On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Interview with residents of Jackson Heights, Queens, neighborhood where dozens of mostly deaf and mute Mexicans were discovered living in squalor in two crammed apartments as indentured laborers; co-owner of building says when she bought dwelling three months ago tenants were already living there, and that she did not know who was renting house; map (M)
Soaring price of Microsoft Corp stock discussed in light of company's own view that stock is overvalued; graph (M)
Scandal overs Sears, Roebuck & Co's behavior in collecting payments from credit card customers after they declared bankruptcy has emerged as greatest challenge yet to chairman and chief executive Arthur C Martinez's image as leader; he has resisted any temptation to play down issue, even though it has had little impact on sales, which continue to rise; has offered unexpectedly generous settlment plan for potential claims; photos (L)
Biographical sketch of boxing referee Mills Lane in view of his disqualification of Mike Tyson for biting Evander Holyfield's ear during their heavyweight championship fight; notes that Lane is 59 years old and district judge in Reno, Nev; photos (M)
Cathedral of Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church will open in Jamaica, Queens; Rev Floyd H Flake, who is also a Congressman, says cathedral will be second largest predominantly African-American church in New York City; it will seat 2,500 in 93,000-square-foot church complex in Jamaica, Queens; photo (S)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of July 16, 1997, covering July 20, 1997.
The Prodigy
Soundtrack
Spice Girls
Hanson
Tim McGraw
1997M. E. H. Maharoof, Sri Lankan politician (born 1939)[†]
Mohamed Ehuttar Hadjiar Maharoof was a Sri Lankan politician and Member of Parliament.
1997The fully restored USS Constitution (a.k.a. Old Ironsides) celebrates its 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.[†]
USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. She was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. The name "Constitution" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March or May the frigates that were to be constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sister ships were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. She was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Her first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
In 1997, the world population was approximately 5,924,787,816 people[†]