John McDermott. April 23 – Representatives of the Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation and U.S. Dawes Commission sign the Atoka Agreement, which becomes an important precursor for creating the State of Oklahoma. April 27–6 May – Greco-Turkish War of 1897: Battle of Velestino. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson is born. April 30 – J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London. May 6 – John Jacob Abel announces the successful isolation of epinephrine (adrenaline), in a paper read before the Association of American Physicians. May 10 – 19 zinc miners die of carbon monoxide poisoning at Snaefell Mine on the Isle of Man. May 11 – A patent is awarded for the invention of the first automotive muffler, with the granting by the U.S. Patent Office of application number 582,485 to Milton Reeves and his brother Marshall T. Reeves, of the Reeves Pulley Company of Columbus, Indiana. May 14 The Stars and Stripes Forever, an American patriotic march by John Philip Sousa, is performed for the first time. (or May 15) – The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, WhK) is founded in Berlin as an LGBT campaigning organization, the first such in history. May 19 – Oscar Wilde is released from prison in England, and goes into exile on the continent. May 22 – The Blackwall Tunnel, at this time the longest underwater road tunnel in the world, is opened for traffic beneath the River Thames in the East End of London by the Prince of Wales. May 26 – Irish-born theatrical manager Bram Stoker's contemporary Gothic horror novel Dracula is first published (in London); it will influence the direction of vampire literature for the following century. June 12 – 1897 Assam earthquake: An earthquake of magnitude of 8.0 rocks Assam, India, killing over 1,500 people. June 18 – Kyoto University is officially established in Japan. June 22 – The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria is celebrated in the United Kingdom. No other British monarch will celebrate such a jubilee until Elizabeth II in 2012. July–September July 11 – S. A. Andrée's Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897 begins. The ill-fated expedition to fly over the Arctic results in the death of the entire team within months. July 17 – The Klondike Gold Rush