedicated in New York. Decades later, comedian Groucho Marx gave consolation prizes on his TV quiz show to contestants who knew: “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
• Irish author Bram Stoker published the novel Dracula.
• A 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith became the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after he slammed his cab into a building. He was fined 25 shillings.

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